My January copy of Flight Training arrived yesterday. Before it arrived, I had heard from priests in California and Florida about the article about Ron Turo and me (“Friends and Flight”), as they invited me to join an organization I had never heard of: the National Association of Priest Pilots.
The article is magnificent. Thank you for doing such a great job in creating a fun read, which I hope will inspire others to fly with a friend and have as much fun as Ron and I have flying together.
Bill King
Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania
Topsy-turvy
I just read the article “Topsy-Turvy” in the January Flight Training magazine and wanted to share my spin experience with you.
I was with my instructor in a Cessna 172 doing maneuvers over Malibu, California. I hadn’t done stalls in several months, so I was a bit rusty. We started a power-on stall.
I apparently wasn’t paying enough attention to the rudder, because as the stall broke, the right wing went down a bit and then the left wing went way down as the nose dropped, and I realized we were starting a spin. I had never had any formal spin-recovery training.
I took my hands and feet off the controls, confident that my instructor would save us. I glanced over and saw my instructor still sitting there with his arms folded as we started dropping and going around.
After saying a few choice words to myself silently, and while seeing the beach below in the windscreen, I grabbed the controls again, pushed the nose forward, made sure the ailerons were neutral, and gave it full right rudder. Almost immediately, we stopped spinning. I breathed a big sigh of relief, and realized the whole thing had taken only a few seconds. I had forgotten to pull back the power, but that didn’t seem to matter much.
My instructor then said, “Let’s do that again.”
I replied, still shaking, “You mean without the spin?”
He laughed. “Yup.”
It was a weird feeling. On the one hand, I was scared to death and still shaking (and a bit wary of power-on stalls for a while), but on the other hand, I realized that I had saved myself from an accidental spin—without any instructor help or guidance.
I hope to one day complete my training and get my pilot certificate, but that will have to happen only when finances allow.
Jeffrey Sherman
Los Angeles, California
Erratum
Colors inadvertently were reversed in a diagram in the January issue of Flight Training (“How It Works: Turbocharging”). In the diagram, intake air would enter from the left to be compressed, and exhaust gas would enter the turbocharger from the lower right. Flight Training regrets the error.
What do you do to keep your aviation knowledge fresh during the winter?
Fly 41%
Practice on a simulator 3%
Attend safety seminars 2%
Read or take educational online courses 9%
Other 1%
More than one of the above 42%
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