Lesson Eight: Basic Stalls (and aerobatics!)

Well, definitely an interesting lesson this one, and a big learning curve at that. Here is the lesson objective:

As per usual I went out by myself and completed the pre-flight inspection, and everything looked up to scratch. This time my takeoff was better as I kept us straighter once we became airborne.

The instructor than gave me a few demonstrations of the stall before I had a go at it myself. The first few times I was a little apprehensive so I didn't recover quite as fast as I would have liked, but I began to get the hang of it after a while. I kept forgetting to turn the Carb heat off when we passed through 60 knots, but that wasn't too much of an issue once I got the hang of it. My last stall of the day was the best, but Murphys law made its presence known by telling us we would have to return to the airport or we would go over our 1 hour limit in case someone else needed the aircraft. So we headed back to the airport Meanwhile, I was asked if I wanted to do some aerobatics so I said 'may as well!' and away we went.

First of all we did a couple of rolls, which was awesome fun, and I think we also did two or three stall turns after that, followed by a loop which was the best of the lot, as we stayed flying upside down for a couple of seconds before finishing off the loop. G-forces made it a little interesting too. The forces rather try to pull your mouth down, which would be amusing to watch in a video.

Following the aerobatics, we headed back to the airport for landing. Once we joined the circuit (or pattern if you want to call it that) we had to complete a right hand orbit. I then had a go at the landing, this time I stuffed up by over flaring instead of under like the last landing and we ended up doing a bit of a 'floater' down the runway Oh well, practice makes perfect.

Overall an awesome lesson, with getting the hang of stall recoverys and the aerobatics the highlight of the lesson. Next up is power and flap stalls.