I've been around airplanes most of my life. My dad earned his private pilot certificate when I was 5 years old. At 6 I knew the alphabet from Alpha to Zulu and had carefully studied the sectional charts that he used to wrap our Christmas presents. So when I first sat in the left seat of a Cessna trainer in August 2001, I thought I was well-prepared for my new adventure.
I could not have been more wrong. Though ground school was fairly straightforward and I easily passed the knowledge test, I soon discovered that the ability to pilot an airplane is not a genetically acquired trait.
Next to turbulence, the most insidious bee in my headset during primary training was the power-on stall. The first time my flight instructor, Robert, demonstrated one I thought I would vomit: The extreme nose-high attitude followed by the pitch downward for the recovery made me feel like I was on a roller coaster—and I hated roller coasters.
When it was time for me to do a power-on stall, I would grip the yoke so hard on the way up that I would actually bank to the left and cause a wing to drop, which only compounded my fear of putting the airplane into a spin. Robert must have sensed my apprehension, and he devised what seemed like a perfectly reasonable approach to performing a stall recovery: Get it done as quickly as possible. Rip it off like a bandage from a hairy arm.
One day, Robert folded up a paper airplane to help me visualize the maneuver from the safety of a classroom chair. I sat there reciting, "Full power, right rudder, and pitch up without delay!" when I got the little plane slowed to its imaginary rotation speed, followed quickly by "There's the buffet...there's the stall....Nose down to recover with minimum loss of altitude!" Well, I thought, this is not so bad. I can do this. Just think of that little paper airplane.
Then we went out to the practice area in a real airplane. My palms were incredibly sweaty, making proper yoke control that much more difficult. I had a death grip on the yoke. Robert had told me to keep a light touch on the controls. But during those early stall sessions, I was more concerned with self-preservation than with form. I held onto that thing like a life preserver.
Robert demonstrated one or two, and then we did a few together. Before I would attempt one unassisted, however, I had to convince myself that even if I screwed up and let the nose fall off to one side, I could get the airplane flying again. I studied emergency procedures in the pilot's operating handbook (POH) before each lesson and had memorized the spin recovery procedures. Robert set me up for and let me recover from a few incipient spins, and eventually I was not afraid to stall the airplane because I was confident that if a spin developed, I could stop it.
The next step to grasping the power-on stall was maintaining my heading. I realized that this was the key to the maneuver: If the wings are kept level and proper rudder inputs used to keep coordinated, the airplane will not drop a wing and therefore will not spin during the stall. I began to use the heading indicator for this purpose with some success, but by doing so was focusing too much attention inside the airplane.
With the nose pitched so far up, I found it difficult to tell whether the nose was straight and the wings were level just by looking out the window. Robert had me use prominent landmarks as aiming points for a visual reference of where the nose should be pointed at the start and the end of the maneuver. But inevitably, I would begin the stall headed for Sugarloaf Mountain and recover with the nose pointed, well, someplace else.
I needed to learn to use peripheral vision. Robert suggested that I walk around the house with arms outstretched and, using only peripheral vision, lift one arm up and let the other one down (as if I were "banking" myself) to see how that looks out of the corner of my eye. I did this for a few days, and it seemed to work. I was able to establish a mental picture of those visual cues, and this made it easier for me to keep the wings level during the power-on stall while keeping my attention focused outside the airplane. With the fear of spins behind me and my heading control much improved, I was finally able to concentrate on performing the maneuver to the parameters set out in the Private Pilot Practical Test Standards.
Or so I thought. Fast forward to the month preceding the first of many rescheduled checkrides. Robert was out of town, so I flew with two other instructors to stay proficient. Both suggested that I gradually increase the pitch attitude for the stall, compared to the swift, nearly full-back elevator pressure I had learned to use.
The more pilots you talk to, and the more you read and learn about flying, the more you realize that different instructors use different methods for teaching stall recovery—and that even though demonstrating spin recovery is no longer a requirement for the private pilot certificate, many professional aviators, including Robert, believe that it should be. Robert felt that an aggressive approach to the power-on stall, in addition to helping me overcome my fears, was best because it put me on the edge of the spin, where the airplane is much more difficult to control. He argued that a student who can recover the airplane in that condition will be better prepared to handle most any stall situation.
However, some instructors who favor the gentler technique reason that even at a reduced pitch attitude, the airspeed will bleed off and the airplane will eventually reach its critical angle of attack—all you have to do is wait. With a shallower pitch attitude during the approach to the stall, the student has more aileron control for a longer period of time, making it is easier to keep the wings level.
My surrogate instructors also suggested that I wade my way into the maneuver using less than full power, which would further decrease the severity of the stall. Then, as I got more comfortable with it, I could use full power. The PTS stipulates that during the power-on stall, the applicant must set power "to no less than 65 percent available power." Interpolating data from the cruise performance tables for my club's 152, I learned that on a typical winter day at 3,000 feet mean sea level, I could expect the engine to deliver 65 percent power at about 2,300 rpm—just shy of the firewall.
So who was right, Robert or the other instructors? My answer is, none of them and all of them. To learn to fly is to develop a methodology that will allow you to meet the standards and inspire confidence with the examiner—and with subsequent passengers. The examiner wants to see not only that you are able to hold your heading within 10 degrees, but that you don't dabble in aerobatics in the process. Robert taught me to overcome my fear of the maneuver, and I will always be grateful to him for his patience. The other instructors added to this by offering me another way to perform the stall with assurance for an FAA examiner.
I passed the private pilot checkride on February 6, 2003. My power-on stall was not perfect—I could have used more right rudder during the initial power application to hold the heading more accurately—but I kept the wings level and was very much in control of the airplane. (And that's the whole point, isn't it?)
After conquering power-on stalls in happy-day visual meteorological conditions, I learned to recover from them under the hood, partial panel. With Robert's help I have completed the requirements for the instrument rating and am fine-tuning to PTS proficiency before scheduling the checkride.
My list of future aviation challenges also includes upset recovery training in an aerobatic airplane. Maybe even a loop.