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March 28, 2005
Getting Ready for the Checkride
K has just finished his solo crosscountries, and it is time to think checkride. April 15th is the date, favorite airplane is reserved, examiner scheduled. Unfortunately, there is still a lot to do.
I am not convinced that the standard stall demonstrations are really such useful exercises - well, actually, they are, but not for the officially intended purpose, which is to prepare the pilot to deal with stalls on approach or on takeoff.
Stalls on approach sneak up on you. The best way to demonstrate that is to cut the engine on a crosscountry, near some airport, and let the student attempt to glide it in. He's likely to misjudge it and end up short, in which case the natural impulse is to pull back on the stick, and lo and behold, they will even ignore the stall warning and continue to pull back! At this time, of course, you will add back the power and save us from a fiery end.
Another place where stalls occur all too frequently is when operating around high altitude airports. Pilots are so used to the apparent speed at which the landscape usually sweeps by that they completely forget to look at the speed indicator, and do not realize that at high density altitude, the true airspeed will be significantly higher than normal. Just last year at Burning Man, a highly experienced pilot crashed due to this exact effect.
I believe the real purpose of the stall exercises, especially the power-on stalls, is to get the student to at least approach something closer to the edge of the usual flight envelope. It is quite amazing how much you need to pull up that nose to get a stall break with full power. The trick is to very deliberatly and curtly pull back on the yoke - all - the - way. It takes a little bit of guts to do that, especially if you're already apprehensive.
In other words, a well executed power on stall will demonstrate confidence that the pilot will remain in control, even in an upset.
This is, I believe, K's only big weak point. I'll know more next weekend, when he'll be going up for a mock checkride with another instructor.
Posted by Christian Goetze at 10:19 PM | Comments (634)