Some Interesting New Things

We flew tonight. No formal ground lesson because of impending darkness. My CFI did a pre-flight briefing on what we would cover. He included stalls (more in a bit) and some flying with vision restrictors on. You got it. I am on the third lesson, and he is introducing instrument flying. As it turns out, 90 percent of VFR pilots (those of us not rated for flying in instrument conditions where there is no visual reference and no quick way to get to one) who inadvertantly end up in IFR (instrument conditions) die. This doesn't count the pilots who fly through a cloud or those who get up into the clouds and then right back down out of them. But those who get into serious weather where they are truly out of touch have a 9 in 10 chance of dying. The moral is it's important to get some instrument time! And learn about weather! And be cautious!

So... we took off and headed west. He had me practice changing and maintaining altitudes at give speeds. It's a constant balance between pitch of the aircraft and power. It's the opposite of what's intuitive. You change altitude by varying power, and you change speed by varying pitch.

We then tried a couple of stalls, one power on and one power off. A word of explanation is in order. A stall has nothing to do with the engine. A stall is when the angle of attack (the angle of the wing into the relative wind) becomes so steep that the air will no longer flow around it nicely and the wing "stalls" or suddenly loses all lift. So.. you pull back on the yoke and the airplane pitches up. You pull back far enough and it stalls. The controls get real sluggish and it starts to fall out of the sky. With power on, you immediately push the nose down to gain speed and re-establish air flow over the wing. With the power off (engine at ide) you put the nose down and hit the power. It's an odd sensation and it happens really quickly. One moment you are nose up and mushing along... the next feel the bottom drop out. The recovery is very quick.. assuming you do the right things right now. The CFI demonstrated the recovery. I have a feeling he won't demo it for long. The airplane we were in liked to stall and start a roll at the same time. So there was some quick rudder work, too. It didn't freak me out at all other than the idea that I need to learn how to recover and how to avoid them to begin with. We also tried some steep banking turns. I liked that a lot.

Following that we flew out over Parma and he handed me view limiters. It's a pair of goggles that blocks you view forward but not down. So you see the instrument panel, but not out the window. He then asked that I establish a particular course and altitude using the instruments alone. I managed that OK, surprisingly. We tried a few turns and I did fine. We flew back to Boise that way. I did very well and was surprised by that. He then had me take off the goggles, find the airport by sight, and turn and line us up with the runway. I did well at that. He then landed while my hands were on the controls so I could get the feel of it.

All in all, I learned a lot. He told me not to analyze too much. Pilots need to do things, not think them through. Good advice.

No schedule yet for next time. We will settle that in a day or two. He is in the Meridian Fire Dept and they sent some guys to California. The ones here are covering extra shifts.

Once more I had a huge amount of fun. The Rodeo doesn't steer worth a damn using my feet.