Lesson 6 PPL
06 Jul 2004The plan for this lesson was stalling, where you fly so slowly that the wings stop producing lift. To practise this and how to recover from it safely, the cloud base had to be above 4000ft. This meant I had to put this lesson off for two weeks to get the right weather conditions.
I took off and flew out to Burgh Island again, dodging some slightly lower wispy clouds, and then did some stalling exercises on how to recover with and without power. Essentially you just have to drop the nose of the aircraft (which it tends to do naturally anyway) to re-establish enough airflow over the wings so that they start to produce lift again.
It sounds much more dramatic than it is, and often you only lose a couple of hundred feet when it occurs.
I flew back to the airport and then landed on runway 31 for the first time, as there was no wind and almost perfect conditions. Runway 31 is the main runway used by larger aircraft because it has the ILS (instrument landing system), which is used to guide them in during poor weather.
The landing was a bit hard and I pulled back too much when flaring, causing the plane to go up and to the right slightly. I thought I was going off the runway, but my instructor helped correct it. It was still a good lesson overall.