Stalls, Spins, and Animal Cruelty

Saturday afternoon brought another flying lesson. The lessons are starting to become a little bit hard to define, as I am starting to review and practice all kinds of air exercises that I have already been introduced to. However, there's always more new things to learn, and boy did I learn on Saturday.

This lesson comprised mostly of different types of advanced stalls. Yes, an airplane can stall in more ways than I ever had nightmares of. Some of the stalls are power-off (idle engine) stalls, power-on (engine at about cruise power) stalls, turning stalls, etc. We practiced those three stalls in particular, but there are numerous more stalls that can occur.

However, the most notable thing for me this lesson was that I got to experience a spin. Two, in fact. A spin can be defined as an aggravated stall, or a stall in which the airplane is not "coordinated". This results in something called an auto-rotation, which is basically the airplane spinning. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about spins.

And here are some of the best examples of spins that I found on Youtube. The first being a video of a spin filmed from another airplane:


The second is a spin experienced from inside the cockpit:

And the third is animal cruelty, plane and simple:


Yes, what you saw above was a floating dog due to zero gravity derived from the nose-dive spin. I won't comment much about that except to say that spin checklists implicitly state that everything must be tied down and secure when practicing a spin.

I will describe experiencing spins as a very humbling experience. The forces I felt on my body and the things I saw with my eyes felt very unnatural as far as being a land mammal. Before I go on, please be aware that practicing spins is considered to be a safe exercise in the Cessna 150. Nonetheless, it does take some getting used to. In this lesson, my instructor just showed me what a spin is like. I was told to sit back and enjoy. So I didn't get myself into any actual spins, but next lesson I will have to.

As you saw in the video, one has to raise the nose of the airplane until it stalls. In order to aggravate the stall, one of the rudder pedals is pushed all the way in in either direction, so that the airplane will enter the spin.

Entering the spin was probably the strangest feeling I've felt. It feels like you're flipping backwards, with your stomach going into your throat, and before you know it, you're in a nose dive, while the colours of the autumn leaves of the Canadian landscape start to create a kaleidoscope effect on the windshield once the airplane begins to corkscrew its way towards the earth.

Sounds dramatic? Well, it was for me. It's not an experience many people think they'd go through in their lifetime, but I asked for it. Not only did I ask for it, but I have to get used to spins, as next lesson I will have to practice them myself.

Have you ever stood on a balcony while it occurred to you that if you had a tiny lapse of reason, you can just jump over the balcony without having the chance to correct your mistake? Me neither, but it did occur to my friend once... Anyway, I compare practicing spins to jumping off the balcony, except getting the chance to apply corrective actions in order to stop yourself from plummeting to the ground. As such, you can now probably understand why doing spins in an airplane would invoke such strong feelings.

My instructor said that this lesson is the point at which some of his students never return for another lesson. Although I'll admit that it was a bit of a frightening experience, I'm determined to go back for more. The way for me to look at it is that it is a safe exercise that's practiced by many pilots each day. You don't hear of very many crashes involving accidents due to students practicing spins. So there. In fact, after my instructor demonstrated the first spin, I asked him to show me another one, since I knew I'd have to get used to it sooner or later.

In other news, we practiced more stalls, steep turns, which i accomplished satisfactorily this time around, and we also practiced a maneuver called a "side-slip", which I will be covered in an upcoming lesson, as well as an upcoming post. I also managed to have quite a violent landing this time. Although it really didn't seem all that big of a deal after experiencing spins. Landing definitely seems like a delicate art which I will have to master. I'll probably have an easier time once I actually go through the lesson about landing.

Anyway, there's more stories to tell from the last lesson, but this post is getting long, and I need to get back to work. But stay tuned for my next post, as I tell tales of my adventures aloft.