From dhenriques@earthlink.net Tue Nov 13 01:45:19 2001 Path: cygnus.com!enews.sgi.com!howland.erols.net!feed2.news.rcn.net!rcn!newsfeed1.earthlink.net!newsfeed.earthlink.net!newsmaster1.prod.itd.earthlink.net!newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Reply-To: "Dudley Henriques" From: "Dudley Henriques" Newsgroups: rec.aviation.student References: <3bed4fe8$0$12195@echo-01.iinet.net.au> <1MmH7.477$Jy2.174880@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net> <3BEFDDCE.5010708@alt.net> Subject: Re: Scared SH#TLESS of stalls - help! Lines: 94 Organization: International Fighter Pilots Fellowship X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Message-ID: Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 17:19:17 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.246.210.9 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net 1005585557 209.246.210.9 (Mon, 12 Nov 2001 09:19:17 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 09:19:17 PST X-Received-Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 09:15:02 PST (newsmaster1.prod.itd.earthlink.net) Xref: cygnus.com rec.aviation.student:194821 "Mark Gendron" wrote in message news:tuvsfvdjub7sdd@corp.supernews.com... > > "Highflyer" wrote: > > Mark Gendron wrote: > > > > > > OK, show of hands. . .who read past this point? > > > > I did. To tell the truth I see a LOT of advice here that is less than > > wonderful. > > Perhaps. But I was just referring to his charming opening sentence. Actually, aside from the friendly opening :-)), his approach isn't all that far off. Stalls are mishandled by a lot of instructors unfortunately, and it's a shame. First and before anything else, it's an absolute must that instructors feel comfortable dealing with unusual attitudes themselves before teaching them to students. This is simply not the case in all too many instances. Not faulting everybody by a long shot, but many CFI's enter the job actually carrying some fear, if not apprehension about stalls. Believe me, I've seen it! I've been hiring flight instructors for years, and every one has been given a personal flight test before they were hired. Many were way too nervous about stalls and unusual attitudes; and I'm not talking extremes here; I'm talking plain generic stalls. Even given a good comfort level around unusual attitudes, there are still instructors out there not approaching the general subject of departure correctly. Stalls are more than simply another maneuver to be learned. The worst thing I can imagine doing is to put a student through stalls and let him/her go forward to other things carrying apprehension about them while performing them correctly under great stress.This brings up that all important point about just how much emphasis should be placed on the "dangers" of stalls. Naturally, we want students to be aware that stalls entered at low altitude can be dangerous. Now this next point is important!!!! It's possible to convey this message without scaring a student half to death about stalls, but some instructors miss this, and wade into the danger aspect so deeply that the student concentrates more on stall avoidance than in recognition and recovery. This can develop easily into a "I don't REALLY have to worry about stalls, because I know how to avoid them" attitude. Added to THIS, given some deep apprehension about stall left in the student by an unseeing instructor, and you have a potentially unsafe situation here. In teaching stalls, the instructor should ALWAYS do some pre-flight prep with the student before the lesson. CFI's should NEVER assume a student will react "normally" to the initial introduction to unusual attitudes in an airplane, even if the student shows anticipation. It pays huge dividends to prepare a student properly. This means bringing the student in with an attitude that stalls are a NORMAL region of flight, and as such should be completely understood, and dealt with just as any other aspect of the flight experience. This again brings up an important point. The objective of the instructor should be to impart this complete understanding of stalls to the student, and endeavor to have the student become COMFORTABLE in the stall environment. This "comfort level" is where some instructors go astray. They teach the stalls, and accept as a completed goal, a student's ability to recognize and recover with a minimum loss of altitude. Now on the surface this looks ok, but delving a bit deeper, we can find many cases of certificated pilots who can perform stalls to specified parameters, but are in no way comfortable in this region of flight. What can develop here over time, is a pilot who, rather than being completely comfortable in ALL areas of the airplane's flight envelope; is a pilot who has gone through the program and become certificated; has done all the right things and pushed all the right buttons; but isn't at all comfortable in the left hand corner of the flight envelope of his airplane. This is a factor that can easily contribute to a serious accident down the road. Each instructor has to evaluate his/her own situation when it comes to things like teaching stalls. There isn't any set procedure for doing it right. Each student will bring a different set of abilities and apprehensions to the learning table. You have to take each one separately and do whatever it takes to make that particular student "comfortable" with stalls. The bottom line on all this is simply that to do the job right as an instructor, you have to to take the student carefully into the left side of the envelope and make him/her comfortable flying there. It's not enough that a student can recover the airplane with a minimum loss of altitude in a stall while that student is doing this under great stress and apprehension not picked up by the instructor. The student might pass the test, but the instructor has failed. There isn't anything to be feared from stalls, and there's a lot to be gained from teaching a student to be comfortable doing them. Instructors HAVE to anticipate apprehension, accept it as simply something to be dealt with in the right way, and deal with it in a way that produces a pilot completely comfortable in the airplane at ALL TIMES!! This of course is a VERY general outline of the situation. This subject deserves a much closer look than I've given it here. It is something however that every CFI should consider. -- Dudley Henriques International Fighter Pilots Fellowship Commercial Pilot/CFI Retired