Lesson 7 – More stalls

31^st July 2011  VH-TXU

Back with my normal instructor this week and off to practice some more stalls and my radio calls.   I feel like I’m starting to get the preflight, start, taxi, and run-up, but there is always little few to improve next lesson.  Next week I want to focus on ; learning to to operate the transponder fully, making sure I have my “radio calls” cheat sheet with me for each flight, maintaining good taxi speeds.

Once cleared , we took-off and head straight for the turning area without issue.  (Need to watch my heading and height control, as well as making better use of the trim during the climb.)

Like last week we did our HASEL checks then a number of stalls. (couple of “clean” stalls with powered recovery, couple with no power recovery, and a few with flaps.) Again I’m surprised by how much back pressure I need to get into the full stall and how benign the plane behaviours when it does finally stall.  (review HASEL checklist,  don’t be timid pulling back, Power then retract my flaps)

All too soon, it’s time to head back to Moorabbin via Carrum.  By the time we get to Carrum We need to be at 1500ft.  To do that we start descending from 3500ft around Cranbourne (2000ft @ 500ft/min requires 4 mins, @ 100kts GS = approx  7nm). 

Before I get to Carrum I need to check the ATIS on 120.9 and swap to the West tower (123.0).  It’s worth doing this early, so I can get a chance to listen to any another aircraft making their inbound calls. (Thus building situational awareness of the other aircraft).  Finally we need to switch the transponder from 1200 to squawk 3000 and call the tower.  “Moorabbin tower, Warrior TXU, Received <ATIS>, Carrum One thousand five hundred, Inbound.”

As I’ll be starting circuits soon, Jason gives me an introduction to “landings”.  We a doing a straight in approach, so first we need to get down to pattern altitude 1000ft (before we reach 3nm) and do the pre-landing checks (Will cover these in my circuits post), set up the descent, power back, flaps, attitude, & speed. If we  get a bit low add power and if too high reduce it. Finally the flare and landing.    This is going to take some practice.  (I’ve got a million thinks going through my head and felt way behind the plane.  Need to relax )

Another great lesson with the promise of more fun to come.

Piper Warrior III VH-TXU,  Flight Time 1.2hr (Total 7.9 hrs)