Scott James Remnant

I really wasn’t sure whether the weather was flyable looking out of the window this morning; the forecast hadn’t been that promising, but today’s METAR was a little better — at least it gave me some room under the cloud.

Phoned the flying school and was told that the cloud base was pretty high, but that wind was rather gusty down the slot. Flyable nonetheless.

Got there, and John had decided it was too gusty to start on circuits; he wanted it rather calmer for my first landing attempts. Instead he’d been down to the South-West with the previous student, and there was a good couple of holes in the cloud, so ideal for stalling!

Gulp.

In reality, the idea of stalling shouldn’t have made me that nervous as we’d been close to the stall with slow flight the last couple of lessons and had already practiced recovery. Nonetheless the thought of deliberately stalling the plane and losing the precious lift wasn’t exactly making my day. Two hours of it to do for the course though, so brave face!

Checked over the plane, largely okay except for a screw loose on the wing that John had already spotted during the previous flight, quickly fixed and taxied off down to the hold. Runway 18 today, haven’t used this one in a few weeks, so a different place to test the brakes and rudder, but remembered.

Have noticed that I’m largely being left to do the checks and pre-flight myself now, and that they’re becoming close to second nature. Still noting that I tend to pre-empt the FISO in shortening the callsign, and deliberately left a space on my kneeboard for writing it down once told it. Didn’t help much, since I ended up forgetting to shorten it and confusing myself, something to work on I think.

In fact, this time John didn’t just let me do the checks and pre-flight, he left me to it all the way through the take-off as well! I’d gotten a little used to his voice talking me through it the last few times, so I compensated by talking myself through it instead.

It seemed rather busy to me, the fact that once off the ground we basically ended up going sideways with the wind didn’t help; and I was using up all my brain-power to keep the plane climbing and in balance. John was entirely happy, and thought I coped brilliantly with the challenge, so that’s ok then.

Bumpy climb all the way to Shipston, where there was a nice hole in the cloud as promised. More than enough room to climb to over 3,200ft for the exercises.

Some revision of FREDA checks and HASELL checks, then handed control to John so that he could demonstrate a clean stall and recovery with power. Not as dramatic as I feared, it seemed to take ages to actually stall, and then the nose simply pitched slowly to the ground as we lost height. Hold it down, full power, and pick your stomach up later as the plane regains height.

My turn now.

Regain the height, HASELL check then reduce power to idle. Hold back on the column to keep height, pull back on the column, heave back on the column. Speed washes off quickly, then at some point the stall warner sounds. Still pull that column back, with all the strength you have, as the plane tries to pull it away from you and eventually it goes limp and the plane pirouettes down. Column forward, full power, wait for a good speed, and collect the stomach. “Good,” said John, “minimum height loss, well done!”

Maybe that wasn’t so bad after all. Regained the height, and a full turn to keep out of the cloud and had another go. Minimum height loss again. One more then; this time pulled out a fraction too early so the stall warner sounded, I reacted instantly releasing the column pressure and John was pleased that I’d simultaneously demonstrated to myself how to repeat the stall during the recovery, and how to avoid/recover from it.

Cloud was coming in a bit, and we were having to turn in it to get away and there just wasn’t enough of a hole left to carry on. Descended down underneath the cloud base again, which turned out to be 2,200ft; and set a course for Stratford.

Flew the pattern for the overhead join, but the FISO decided to throw me a curve-ball; on announcing that we were descending deadside I got told “use callsign Robin Victor November”. Turns out that there was a helicopter flying around clashing with our usual callsign.

Crosswind made it a little tricky to get the plane to descend and turn at the same time, so John took control to get us in the right direction before giving it back to me for the rest of the descent and join.

Passed over the threshold and heard radio traffic from someone announcing downwind, and looked out for them since we would shortly be turning onto downwind ourselves. Spotted them in front of us, but about 1,000ft higher! Quick sanity check ensued, look out of the windows to see whether we were too low, and check the QNE and altimeter. All ok, he must have been too high. This must have been the case, since by the time we turned onto base, he was rather lower.

Handled the turn onto base and start of the descent myself, up to the turn onto final; but the crosswind was too much to get the attitude right so John took over for the landing itself. “A bit unfair for your first landing to be in this,” he said while wrestling with the plane himself!

Control back to me on the tarmac, checks and taxied to the fuel bay to fill the plane back up for the next student. No wait this time, so easily done and back to the school.

Next week will depend on weather; if it’s relatively calm, we’ll be starting on circuits (and landings!) otherwise if there’s a good cloud base or hole, it’ll be more work on stalling, especially different types of stall.

P/UT Hours Today 0:40, Total 8:15