Home schooling: Stalls

Last night Husband and I went out to the airport for a short local flight, with a mind of me doing the preflight/securing, taxiing and some of the in-flight maneuvering for practice.

Preflight went fine and taxiing showed improvement, although Husband did suggest to me several times to give a little more margin between us and the other aircraft, which is perfectly reasonable. I need to get over the "driving a car" tendencies to only take up what room I need and leave the rest open for other aircraft should one be met and replace all that with a strategy for centering myself in all available room (and of course following the yellow lines when available). I also thought of an invention: a nice, bright, lighted marquis that would mount to the top of the cabin stating "STUDENT PILOT." That way, when people at the airport see me weaving all over the place, they'll humor me and perhaps politely get out of my way instead of giving me the crook-eye. :) But alas, I guess things that would alter the flight characteristics of the aircraft are bad...

The real highlight of the flight, unfortunately, was the stalls. Husband asked whether he had done any with me before and I answered in the default way: "Probably." I mean, we've been up together a lot, so surely he had, right? He's talked about them at home, and we've talked about stall speeds and angle of attack and all that jazz, so we had probably done them in the air.

No, we hadn't.

I would have remembered that.

Indeed!

It scared the snot out of me. I knew generally what was going to happen. I knew that the plane would drop its nose and that the situation would be quickly recoverable. I have full faith and confidence in Husband and never questioned his ability. The impending-doom screech of the stall warning doesn't bother me and I've heard it plenty before (on landings).

But when that nose dropped so dramatically, and we went so suddenly from what felt like 45 degrees pitched up and flying slowly to 85 degrees pitched down and absolutely diving, my instincts took over and I grabbed on for dear life, tensed up, and maybe even stopped breathing for a sec. I imagine I went pop-eyed, too. I know we weren't diving at 85 degrees, but it was way more dramatic than what I expected. And I can't come up with a better description than dramatic for it.

I had expected the upward pitch, the slow flight, and then a gentle and smooth tipping down and unsurprising recovery. That wasn't the experience.

"Don't do that again."

Husband quickly looked over at me with a look of worry. He knows this reaction was out of character for me. Then he told me that in time stalls will be fun, like roller coasters. I like roller coasters, but I can see the roller coaster track and anticipate what it will feel like when I get to that next hill.

I know I've gotta do them, and I will get used to it, and I will be able to anticipate it, but I need some time to process and digest that and realign my expectations for the next time.

So we did it again immediately. And it was only mildly better. I still did the instinctive brace-for-impact response, but didn't stop breathing. That's progress, right?!?! :)

(I suppose I'm feeling a little melodramatic this morning. I'm surprised by how startled I was yesterday, but am not logically intimidated by the maneuver. Beyond that, in practice it took a lot of effort to get it to stall. Low throttle, flaps deployed, pitched way up (to hold altitude, too)... And then 388 pretty much recovered itself by tipping forward.)