Flight School: Day 2
Just call me Joseph Stallin'. Cause I'm awesome.
Today we did some more aircraft manuevering, including the stomach wrenching "close your eyes and fly the plane" sqeemishfest that left my legs a little wobbly and my brow sweating profusely after flight 1 midday. I was pretty nervous the whole time, had butterflys anxiously awaiting my body to succumb to its desire to hurl on the cockpit glass, and got mic fright so many times I had to write down my ATC lines. I was also ready to pass out on their extra comfy leather couches while studying transponder codes.
Helpful Hint: If your plane is hijacked you set your transponder squawk code to 7500. Then ATC says "Are you sure you want your squawk code there?" and you say "Yes". Then you OWN the sky, but you'd better have an unwanted passenger when you land.
After lunch and more videos, we went up again and practiced slow flying and stalls. I was told stalls were the scariest thing that could happen on a plane, and my grandfather couldn't get his own private license (not recreational license though) because he was too afraid of them (you have to perform them on the checkride). After learning to fly slow like a champ I faced my greatest flying fear... and was sorely dissapointed at how inane it was. I'm used to seeing stalls in video games where you're flying your F-22 Raptor at a 90 degree incline and you don't have enough power to continue rising and you pitch down 180 degrees and drop a couple hundred or thousand feet. I was wrong. We basically slowed down to below 40 knots airspeed, the plane shuddered a bit, and the nose pitched down 20 degrees or so. I jammed the throttle in, raised flaps from 30 to 10 degrees, and pulled back gently while applying right rudder to not spin. Easy as video games. The reason stall practice is so important is because you practically stall when landing and can easily run the risk of stalling when taking off. I'm glad I'm not scared of this problem anymore.
Bedtime, next flight it at 7 in the morning.
Today we did some more aircraft manuevering, including the stomach wrenching "close your eyes and fly the plane" sqeemishfest that left my legs a little wobbly and my brow sweating profusely after flight 1 midday. I was pretty nervous the whole time, had butterflys anxiously awaiting my body to succumb to its desire to hurl on the cockpit glass, and got mic fright so many times I had to write down my ATC lines. I was also ready to pass out on their extra comfy leather couches while studying transponder codes.
Helpful Hint: If your plane is hijacked you set your transponder squawk code to 7500. Then ATC says "Are you sure you want your squawk code there?" and you say "Yes". Then you OWN the sky, but you'd better have an unwanted passenger when you land.
After lunch and more videos, we went up again and practiced slow flying and stalls. I was told stalls were the scariest thing that could happen on a plane, and my grandfather couldn't get his own private license (not recreational license though) because he was too afraid of them (you have to perform them on the checkride). After learning to fly slow like a champ I faced my greatest flying fear... and was sorely dissapointed at how inane it was. I'm used to seeing stalls in video games where you're flying your F-22 Raptor at a 90 degree incline and you don't have enough power to continue rising and you pitch down 180 degrees and drop a couple hundred or thousand feet. I was wrong. We basically slowed down to below 40 knots airspeed, the plane shuddered a bit, and the nose pitched down 20 degrees or so. I jammed the throttle in, raised flaps from 30 to 10 degrees, and pulled back gently while applying right rudder to not spin. Easy as video games. The reason stall practice is so important is because you practically stall when landing and can easily run the risk of stalling when taking off. I'm glad I'm not scared of this problem anymore.
Bedtime, next flight it at 7 in the morning.
posted by Benacor at 3:27 PM
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