Yesterday I flew with Tyler for the second time. When we finally landed back at Millard I was worn out, sweaty, and felt great! We covered a lot of ground in an hour and a half — literally and figuratively.
After flying to the west practice area, we started with slow flight. At 65 MPH he had me do turns — more than I had done before; we did 360 degree turns to the left and right. The airplane is wallowing and barely flying at that speed, and getting it to do what you want is a real balancing act. I’ve got a much better fell for it than I did before.
After slow flight we did power-off and power-on stalls. I greatly improved my power-off stalls to the point where we lost very little altitude and stayed on heading, even after letting the stall break. Power-on stalls are really a non-event. Wait til you feel the buffet, then drop the nose… duh.
Then it was on to steep turns; 360 degree turns left and right at 45 degree bank angles. Again, not bad, after the first one I was able to hold altitude plus or minus 50 feet. Then it was down to 2000′ MSL for ground reference maneuvers. We started at 4500, so he had me do a forward slip to dump altitude. NO problem there, John had me do a slip on every crosswind landing… which is to say, every landing we ever did. Full aileron, full opposite rudder, hold heading and sink like a rock. Ground reference was not a problem with the very light wind, in fact it felt a little like cheating. I want to practice in higher winds, but I hope it’s that calm for my checkride.
After turns around a point, rectangular course and S-turns, he told me to head back to Millard. As we were climbing back to 3000 he reached over and pulled the throttle back to idle… engine failure. I didn’t need the checklist, but I could have picked a much better field (like one on our side of the river, and where I could land into what little wind there was). Then it was back to the field for some pattern work and touch & gos.
All in all… a lot of work, but a good flight. I’m certain that if I had been able to fly with ONE instructor since I started, I’d have soloed by now. Other than having a much better than average grasp on ATC communication, picking FNG as my flight school turned out to be a really bad idea.