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Lesson Nine: Spins!I was going to have today's lesson yesterday, but it didn't work out. I arrived at the airport yesterday at 0900, and drove out to the airplane. ( At PAO, they let people drive on the taxiways; I understand this is fairly rare ) Somebody else was preflightning the airplane! My instructor came out with a stricken expression and said "Isn't your lesson at eleven"? "No, we changed it to nine, because I had something else I had to do this afternoon". Whups, he'd forgotten about the Sunday 0900 guy :-(.So I went out there again today. The weather was beautiful, sunny, and freezing cold. ATIS said "temperature four-niner....". I preflighted the airplane; oil was a tad low. This time I was careful not to leave the filler cap loose. In fact, I finished the entire preflight before going back to note the oil addition in the log. Fuel was adequate, but not really ample, about an eighth full in one tank, almost half-full on the other. My instructor arrived, he told me what we would do: power-on and off stalls, and elementary power-off spins. ( Quick Martha! Get Jerry's bravery pills! ) I put the best face on it, we set off. I did all the radio work. :-) I performed my usual muffed takeoff :-(. This time the airplane swerved too much, I didn't hold the yoke back enough, I didn't give it enough right rudder. At least when we did leave the ground, I held the nose down OK, instead of heading right into a departure stall.... After our (crosswind departure) turn, I asked him "I _will_ get to practice takeoffs one of these days, right?" "Oh, yeah, takeoffs and landings, until they come out your ears." The air was really bumpy going over the hills - about the bumpiest yet. I guess that makes sense: bright sunny-shiny cold day, the sun heats the ground, the ground warms the air, that warm air starts to bubble up through the cold air surrounding it. We got out to the practice area, he had me do some more power-off and power-on stalls. This time, I got a better sense of keeping the nose straight with the rudder during the stall. My instructor also showed me something amazing: he flew the airplane with an indicated airspeed of zero! There we were, nose pointed at the sky, airspeed indicator needle hard against its stop, flying along. And it was really flying too, not stalled! Do you believe in magic? The power-on stalls had a tendancy to convert themselves into power-off stalls, I guess because the extreme attitude the airplane assumed tended to slosh the fuel away from the tank's outlet. Also, I had to be careful about how quickly I pushed in the gas on recovery. Apparently, accellerator pumps hadn't been invented yet in 1947 :-). Anyway, if I pushed it in too quickly, the engine would just die. As in dead. Scary stuff, just coming out of a stall like that. Then we climbed up to 5000 feet to do spins. First he showed me a few. "It's easy: you just do a normal power-off stall, and hit hard right rudder and hold it there" ( here Jerry's eyes open really wide, the world is going round and round! "Then you hit hard left rudder, push the yoke forward, and it comes right out of it". ( Here we climbed back up to 4000 feet ) Three or four times, he did this. I did not scream :-). Then he had me do a couple. The first time, I stopped the rotation, but didn't get the stick forward. The second time, I stopped the rotation, AND got the stick forward, but let the airspeed get a bit high during the recovery. And the third time... well, there was no third time: I asked "Can we go home now?" Off we went, back over the hills. Bouncie-bouncie. I hadn't noticed it during the excitement of the spins, but a certain feeling was making itself known in my stomach. In spite of the feeling, I did the radio work, got us down into the pattern, even did the turn onto base. Then my instructor said "my plane!", looked around, waggled our wings a bit, and called the tower: "Palo Alto tower, does that guy coming into the pattern know we're here?" Nope, he sure didn't. We had turned left base, and he was coming into the base leg from the *other way*. He couldn't have been more than 500 feet away, he was maybe 50 feet higher than us, and he HADNT SEEN US. I should have been more scared - guess I was just numb from the spins :-). One thing about the spins, the airplane was very predictable; it behaved exactly the same way each time. This was comforting. Once you get over the initial shock, I think they're easier than ground reference maneuvers. No fussy little attitude adjustments, just bash that pedal! I don't think I'll ever practice them without my CFI on board, though. So, it's been almost a month of lessons, and twelve hours dual received. What do I have to show for it?
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