I am mostly ready for my check-ride.  I was 1 hour short or 40 and I need some work on controlling my stall recovery.  That was the plan for this lesson.  In the last lesson we had done a lot of work on the maneuvers and revisited stalls.  This idea behind this flight was to get some more practice with stalls to make sure that the procedure sticks. The last thing I want is to get out and spin it on the check-ride.

I flew out to the Fort Loudon Dam practice area and did some clearing turns in anticipation of several stall entries and recoveries.  I first made sure to find an area clear of any ground based structures like houses just in case something went wrong.  Then I pulled the power back and let the airspeed bleed off.  I resisted the urge to yank back and force the stall, instead letting it happen naturally.  It broke cleanly with a slight drop of the wing and I applied full power and slightly too much rudder to counter the left yaw.  It wasn’t perfect, but it was well within standards and I didn’t lose much altitude at all.  It was a clean enough example of a power-off stall that I moved on to power-on stalls.

My biggest weakness with power-on stalls is still impatience on my part.  I want it to happen and I wind up yanking it back until the stall happens resulting in a lot more pitch than is actually required.  To combat this, I remind myself to slow down and follow the procedure.  I brought out some power and waited for 74 knots. Then I pitched up and added full power, to simulate takeoff.  I kept adding back pressure, waiting for the stall, and minding my rudder.  Just as I reached the stall point, out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw something move.  It turned out that there was nothing there, but that didn’t stop me from jerking and cramming the rudder nearly to the floor right as the plane stalled.  The next thing I know, I’m saying words and praying I recover from the spin.  As it turned out I didn’t spin it, but I did do a pretty handy wing over of sorts.  I would definitely be trying another power-on stall.

The next attempt went much better.  I performed everything as I had before right up to the break.  This time it broke and I recovered successfully.  I decided, that this was as good as it was going to get and that I was mentally ready for the check-ride.  I radioed approach and headed back in for landing.  I decided to perform a soft field landing, just because I wanted to get one more in.

The landing was uneventful, I came in as normal.  Flared and added a little bit of power to keep the nose wheel up as I touched down.  Then I let the nose wheel come down softly.  It was a pretty decent soft field landing if I don’t say so myself.  The only thing I hate about it is the fact that you can’t see over the nose, so you’re pretty much using the side windows to figure the center-line.

I taxied back, tied down the plane, and went inside to declare I was ready.  Somehow, I managed to hit 40 right on the nose.  We discussed the next few steps including the paperwork, etc. and I set up a time to go over everything and call the examiner to schedule a check-ride.  It will be after Christmas, but I will try to get it in before the end of the year.