Slow Flight Bugaboo

I read a quote about flying that said, "If you can't fly slow, you have no business trying to land."


Our lesson today was mostly about slow flight and Minimum Controllable Airspeed (MCA.) We also started ground reference maneuvers and power off stalls. All of these skills come into play when it comes time to start landing.



My family had come to the airport to see what I had gotten myself into. They got a tour of the airplane while I did the preflight and then watched us takeoff. My takeoff was not the best as I began to drift off of the center after we got airborne.

We got to our training area and looked for a preselected area to do a rectangular pattern. That seemed to go ok but I'll need a lot more practice.

Next we tried S-Turns across a road. Harder still than the rectangular pattern. More practice will be needed.

Down below I spotted a water tower and asked if I should try to do the turns around a point maneuver. I thought that would be very easy. WRONG. That was hard. Then I mentioned emergency procedures. My instructor had me make a quick transition to slow flight. We started making a turn and began to get really slow as we continued turning. We were pitch high due to the slow flight and we leveled off. As my instructor spoke I got the sudden feeling that we were about to stall. My instructor had been helping me through the maneuver as panic set in. I pushed the controls forward and went for the throttle knocking his hand out of the way. Up until I did that he hadn't realized that I had panicked and scared myself. He was calm as he tried to calm me down. I immediately apologized and told him the why behind what I did. He said that he understood and we moved on from there. I was embarrassed by my jumpiness.

Next came more work on MCA. I had a lot of problems with control at this speed. More on this later. We also did power-off stalls. These are important because they can occur on landings. That's when you are LOW and SLOW. That's not a good combination. The stall recoveries could have been a lot better.

When the lesson was over I was a bit discouraged by my performance. I realized that the more I learned the more I had to learn.

My instructor said that I was doing well for someone with only 5.5 hours but I still felt a bit like a dufus. I vowed to research the problems I was having and try again next lesson.