OK, the truth is that those words were not actually spoken during today’s flight, but it sure makes for a colorful title, and does sort of allude to one of today’s experiences.
This morning dawned with iffy weather. My first lesson of the day involved the limitations of automatic weather. Just before leaving the house the PDK METAR claimed that the skies were clear. Temperature/dewpoint spread was pretty tight, which was a bit of negative information, but I put my trust in that clear sky claim. The moment I walked out my door, I realized that while it might have been clear directly above the PDK weather station, it was most definitely not clear over my house. In fact, there was a solid overcast at what might have been 100′ AGL. As I drove towards PDK, though, I could see the edge of that particular patch of clouds, and by the time I go to PDK the skies were mostly clear above.
Once we determined that the weather would be OK for flying, it was time to go. The primary subjects were to be slow flight and stalls. We briefly discussed the maneuvers in the office so I would know what to expect, and then headed out to the plane. Preflight, startup, taxi, runup, time for takeoff.
After Sunday’s successful pattern work, I must admit that I was feeling pretty confident about my flying. I’d flown one takeoff along with multiple touch & gos, and felt that I had a pretty good handle on that portion of the program. I suppose it was about time I got reminded that I’m still barely a five-hour pilot. I taxied onto the runway, got lined up, throttle up full, and I proceeded to make a fairly impressive swerve to the left. Not quite enough right rudder there, Forrest. After rotation, whatever smoothness I thought I had previously seemed gone. In my efforts to keep the plane on runway heading, I rocked back and forth a few times before finally getting settled down with the wings level. After that bit of a rocky start, though, I got myself back under control and headed for the practice area. Along the way, I got my first taste of flying above the clouds. I’d done this before in commercial or other aircraft, but it’s a different experience when you’re not just a passenger. Somehow that made the sight far more lovely.
Out over the lake, it was slow flight time. For the most part, this was a straightforward task; come back with the power, let the airspeed decay, come in with flaps as appropriate, and as airspeed gets low enough, the power has to come back up to maintain level flight. The result is the little Diamond mushing along at just over 40 knots, with the nose quite high indeed. Forward visibility was essentially nil. At these speeds, the controls take on a vastly different feel- in normal flight, just a bit of control pressure gets you a pretty instantaneous response. Down at 40 knots, it’s sort of like a car from the 80s with that ridiculously overboosted power steering. You feel more as if you’re giving the airplane suggestions instead of commands. That’s not to say it’s uncontrollable; the responsiveness is just down the drain. I performed a few turns in this configuration, getting used to the new need to really anticipate my rollouts.
Immediately after that, it was time for my first power-off stall. Scott demonstrated one for me before turning the airplane back over to me. The procedure here is pretty straightforward- essentially the idea is to get the plane in slow flight again, but pull out the power and attempt to maintain altitude until the stall horn sounds. Once that happens, recovery involves dropping the nose below the horizon, coming full up on the power, and bring the flaps up a notch. Done right, there’s almost no altitude loss. This is a vital part of the maneuver- if one were to get into a stall situation close to the ground, minimal altitude loss is obviously an important consideration.
Next up: power-on stalls. The idea here is to simulate a takeoff situation where the airplane is trying to climb too fast. As such, entry involves slowing to approximately rotation speed with flaps set to takeoff, applying full throttle, selecting a too-high pitch attitude, and holding it until that pesky horn goes off again. This brings us to the inspiration for the title of this post. You see, there was a bit of a misunderstanding here- I was under the impression that I needed to continue bringing the nose up until the stall, as opposed to simply picking an unsustainable attitude and holding it. I thought I was doing great… power up, bring the nose up, up, up, up… man, that’s pretty high… and then a voice spoke in my ear and said, “My airplane… let me demonstrate one for you here.” I guess it makes sense that hammerhead turns won’t be covered until maybe the fourth or fifth lesson… 
After a few (correctly executed) power-on stalls, we wrapped up with some steep turn practice. Here again was a maneuver that I had done fairly well on before, and found myself struggling with a bit today. On my first few, I was way too slow getting back pressure on the stick entering the turn. As a result, I started losing altitude in the turn. I recognized this and moved to correct, which led to gaining altitude in the turn, which I then corrected for and started losing altitude again… you get the idea. The resulting flight path probably looked quite a bit like the perimeter of a Pringle. The next few were improved, but it was clear that I needed more practice- which shouldn’t be too surprising, given my miniscule flight time. Back to PDK, I flew the pattern and got some much-needed experience at flaring waaaaay too early.
All in all, I’m finding the experience more rewarding as time goes on. I was confident going into this that I’d do better than most students, but I was also mindful of my limitations. Simulators are lots of fun, but they only teach so much, and while my first couple of flights seemed almost easy, I’m actually glad to be at a point where I’m feeling challenged. I don’t think it would feel right any other way.
