{"id":387,"date":"2016-05-18T20:00:10","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T03:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/?p=387"},"modified":"2016-06-08T17:58:37","modified_gmt":"2016-06-09T00:58:37","slug":"lesson-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/?p=387","title":{"rendered":"Lesson Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

The weather today was a great improvement over the conditions during\u00a0my first lesson. A 4,000 foot scattered layer of clouds presented a good opportunity to practice slow flight and power-off stalls to the east. Also, something I didn’t mention in my first post was the slight nausea I experienced while practicing turns right below an overcast layer. (And by right below, I absolutely\u00a0mean at least 500 ft below<\/a>.) I was looking forward to the cloud deck being much higher for our practice today to hopefully alleviate any nauseousness.<\/p>\n

Before departure, I went through the motions of the pre-flight inspection with my CFI similar to the first lesson. He advised me that he would soon prefer to just meet me at the aircraft, bestowing on me the responsibility of showing up early and pre-flighting\u00a0the aircraft on my own. I liked this idea for two reasons. One, it seems that I will develop a better appreciation for the pre-flight when I am the one determining the aircraft’s\u00a0airworthiness. And two, if I have the pre-flight complete when my CFI shows up, that saves me minutes on the clock toward the\u00a0instructor fee.<\/p>\n

Time to taxi\u2014which means time to improve on my horrendous taxi job from the first lesson. I requested a Right Dumbarton departure with the ground controller and began making my way toward the run-up. My movements on the ground were a slight improvement over the first lesson. The muscle memory of how much pressure needs to be applied to the rudder pedals kicked in quick. We performed a quick run-up in accordance with the before take-off checklist and then proceeded to depart to the north east in the direction of Livermore.<\/p>\n

Over the San Antonio reservoir, we climbed to 3,500 ft and configured the aircraft for slow flight. I soon learned how unresponsive and sluggish the controls become when you have a relatively low airspeed. After a few turns at slow speed, we commenced the power-off stalls. Wow! The human body is definitely not naturally comfortable when the aircraft\u00a0you’re flying\u00a0in suddenly begins to drop out from under you. Luckily the feeling does not last for long. The Skyhawk is an inherently stable aircraft, meaning it will correct itself during a stall as long as you don’t apply too much input to the controls and try to over correct\u2014let it fly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The weather today was a great improvement over the conditions during\u00a0my first lesson. A 4,000 foot scattered layer of clouds presented a good opportunity to practice slow flight and power-off stalls to the east. Also, something I didn’t mention in my first post was the slight nausea I experienced while practicing turns right below an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=387"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":423,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions\/423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.brockshetley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}