Today was a great lesson. I was able to take a passenger up with me and I brought my grandfather who is here visiting from Europe. My grandfather was a pilot in the Dutch air force and one of the reasons I am a fan of aviation to this day. He took the back seat of the Cessna 172 and we did our usual prep for take off and taxi.

Once airborn, we headed to our common training airspace over Simi Valley. We started with some more 45 degree steep turns (as mentioned in the previous post) and then began on the dreaded stalls. Now being this was only my 3rd lesson and my first one doing stalls, I had no idea what to expect. My instructor briefed me on the difference between the power-on and power-off stalls and proceeded to demonstrate each. To be perfectly honest, during the first stall I was a bit startled. My instructor adjusted the carburetor heat, went idle on the throttle, then lowered the flaps. When we hit the stall the plane started losing altitude quick and I jumped. I wasn’t afraid of crashing but was not expecting the sudden drop. Either way, I learned and performed both stalls without problem.

The next thing we went over was slow flight. Slow flight begins by applying carburetor heat and dropping the RPMs to 1500. The tricky part about flying with a low airspeed was that the aircraft doesn’t maneuver tightly. What are usually pretty simple turns with the yoke turns into sort of a drift with the rudder and too much can result in a spin. I personally didn’t find it too difficult but fortunately a Summer in California doesn’t produce too much wind.

With the stalls fresh in my head, my instructor let me take control of the aircraft for the approach. We announced our approach to ATC and descended below 3000 feet while passing Warner Center. We head due South towards my university and made our alignment with the runway. I brought the throttle to idle and lowered the flaps keeping airspeed at about 60 knots. I had a clean approach and my instructor took the controls for the actual touch down.

I logged another hour of flight time and came a step closer to a landing on my 3rd lesson. My grandfather had the time of his life being able to be in a small plane again and I am happy he got to experience his grandson doing something that means so much to him.

It was an expensive week since I picked up my ground course books and an ASA HS-1 headset but I am trying to get as much out of the way as possible. I look forward to my next lesson.

(This post was created on June 18, 2008 but reflects the date of the flight)