Flight Lesson № 5

I think the strategy for training first-time pilots is to get them able to solo as soon as possible, which means going through the things that might go wrong while you're up there by yourself and how to deal with them.

Friday's lesson focused entirely on stalls. Stalls in an airplane don't refer to the engine (though engines too are capable of stalling, we just say they quit or fail or go out if it happens in an airplane), but to the airflow over the wings. When too much is asked of the wings by exceeding a critical angle of attack, the wings lose lift and the plane drops, which exacerbates the situation because the drop increases the AoA still further.

Stall practice involves producing a stall in various configurations, thereby learning how not to produce a stall, and then recovering once the stall occurs with minimal altitude loss. We did stalls in approach configuration (low power, no flaps), landing configuration (low power, flaps extended), and takeoff configuration (high power, no flaps). It's a little funny how much effort is spent learning how to get into a stall, since that's not something you'd want to do normally, but it's part of the final test and how else would you learn to recover? I have to say the Cessna 152 can get into some whacky attitudes and still not stall, and even when it does, it's usually neither violent nor dramatic, but more like, meh, I think I'll nose down now. It's comforting to know the plane is so forgiving. Several times I wasn't fast enough pulling the yoke back and the plane hadn't stalled by the time I got it all the way back. This effectively counts as a stall, although the wings wouldn't say so.

The lesson was one of those information overload lessons, where there are several new things I have to process and I have to do them at the same time. I would forget one thing and then if I focused on remembering that, I would miss something else the next time. Also Friday evening at the end of a long work week isn't the most conducive time to learning, but that's how the schedule worked out. But I remind myself I've been through this before, learning skills that require practice; it's uncomfortable when skills are going in, that's just how it works. My head is pretty dense and they have to be rammed in.

Finally, I made my first radio calls Friday, dramatic transmissions such as, "Cessna 152, departing runway 4, Solberg traffic" and "Cessna 152 entering left crosswind for runway 22, Solberg". Just like Maverick.

I've another lesson scheduled for tomorrow, the shortest inter-lesson interval yet. We'll work on either ground reference maneuvers or the landing pattern, depending on the wind.

• Flight Hours: 4.6
• METAR KSMQ 072253Z AUTO 14005KT 8SM BKN075 26/13 A2987 RMK AO2 SLP114 T02560133

This balloon was launching as I arrived at the airport. I love hot air balloons.