Aviator90 Episode 18

[intro music]

Chris Palmer: [0:31] Welcome back to another episode of Aviator 90 from Angle of
Attack. In this episode, we’ll be learning about the often touchy
and scary subject of stalls.
[0:42] Many people fear stalls because, well, it’s basically a
situation where the aircraft isn’t producing enough lift to want to
continue flying, and it essentially falls. With that said, it’s not
something you should be experiencing unless you are practicing. So
you won’t experience it in everyday flying.

[1:01] The technical explanation of a stall would be to say that,
once the air foil angle of attack reaches its critical angle, it
can no longer create enough lift to keep the aircraft flying. And
unless the angle of attack is reduced, you will stall. So, luckily
for us, we have some guesses on what air speed a stall will happen,
in addition to some other indications.

[1:27] We will be doing two types of stall in this episode, a power
on stall and a power off stall. A power on stall will be our clean
configuration stall, done at full power and it emulates normal
flight conditions. Now, a power off stall will be done to emulate a
landing. We will be at idle power in the landing configuration with
our flaps down, and we will simply maintain an altitude until a
stall occurs.

[1:57] First, let’s get to the power on stall. Here we are,
straight and level at 2,500 feet. So basically how this procedure
goes is we will pull the power back, and then we will get to where
we’re almost in a stall and then we will add power again. So a few
notes before we get started here…

[2:16] It’s important to always keep the ailerons neutral during
your stall techniques. It’s all rudder. All right. So, pulling the
power back now, we want to maintain that altitude and pull the nose
up. You can see the air speed bleeding down. We’re going to get to
the lower part of the green arc, and then we are going to add power
again. Remember, no aileron, just rudder.

[2:38] So here we go, adding the power… And keep it aggressive.
Here we go. That’s the stall warning horn. There’s the stall. Lower
the nose to the horizon, and now what we’re going to do is get a
positive rate of climb. So now that the air speed’s fine again,
look at your vertical speed indicator and get it to start climbing
again. Make sure not to go into a secondary stall, a second stall.
You can see, we’re climbing above 2,500 feet now. We have recovered
from the stall.

[3:13] That’s basically it for the power-on stall. It’s a pretty
aggressive break, as they call it. Just make sure to keep your
ailerons neutral, and it’s all about the rudder pressure.

[3:24] All right now, let’s do a power-off stall. This one is
different in many ways. But in some ways, it’s actually very
similar. The aircraft is going to break like it did before, and we
just need to recover.

[3:36] Again, this is in the landing configuration. What I’m going
to do initially here is start to pull back the power, and then we
will start to put in our flaps.

[3:49] I’m pulling the power so I get to our safe flap air speeds.
Again, this stall is much like the power-on stall. It’ll break, but
it won’t be as aggressive because we are in the landing
configuration.

[4:10] There’s the first notch of flaps, second notch of flaps, and
full flaps. Now, we’re going to pull the power and we’re going to
maintain 2,500 feet. This one happens pretty quickly.

[4:30] Here we go. [buzzer] The warning horn and there’s the stall.
Full power, recover, pull the nose up. We need a positive rate of
climb, but we also need to have a good airspeed.

[4:50] All right, one of the first things you need to do is bring
out one notch of flaps once you get a positive rate again. This
process is a little bit slower than the other one.

[5:02] You’re going to have a harder time climbing. So a you
continue to climb, continue to get rid of those flaps, as that will
assist you in the climb.

[5:13] All right. So that does it for the power-on and power-off
stalls. Now, there are other types of stalls that are a bit more
advanced. For now, this is all we’re going to concern ourselves
with.

[5:25] It’s also important to note that a stall can occur at any
airspeed and at any altitude. Although, this seems like it’s
contradicting to what we just learned, keep in mind that we were in
a very controlled environment. The stall is all dependent on angle
of attack.

[5:42] All right. So that does it for the stalls. Keep practicing
these stalls on your own and learn to be relatively calm and
comfortable in this maneuver. It is completely controllable. You’ll
really thank your skills when you need this.

[5:57] All right. We’re done with this one. It’s a tough subject
and hopefully you feel like you came out on top. Next time, we’ll
be continuing our footwork as we do slow flight.

[6:09] Until then, throttle on!

Transcription by CastingWords