| 2005/04/03 Stalling sucks | |
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2005-04-03 16:06
by Merlin
in Flying, Nflying
It does in a car, but even more in a plane.
This morning, after practising "flying" by going from Sunnyvale to the San Carlos airport (Redwood Shores, by Oracle) in about 10mn :) (kind of forgot about the DST switch), I got to the airport on time for my appointment. Today was slow flight practise (down to 50knots, which is only a measly 95kph), which was ok until we turned it into stall inducing and recovery. First, to stall the plane (Cessna 152) is hard, it just doesn't want to and you really have to push it (well pull on the stick) a *lot*. First, I was kind of failing because I was unconsciously not pulling enough, just because it didn't seem like a good thing to do :) Recovery wasn't as much of a problem as creating a clean stall: I was getting the plane sideways at 40knots pointing up and got fairly close to inducing spins (well, maybe not, but it felt like it). By the end of practise, I was fairly nerve wracked (stalling and intentionally putting the plane out of control just sucked). Although on the way back I was half tuning out, I actually more or less managed the landing. Anyway I noticed that my car shakes a bit around 110mph. One of my tires must be slightly out of balance. Damn... Oh well, that shouldn't matter too much for the track. I'm not above 110mph for too long on the circuit. We'll see how it goes tomorrow. |