Slow Flight, Stalls, Emergency!

Aircraft: C172N

Weather: Perfect, light breeze, nice and cool!

What a beautiful morning to go flying! Showed up at 0630 and Dan was right behind me. We walked over to the terminal to go over what we did last week and to prep for the flight we were about to undertake. We talked about stalls and angle of attack, and how to set up for each of the 3 maneuvers we would do today.

The airplane had little fuel in it, so we had to call the fuel truck to give us some gas. While they topped of the tanks, I pre-flighted the aircraft. Did my walk around to make sure nothing was loose, checked the tanks to make sure they did in fact put fuel, and the correct fuel in the tanks, (they did) and we were good to go. (there is more to the pre-flight, but for the purpose of this writing I won't bore you with the details.)

Once we pulled the plane out of parking I started her up, tuned the radio and picked up the ATIS. (for those of you who are non fliers reading, that is the Automated Terminal Information Service, which is recorded once an hour by the controllers to give information like wind direction and speed, altimeter setting, and general information like which runways are in use.) After writing down the information I needed I pulled up to the tower to make my initial call to ground. I've been practicing all week so it went pretty smooth. "Chandler Ground, Cessna 4653G at base of the tower, taxi for departure to the South, information Yankee." Ground cleared me to 4L via Alpha and Delta. I read back the instructions and started the taxi. I've gotten pretty good at taxiing in my last couple flights so that was a non-issue. Then Dan looks at me and says, "hey Joe I didn't catch that. What runway were we going to?" I froze and said, I have NO IDEA! Great, so I think I'm good, all confident in myself, read the instruction back to ATC, and I still have no idea what I'm doing. Oh well, no big deal, Dan just called again and asked.

Finally we got to the end of the runway and did our run-up. We do this because we need to check the engine and instruments on the ground before we go in the air. Parking break set, full throttle, check the mags, L, R, Both, make sure engine instruments are in the green, Oil Pressure, Oil Temp, Suction good, Ammeter not showing discharge, Throttle Idle, Throttle just over 1000 RPM. I think that's it, that is from memory, so if I missed something oh well, we use a checklist for that anyway. Someone else is doing his run-up so Dan tells me to hurry up so we can get in front of him (which we did! :) ) I took off (Dan was on the controls too, but lets just say I did) kept runway heading and departed w/ a downwind departure. Above 2500, we turned over the aiport to the left and headed to the practice area.

On the way to the practice area we did some IR - Instrument Reference. Dan gave me some foggles (the foggles block all vision outside so all you can see is the instrument panel) and I put them on. This was pretty cool, because it looked just like my flight simulator. I was actually really good with this practice. I could hold pretty much anything he threw at me and we were done with that after just .3. Pretty fun stuff.

Slow flight was the next maneuver we did once in the practice area. The point of flying slow, is to learn how the aircraft handles when you are in the landing configuration (slow flying w/ full flaps) coming down to land. The maneuver goes like this - Power 1800 RPM, maintain heading, and altitude. When you are in slow flight, pitch controls airspeed and throttle controls altitude. So, back to the maneuver - 1800RPM flaps one notch at 110KIAS. Pitch up to slow down, and put another notch of flaps in when inside the white arc. Keep putting in flaps until they are all in and pitch the nose up to slow the aircraft until the stall horn starts going off. Put in power to maintain altitude and ride the stall horn just before the airplane stalls. The airspeed seemed to hang right around 40 KIAS. I think I did pretty good keeping everything lined up correctly, but then we did some turns. For this maneuver you need a lot of right rudder, and Dan had to keep telling me to push it in. Turns were pretty hard for me to do and I'm not sure why. The controls in slow flight are very sloppy, so it seemed like when I turned it was in short bursts of heading change. I don't know if that makes sense to you, but that's the best way I can describe it. Dan said I would be able to get it down after trying it a couple times. Recovery from slow flight is pretty easy, just pitch the nose down lose the flaps one notch at a time, make sure you're above 60KIAS before yout take out the last notch of flaps. After all of that, you should be at the same heading and altitude you were assigned.

Next we have power on/off stalls, otherwise known as approach or departure stall. Obviously the power off would be approach, because that is when you would be in that configuration, and the power on would be the departure because that is when you would be at full power pitching up. These are pretty east to get into. For power off here is the procedure- Power 1800 RPM slow down and get full flaps down one notch at a time. Once flaps are out, start a 500fpm descent. After 200ft descent, throttle idle and pitch to maintain altitude. Once you are at a high enough angle of attack the airplane will stall. Once stall breaks, nose down to horizon, full throttle climb back to your assigned altitude and get flaps out one at a time. For a power on stall- set power to 1800RPM, slow to 60 KIAS, flaps if specified, @60, full power and pitch the nose up 3 degrees per second while maintaining heading. Once the stall breaks, pitch nose just below horizon and let the aircraft accelerate, above 60knots remove flaps and resume normal cruise. I should tell you, that no maneuver should be attempted before making clearing turns and a flow check, which means looking at panel and making sure everything is right. Master is on, which would be pretty obvious if it wasn't, circuits in, carb heat on.

I don't remember which maneuver we had finished but Dan reached over and pulled my power idle. He told me that the engine had just quit and asked what we should do. I immediately said - find a place to land. Wrong answer! The first thing you do when the engine quits is establish the aircraft's best glide speed, which in our aircraft is 65 knots. Once you are on that slow glide, then you can start looking for a safe place to land. Dan pointed out a good road that had no power lines and that was good with me. We set ourselves up to land and got pretty low. Once we were satisfied that we could make the landing safely, our engine miraculously started working again and we recovered. By this time it was time to head back, which is always the least fun :(

We were pretty low because of the emergency we just simulated so we kept that altitude for the flight back which was perfect because we needed to be low to land anyway. It was really cool flying low because you could see the ground in much better detail and the mountains we flew by were really pretty. Now, I love flying, but as a passenger you get much more time to enjoy the view. Next week I'll bring my camera and have Dan snap some pictures for me. He might as well, I mean I'm paying him to just sit there and get an airplane ride. ( just kidding Dan if you are reading this. I'm sure it is difficult to keep me from killing both of us! )

Once we were near Chandler airspace I made the call for landing. "Chandler Tower, 5 miles SE landing with Zulu" Tower asked us to Ident (which means to press a button in the cockpit so our little blip flashes on their radar screen) and we were cleared for a right base approach to 4R. By this time I was starting to realize where we actually were. I really don't know how pilots manage all this crap in their head. We have to be practically over top of the airport before I realize we are there. I mean I'm guessing it will come to me eventually but jeeez. We put the plane down and taxied off the runway on November. How I remember details like that I don't know, especially when I can't remember what runway we were assigned when I even repeated it back. Anyway, we had to taxi off and hold short of 22R for departing aircraft. It seemed like a long time, cuz Dan and I were both getting pretty antsy watching the Hobbs meter tick by just sitting there on the taxiway. I am charged for every minute the engine is running, whether we are flying or not. Finally tower let us cross the runway and head back to the parking, but the Hobbs had already ticked over for another .1 so we just relaxed and went slow, considering I had already paid for it. (as a side note, I just went to find out online why the Hobbs meter is called the Hobbs meter, but there was nothing. If anybody knows, I would be interesting in knowing.)

After securing the airplane we walked into the school and talked about what we did and what we are doing next time. STEEP TURNS! Woot! I've watched a couple videos on them and they look fun. Should be a good time! Dan signed my logbook and we were good to go.

Well I think that's all I've got. Remember, if you are still reading - CLICK THE ADDS and pay for my flying! I've already made about 11 bucks, but google wont send me a check until I reach 100$. So clicky away! Time to go read about steep turns and work on my chair flying. Thanks for reading!

Today's Flight: 1.2 hrs

Total Time: 9.7 hrs

Total Cost: $1172.87

Total cost does not include the 6.5 hours I had from back in 2003. This is just the cost since I started flying this year, which so far is 3 flights and all the books I bought. Oh... and my headset.

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