Did my first stalls today. Kind of unsettling, but I knew what to expect so wasn’t really nervous.
A stall occurs when the airplane exceeds the critical angle of attack, and can happen at any speed. Usually they happen at low speeds, and it is very weird to try to put the plane into a stall. [...]
Practiced more steep turns (which are starting to feel more natural) and more slow flight. This time we practiced a slow descent from 3500 to 2000 feet with the engine at idle. Carb heat on, engine to idle, nose drops suddenly so pull back and apply full flaps. Nose high with stall warning on all [...]
Pre-flighted on my own today (only screwed up a little bit) and performed my second takeoff. Today’s lesson was hard turns and slow flight.
A hard turn is usually around 45 degrees of bank which starts to feel a little weird as turns go. You get about half way to pulling a second G and the [...]
Did my first take-off yesterday!
There was a decent headwind, so after taking off we flew west into the country to practice some ground reference maneuvers. The practice was to adjust the turn angle based on the wind direction as we flew in a circle over a small town at about 800ft AGL. It took [...]
I attended my first EAA meeting last night down at Morey Field. I was warmly welcomed as a new pilot in training, and met a couple of guys who were building airplanes in their garages. Pretty cool!
An interesting ILS approach chart was passed around, demonstrating some aviation creativity and humor. You can check it out [...]
Had another flying lesson and some groundschool this week. I got to do all the taxiing this time and remembered most of my preflight checks. We took off west and Mike again took us up to 2000 feet and headed north. We flew a good distance to the north to get out the way as [...]
Fun!
My first lesson was in a Cessna 152, a tiny little plane built in 1979. We started with the walkaround and pre-flight check-lists, then Mike (my instructor) took us up to 2000 feet and I flew it up to 3000 and did some turns and a descent. I got to experience the joys of [...]