Lesson 11 - Monday March 8th

Nice Day

Today went very well.  It's a lovely sunny day, and winds are very light.

When I arrive, Tanya is not there yet, so I'm sent out to pre-flight the plane.  I had planned to take some photos of the pre-flight inspection, so I could write up a little piece on that, but all the photos came out too bright, as the dial on the camera had shifted to Tx in my bag.  

This time we were a little low on oil, so after Tanya arrived, I showed this to her, and she went back to get some more oil.  She showed me how to add it, mentioning that she once forgot to put the dipstick back in. 

Anyway, up into the air.  Not a cloud in sight, nice and warm, and excellent visibility, out to Catalina and beyond.

When we took off, the tower asked us to offset to the right, as there was a jet taking off behind us, so we headed pretty much towards the pier, and then up the coast.

First we did some slow flight, then power off stalls, and then power on stalls.  Quite uneventful really, and I did not get sick.

On the first power off stall,  you've get to make the plane stall by pulling up the nose while flying very slowly, then applying  full power.  I automatically pushed the nose forward, which was way too much, giving us an overly nose-down attitude (or: "heading for the ground").  I should just have release back pressure, and the nose would have naturally come down by itself.  Since we are at full power, just leveling off should be enough.  Besides, a power off stall typically occurs at takeoff, when you can't afford to loose any height.

On the way back, tower told me to keep on-shore, and I replied "Rodger, will keep off-shore".  They corrected me, and later we saw the other traffic, who had been directed to keep off-shore, so they would not hit us.  They were much higher than us, so not really an issue, but it's good to know the controllers are on top of things.

Then coming in to land, fairly smooth.

All in all, things are going well.  Pretty soon we are going to do a landing at another airport, which should make things a lot more intersting.