Today was flight #5 for me. Building on last week, we worked on power-on stalls this week, as well as emergency landings. Power on stalls gave me some trouble, but I think I got the hang of it in the end. As one could almost guess from reading about flights 2 – 4, I wasn’t quick enough or forceful enough with the rudder when the plane wanted to start rolling to the left. Had some not so fun moments in there. The good news is that I started getting the hang of it at the end — I think a couple more tries next flight and I should be ok.

Did some high angle (45 degree) turns. Drifted altitude too much, but I think I can master that with a bit more practice.

Also worked on emergency landings. At some random point in flight, the instructor pulls the throttle back to idle and I have to react as if the engine had failed. Step one is continue flying the plane – reduce speed to optimal glide speed (70 knots in the C 150 I fly) and retrim to maintain the glide angle. Then, go through a quick checklist — open carb heat (since the available heat will be going away shortly), fuel mixture to rich, fuel to on (or try another tank if a multi-tank feed system), which is apparently a common problem and people emergency land only to figure out they ran a tank out of gas and could have used a different tank, check the mags, and check that the primer isn’t open. Then comes picking a suitable landing site. By suitable landing site, one of course means a field or something similar. The first attempt was pretty smooth, found a good field, made a nice approach, lined up a bit high but used flaps to adjust my glide and ended up a couple hundred feet above the ground and about 500 feet before the start of the field. Would have drilled the landing perfectly. Second attempt didn’t go so well. I made a bad turn to start the pattern for landing, lost the field, found the field, then discovered the the field had a damned power line running through it. Had enough altitude to push over to a (crappy) but less electrified field. Would have made a bad, but survivable landing.

Flight 6 is on saturday. More power-on stalls and do some instrument flight. That should be completely painful, but should be interesting. Oh, and the Flying Hoosiers meeting is Wednesday – that should be interesting.

[update] I forgot to mention – I managed to land the plane at the end of the lesson, marking the first time that has happened….