What I did this weekend...

[Gabriel]

It was just 0.9 hours, but a very nice opportunity to display my superior airmanship (with an instructor in the right seat).

Bonus points for that who can figure the location (I would never be able to do it).

[3WE]

1. Lake Tahoe

2. I hate you.

3. Why isn’t this in the aviation forum- are you a safety hazard?

4. Shitty social distancing (Ok, maybe this IS a dangerous flight)

5-9. Did you stall? Spin? Crash? Burn? Did died?

10. What was it like to turn final with a fingerfull of power levers and hundreds of lbs behind you?

11. Were approaches stable by definition AND factually?

12. Did you remember that you can (almost) always go around?

13. Were procedures and checklists used or was there cowboy improvisation?

14. Were you mentally prepared to click, clack, and pull the trim cbs?

[Not_Karl]

Nice!
Location: Sweet Monkey River, of course.
Did you monkey with those tempting red buttons?

15. How many PSI where involved in braking?

[3WE]

By the way, that thing should be banned:

1. Because it is obsolete and lacks automation.

2. Because it is an aeroplanie!

[Not_Karl]

By the way, that thing should be banned:

1. Because it is obsolete and lacks automation.

2. Because it is an aeroplanie!

3. Because it does not have redundant engines.

[Gabriel]

1. Lake Tahoe

Wrong lake, right state (if you take the left part of Tahoe)

2. I hate you.

I did nothing that you cannot do any weekend of your choice (as long as you have $200)

3. Why isn’t this in the aviation forum- are you a safety hazard?

The opposite, because it is a display of genius safety (either that or I intended to post it in the aviation forum and missed)

4. Shitty social distancing (Ok, maybe this IS a dangerous flight)

The Archer is wider than the 172. And we wore face masks.

5-9. Did you stall? Spin? Crash? Burn? Did died?

No. No. No. No. No

10. What was it like to turn final with a fingerfull of power levers and hundreds of lbs behind you?

Immensely beautiful and enjoyable.

11. Were approaches stable by definition AND factually?

It was stabilized by the stabilized approach gate (that is, over the numbers).

12. Did you remember that you can (almost) always go around?

Believe me it was a present thought that I silently briefed to myself.

13. Were procedures and checklists used or was there cowboy improvisation?

More or less. The instructor said that he had completed the preflight before I arrived and I believed him. I run all the procedures and checklist from before engine start to run up and before take-off. From there everything was done by memory. I don't feel great about that.

14. Were you mentally prepared to click, clack, and pull the trim cbs?

I clicked-clacked from the beginning. I manually flew almost the whole flight (maybe the fact that the AP was MEL'ed as "not installed" had something to do with it). The only exception was when I commanded my copilot in the right seat to take the control for a brief moment while I took pictures. Regarding the trim, I used it much less that I should have.

I also used much less right rudder than I should have. It was a 180HP Archer which requires much more right rudder than the Tomahawk (but much less than the 182 I once flew) and I was ready for it. I had zero issue with the directional control during the take-off or to keep it coordinated during the initial climb, when I was paying full attention to these things. However, throughout the rest of the climb (and about 60% of the flight was the climb) every time I looked down to the instrumentes I found the ball to the right, I would apply by adding more right rudder but then a few seconds later when I looked down again the ball had drifted to the right again.

Another point where my superior airmanship failed me was the landing. They say that a perfect landing is the end of a perfect approach. Not true, or at least not guaranteed. The approach was perfect, I was very stabilized in short final with the airspeed nailed at 65 kts, I reduced power over the numbers and started to flare while I was bleeding speed. Everything was perfect, I was almost parallel to the ground descending just a few feet per minutes and I thought "Oh, man, this is going to be a prefect greas[CLUNK!]". The wheels touched down when the plane was 1 or 2 feet higher than I expected, a combination of loss of visual memory / practice and maybe the Archer sitting a bit higher than the Tomahawk. We touched down very smoothly but still with excess speed, on 3 points and the nose wheel bounced up a bit increasing the pitch and lifting the plane a feet or so again. I did avoid proposing by not_lowering the nose but holding it up while the plane bled a bit more of speed and settled again, this time on the mains, for a second very smooth (and now definitive) touchdown. But overall, it was a good landing, not just "by definition".

Location: Sweet Monkey River, of course.

No, it was not Texas. Also it was not a river but a lake. And the name of the lake is not monkey but another mammal, a big one.

Did you monkey with those tempting red buttons?

I had to. The engine won't start if you don't turn on the battery switch and flying with the alternator off is a really bad idea.

15. How many PSI where involved in braking?

Not nearly all of them. The instructor cautioned me to be "easy on the brakes".

By the way, that thing should be banned:
1. Because it is obsolete and lacks automation.

Well, no automation, but it does have GPS with a moving map and a magenta line. Take a look the the right of the first picture.

2. Because it is an aeroplanie!

I cannot argue that.

3. Because it does not have redundant engines.

Superior airmanship is more than enough redundancy.

[3WE]

Did you stall?

No.

I am growingly suspicious of engineers and modern training BUT ALSO better understanding the botched stall behavior we sometimes display...

In 3BS experience, stalls were practiced more often than not- especially on random hops in new types of aeroplanies.

Are you three for three on airplane hops with no stall practice? I can see it now- Gabieee in a confused Airbus asking what it’s doing and pulling up relentlessly.

Do you subscribe to the notion that it’s better to AVOID incipient stalls than actually recover from one? Were you pretending you had tail-mounted engines that might flame out and lock up from dirty air during a stall?

[Gabriel]

Did you stall?

No.

I am growingly suspicious of engineers and modern training BUT ALSO better understanding the botched stall behavior we sometimes display...

In 3BS experience, stalls were practiced more often than not- especially on random hops in new types of aeroplanies.

Are you three for three on airplane hops with no stall practice? I can see it now- Gabieee in a confused Airbus asking what it’s doing and pulling up relentlessly.

Do you subscribe to the notion that it’s better to AVOID incipient stalls than actually recover from one? Were you pretending you had tail-mounted engines that might flame out and lock up from dirty air during a stall?

With all seriousness, I do believe that prevention is more important than recovery. If the stall warning activates or you have other signals of approaching a stall (like buffeting), then recovery becomes the most important thing now because t is already too late for prevention, but you already failed. AoA management is key and still not well taught. As you always say, keeping a healthy speed and attitude is al you need to not_stall. But I wish there was more explanation and practice of the almost absolutely direct relationship between elevator position and AoA, and that, lacking an AoA indicator, stall is a matter of airspeed (that we can se in the ASI) and load factor (that we can feel). For example, we are all the time fed with that graph that relates bank angle and stall speed. But we are never told that we can be flying close to stall speed and bank 45 degrees and not_stall (as long as you don't pull back i.e. increase the load factor i.e. increase the AoA) in an attempt to prevent the nose from dropping during the turn, drop that will continue until the plane accelerates by itself to a speed where it provides the necessary 1.41G load factor at the same constant AoA.

That is something that can be practiced. Another thing that can be practiced is recovery at the first indication of an incipient stall (first sound of the stall warning or first detection of stall buffet). I think that this one is starting to be practiced more often, but in my times the "approach to stall" practice was always taken much closer to the actual stall, which is still interesting and important but not what should be done in real life situations (where you should recover at the first indication that you approaching a stall). And another thing that is never practiced but can be practiced (and I did it by myself, to some extent) is to maneuver the plane all the time at the onset of the stall warning. The idea is that you forget about keeping a given altitude or heading or airspeed. Your only goal is to maga AOA to keep the plane at the onset of the stall warning (so you modulate the elevator barely into and barely out of the stall warning all the time) while you add full power to climb, kill the power, turn at different bank angles (including large ones) with and without power. While this is something you would not do and a position you don't want to be in in normal flight, it gives you a very good feeling of how to manage AoA close to stall but without stalling, and of how much you can move the controls and how the plane reacts to that in that situation, so if you ever encounter yourself in a real approach to stall situation in a position where you can't liberally reduce the AoA, you are much better fitted to maga the situation and get most of the plane without stalling and hopefully without contacting the ground if at all possible (because we know that actually stalling is the worst way to try to avoid contacting the ground). Practicing this actually helped me not_stalling a handful of thrust levers and gazillions of pounds in a critical unintentionally simulated condition.

Finally, I am all for practicing progressively-close encounters with stalls all the way to full stalls (which is what I actually did in my PPL training), but that's of course to be used as a last resource and something to show why you don't want to unintentionally/unexpectedly get there in the first place. If you got that far in a real life situation, you already screwed it up at least twice (first to avoid the approach to stall and second by not recovering at the first sign) so I won't trust you very much to not_stall/spin/crash/burn/die if you unintentionally already got as far as the actual stall.

In this flight we didn't practice anything(except what was required for the mission, take off, climb, turns, mountain flying, descent, approach, landing). I thought of asking the instructor to challenge me with whatever PPL maneuver he wanted (steep banks, stalls, 8 around pylons, slow flight, whatever...) but I had set my cap at 1 hour and the mission took (almost) all of it. The rest of my family was waiting down there (none of the other 8 dared to come with me) and I had budgeted $200 for my individual fun adventure. But practicing stalls (and playing with high AoA situations in general, as explained above) is absolutely in my to-do list for when I return to flight for real.

[3WE]

Question 16: Did the instructor say something to the effect that, “You did really good, it wouldn’t take much for you to get current INCLUDING A COUPLE OF STALLS!!!!!!!!!!”.

You can ignore the yelling.

[Gabriel]

Question 16: Did the instructor say something to the effect that, “You did really good, it wouldn’t take much for you to get current INCLUDING A COUPLE OF STALLS!!!!!!!!!!”.

You can ignore the yelling.

He actually said almost exactly that except for the capitalized part.

[3WE]

Question 16: Did the instructor say something to the effect that, “You did really good, it wouldn’t take much for you to get current INCLUDING A COUPLE OF STALLS!!!!!!!!!!”.

You can ignore the yelling.

He actually said almost exactly that except for the capitalized part.

I’m sure he didn’t say the capitalized stuff, BUT YA KNOW, ITS TRULY PART OF IT!!!!!!!

[3WE]

1. He sort of double posted there.

2. He linked them to here.

[Not_Karl]

1. He sort of double posted there.

2. He linked them to here.

1. Does Fllyboyie know and approve?
2. Should we behave for a while?

[elaw]

2. Should we behave for a while?

Never!

[monchavo]

2. Should we behave for a while?

Never!

Concur.

Gab - great summary, lovely picks and thanks for posting sir!