Flight Eight - Stalls, stalls, stalls...and more stalls.

It was a gorgeous day for flying today...sunshine and blue skies. Todays lesson was more of the same...slow flight, stalls and recovery. Being such a nice day there was a bit of traffic at the field, I guess everyone's getting in some stick time while they can. The new tower kept us apprised of other aircraft in our vicinity, we had a bit of a time locating another flyer that was in our vicinity as we were outbound over Vancouver Lake. Eventually we spotted him...just about 100 feet over the lake...crazy.

With nice clear weather, we were able to get to practicing right away...and I went through the routine of transitioning from level cruise to landing configuration. Carb. heat on, reduce throttle, add flaps, pitch down into decent profile - periodically adding more flaps, descending slowly, but not dropping below 80 knots or so...just above the virtual runway, level off, throttle to idle...and then flaring into a stall...feeling the controls get mushy, then the stall alarm horn goes off, the plane shudders slightly as lift spilled off of the wings impacts the tail...plane starts to sink...then it's carb. heat in, full throttle (trick is to stick out your thumb when pushing in the throttle so that it pushes in the carb. heat at the same time), raise flaps incrementally and start climbing out. Another Bald Eagle crossed our path today, but this time the eagle was much higher and further away than last time.

Theresa is really trying to get me to not grip the yoke too hard...something I still do when things change fast. So half way through our flight she had me weave a pen from my middle finger to my little finger of my left hand, leaving just my thumb and forefinger free to grip the yoke...it worked.

After we had been up for just over an hour, we headed back for a one touch and go and then our final landing. There was even more traffic in the pattern on the way back and radio traffic was getting confusing to me. In fact as we made our final approach the second time around...the radio traffic got overwhelming and I got so discombobulated that I was not remembering to fly the airplane. Theresa jumped in and handled the radio traffic to help me get re-focused. The second landing was awesome (the first was pretty good too)...stalling warning sounding the instant before touchdown, hearing the little chirp of the main tires hitting and then bringing down the nose wheel for a smooth(ish) landing.

I'm now about half way to my first solo (usually happens between 12 and 15 hours)...I gotta go get that FAA medical exam soon so I'll be ready.

Hours logged: 1.3 Dual Received (DR)
Cost: $168.51