It was a perfect day to fly—3,000 feet above ground level over California’s sunny Monterey Bay; power on; my rental Cessna 150 with the wings level and facing the center of the bay, which was oddly rotating to the right. I was, however, alarmed by the 1,000-foot-per-minute rate of descent. My logbook shows that I soloed in my eighth hour. For my second solo, my instructor—call him Earl—told me to fly over the bay and practice stalls. We had done a few of those in practice, so I wasn’t concerned. As I recall, we never talked about how to recover from a spin.
I have pretty good spatial orientation, and I’m sure I kept the wings level going into the power-on stall. What transpired beyond that has been the subject of a lot of conjecture in hangar flying.
I believe what happened is that while the airplane’s wings were level, I missed the fact that the p-factor had caused the little black ball in the turn coordinator to shift to the right. The airplane thought that felt like left rudder, and when the power of lift finally failed, the left wing dropped and into the spin I went.
I do remember cutting the power. That, of course, felt to the airplane like a bit of right rudder. Perhaps this, combined with reduced back-pressure on the yoke, was enough to break the spin. Whatever, I owe a debt of gratitude to the capable Cessna engineers who planned for dopes like me, and had tweaked the airframe appropriately.
I headed home, badly shaken, and made one of the worst landings of my short career. It was a defining moment for me, one which I suspect many flight students have shared. Do I throw the keys at Earl and put him and aviation out of my life, or do I make him take me up to show me everything he can about the flight envelope?
I chose the latter. We put this poor little Utility category 150 through its paces. Loops, rolls, spin entry from left and right, skid entries, chandelles, hammerheads, you name it. Earl was a retired Navy fighter pilot, and this was child’s play for him. Nothing bent, and the Navy flying club where I had rented the airplane was none the wiser.
I went on to many years of happy flying and now have 1,500 hours, a wonderful T-206, and many ratings, including instrument instructor. But what I learned from my experience is that while speed is desirable in an airplane, it is not desirable in an instructional program. Earl came from the military old school where you threw students in the water so they would learn to swim. Fortunately, we don’t have many of those instructors left.
My wife is working on her private ticket now. She has 31 hours, and expects to solo soon. When she does, she will understand stall/spin entry and recovery, how to use the rudder, and all manner of things I didn’t know when I soloed. She is not in a rush, and I am not in a rush for her.
Yes, it costs a bit more, but it doesn’t cost everything. I’m very proud of her.
Flight Lesson offers the opportunity for pilots to learn from the experiences of others.
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