Geee…ha!

Weather was good so I went out flying today. Today Terry said “we’re going to learn something new”!

After normal takeoff, climb and usual hello to Cedar Rapids Approach I started to climb out up to 3500. After leveling off time has come to slow down. I have to admit that it was pretty strange to see how it’s flying with speed lower than speed for takeoff. In this C172 power off stall happens around 35mph. As we were doing it upwind we were actually hovering, or maybe even going backward at moments. Pretty amazing. Then I cut down engine to idle. BUM! and we were 200 ft. lower without almost any warning.

I checked video (unfortunately quality is too low to put it here) and now I can hear that there was actually stall warning horn but I have to tell you – I wasn’t expecting it happening so fast and so abruptly that I didn’t have time for any single thought. Second one (this time power on stall ) wasn’t so surprising, so it went much nicer.

Didn’t I have already enough of excitement for today it was time for steep turns. I can tell you, if that was only 1.7G I never want to fly in F-16. Not that it wasn’t fun, but I doubt I could stand more than 2G without proper training. Cleaning upholstery is not a nice job you know…

After that we did some s-turns, and turns around the point. Today it was much better than yesterday, after refreshing my memory about variable bank angles depending on the wind strength and direction I was able to do some nice circles. After that we headed back to the airport. And here problem again – I approached the runway way too fast. Both times. Second time Terry managed to get the can on the ground OK but it’s going to be long and bumpy road before I’ll be able to put it nicely down on the ground by myself.

1.2h/0.0h inst : 2 to/ldg logged
5.6h/0.0h inst : 7 to/ldg total