Hey guys,

I started my PPL training about 1.5 weeks ago and did my 5th lesson. I just thought I would tell y’all about my experience doing stalls.

We did power off and then power on stalls. Wow.... the nose is really high when doing power on. At least it feels very high to me.

Did a few of those. I did OK. Kept the plane for the most part coordinated and did not lose much altitude. Then my instructor showed me a spin..... wow. This gave me a much higher appreciation for fighter pilots/aerobatic pilots etc. It felt VERY intense. We dropped about 400-500 feet. My ears were popping big time. I’m sure to you experienced pilots it is not a big deal and probably over time I will get more used to them with practice.

Though I can not even fathom flying in a blue angel jet or a aerobatic plane, considering this is nothing relative to what those guys do.

Also an eye opener that if you spin at low altitude and don’t know exactly what you are doing, you are probably going to die.

I really need to get my head looking out more. I’m so buried in the cockpit looking at my instruments too much for VFR.

Oh dear...let me put my a-hole hat on for a sec.

https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/2812257-post3.html

Show me a 141 syllabus that has you doing spins in lesson 5....
Don’t bother looking, there isn’t one.
Pardon my language but your instructor is a flaming idiot for doing spins with you in lesson 5.
Serves no purpose but to chase a student away.
Was the airplane within the “Utility” weight and balance envelope?
I’ll bet you that it wasn’t.
Was everything secured in the luggage compartment?
I’ll bet you that it wasn’t.
Did he designate an emergency landing site in case of engine stoppage?
I’ll bet you that he didn’t.
Did you carry parachutes?
Required for aerobatic flight unless it’s spin training for your CFI rating.

Now I’m pretty sure he got bored and was looking to show you something fun.
He shouldn’t have.
Period.
An FAA Inspector would have nailed him to the wall.
Top of my head I have six violations.

Schools do a disservice if they teach stalls with the nose pointed at the sky and spins as mysterious and hard to recover. The chief purpose in teaching both is to enhance your ability to recover.

Remember that stalls happen in any attitude; nose pointed straight up, straight down, or straight and level. A spin is a stalled condition with rotation; roll and yaw. In most cases, both rotations can be stopped with opposite rudder; that leaves reducing angle of attack (stall) and recovering from the descent. That's it.

You can't spin if you don't stall. It doesn't matter the altitude. If you can do a stall recovery (which implies a stall recognition), you can prevent a spin; while it is possible to spin an airplane at an altiitude that's too low to recover, the name of the game is preventing the stall that leads to the spin, and some exposure to stalls and spins is good to help you recognize and impart preventative measures early.

Enjoy it in small airplanes, which is where much of the fun in flying takes place. We don't really stall or spin big airplanes.

Unless you’re Maverick and Goose...

Actually, no.

http://<br /> https://www.faa.gov/a...rpretation.pdf

We were just working on stalls. The power off stalls were being practiced for traffic pattern landing.

The power on were for take offs so I guess that is why he was teaching them in that way.

I think they don’t want to overwhelm me yet with performing stalls outside of those circumstances but then again I don’t know what I don’t know.

The spin was to show me what happens when you are uncoordinated and stall because I was struggling to keep stepping on the ball. I did not perform a spin myself. Granted I already knew a spin would occur but obviously experiencing one is much different than watching a video of one.

There really was not anything in the aircraft with us other than my flight bag which was behind my seat but I see what you are saying regarding an object flying around that is not secure.

I must say, I am pretty mechanically inclined, race motocross, motorcycles, cars etc. I thought I had a little knowledge of flying prior to starting but wow. I thought I would be doing better than I am at flying. Flying is really difficult. Even just making a 360 turn nice and even without losing or gaining altitude. My s-turns were decent.

So far we have done slow flight, s turns, circles, turns, climbs and descents, straight and level.

Landings are pretty tough. I’m definitely not changing my aiming point to look further out for the round out so I keep rounding out too high. Plus, every time I have flown we have had decent crosswinds.


I’m definitely getting better on my radio calls.

Overall learning to fly has been substantially more difficult than I was expecting. Not that I was expecting it to be easy, but still...

The problem here is not stepping on the ball, it's controlling the yaw of the airplane. When the nose is high, pick a cloud or point way off in the distance that you can see to the left of the glareshield. Keep it parallel (wings level). Then just use enough rudder to keep that point stationary throughout the process. That's also how you climb coordinated. If you are trying to "step on the ball" to remain coordinated during the stalls, you'll always be chasing it and never very coordinated. I always find you have to nearly let off of it completely at "break" if you are doing full stalls, but again, you'll SEE this if you are looking at yaw, rather than chasing the ball.

IMO, teaching "stepping on the ball" is very lazy, it draws your attention inside, makes it harder to control the plane, and its simply not necessary if you pick a point in the distance and just control the yaw. It can be hard to "feel" the "correct" yaw sometimes for the new pilot, even for experienced pilots, although it always seems easier when you are not the one flying, but you can see the yaw plain as day if you know where(are taught were) to look.

I stand corrected thank you.

https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/agc/practice_areas/regulations/interpretations/data/interps/2018/Fitzpatrick-Spartan%20College%20-%20(2018)%20Legal%20Interpretation.pdf

The instructor is now down to 5 violations....and still a flaming idiot.

Groundschool, groundschool and then more groundschool.
If you don’t grasp how the airplane works aerodynamically on the ground in an air conditioned class room you sure as hell not going to magically put the pieces together in a noisy cramped airplane while the instructor is entertaining hisself with spins.

And the current version of the age old joke:
“I’ll teach you how to fly for $50......I’ll teach you how to land for $9,950”

F-14 a **big** airplane?

The F14 was 72,000 lbs gross weight and had a nasty habit of going flat in a spin. Eyeball out G could incapacitate the front seater and as the movie correctly portrayed the canopy needed to be manually jettisoned prior to ejection to avoid hitting it

https://youtu.be/ghxQfkngeKI