Loose Cabin Doors

5/1/2005

Pre-flight was weird - I kept missing items on the checklist?? I had to slow down i think..

Weather was hot and bumpy again. However, this time, Mr. Stomach was OK. Today we practiced stalls, power on and off, and more turns. During a 30 deg turn to the right, Bruce's door flew open!..glad he had his belt on! Bruce also demonstrated to me an engine out. This, I have to say, scared the crap out of me. He set throttle to idle, and asked me to choose a field. Then I was instructed to head toward it, all the time he was coaching me on airspeed and nose down etc. When we got about 200 feet off the field, he took control, and actually took the plane down to around 50 feet or so! Like he was coming in for a landing! at the last second, he went back to full power, gradually decreased flaps, and we got out of there. Phew.

During stalls, I felt what it was like for the plane to kick to the left during a power-on stall. He had said get ready with that right rudder...you'll need it heavily as soon as you feel the plane going left, sure enough, I felt the kick, and promptly buried the right rudder/nose down/throttle forward. Lots of pos' and neg' G's on this lesson.

Landing was a cross wind, it looked like he was crabbing it in, ie. we were to the right of the runway on final,and pointing say at 2 o' clock and the plane kinda drifted to the left gradually...until we touched down - on target.