Sender: <marv@lancaironline.net> (Marvin Kaye)
To: lml
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 13:24:01 -0400
Message-ID: <redirect-1502948@logan.com>
From: RWolf99@aol.com
Subject: Re: Stalls
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Brian -

I think it is important to know what to expect if your plane stalls, and how 
to recover from it.  I don't think it's necessary to let the stall progress 
to a "deep stall" or, more likely, a spin.  The important thing is to become 
familiar with the warning signs and also, to turn the recovery actions into 
instinctive behavior.

Those who know me will tell you that I'm a pretty conservative pilot.  
However, one day I was flying a glider 1200 feet above the ground and trying 
to center a thermal.  I was fairly close to the airport and nobody else was 
flying, so I was positioned to enter the pattern at the customary 1000 feet.  
At one point I realized that I had just passed the center of the thermal and 
I needed to tighten my turn, so I did.  I yanked back a little too hard and a 
fraction of a second later I was looking straight at the ground.  

I remember noticing that cornstalks looked very unusual from that 
perspective...

Okay, it's a classic accelerated stall.  Unload -- a momentary rush as you 
feel yourself being ejected from the seat until the straps catch you -- then 
recover.  It was totally instinctive and I only lost 100 feet altitude, and 
entered the pattern normally (and immediately).

This instinctive recovery reaction came from lots of stall practice in 
powered airplanes.  To me, that's a good enough reason to practice them.

- Rob Wolf