Well much to my surprise conditions were good enough on Sunday to fly. The pressure had been rising all day, the cloud lifted until we had over 2000ft to play with. This Sunday I was learning slow flight, including standard stall recovery.
I should really have written this up straight away. Damn my shabby memory.
Every manoeuvre seems to have its own work process acronym - this one was no different. HASELL stands for
H - height. Do we have enough for this? 3000ft is the recommendation.
A - aircraft. This is our plane. Is it configured, in trim, straight and level.
S - security. Physical security for passengers, pilot and loose articles.
E - engine. Temperatures and pressures.
L - location. Are we in a suitable place. ABCCCD (Airfields, built up areas, crowd, cloud, controlled airspace, danger areas)
L - lookout. Is the airspace clear and safe. We should include some turns to clear.
On subsequent trys we can reduce this to HELL.
We start with
P - power - 1500 RPM and in balence
A - attitude - > 60kts, 2000 RPM
T - trim
Standard Stall recovery (At Last)
So the aircraft stalls when the angle of attack is around 15˚ - not very steep. This is known as the critical angle. To recover:-
Pitch forward
Apply full power
Balance
I felt okay doing the stall recovery - seemed fairly sensible. However I didn't get to see what happens if one wing drops - one should keep the ailerons straight. Doing otherwise makes things worse - spinny spinny! Stu demonstrated a spin recovery which once again had my stomach in my mouth.
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