Flight 3: Debut of the Cessna 152
For this lesson we switched to a Cessna 152. The combination of today’s cooler weather, which makes the air more dense, and the 152’s added horsepower made the plane really want to climb.
It was my turn to practice stalls, but no matter how many times I watched them demonstrated, I just didn’t get it. (I guess it’s good to test your instructor’s patience early on; mine passed the test.)
Although I had done a lot of reading since the last lesson, I didn’t look at the syllabus for this flight. Had I done so, I could have just memorized the few steps needed to cause and recover from a stall, which I’ll have to know anyway. What should have been a few minutes of practice used about half the class time, and since it was late afternoon, darkness ended the lesson after the first touch & go.
It was too bad, because there was a crosswind just right for some good approach and landing practice, and another 15 minutes of daylight would have been handy. (There will be night training later, but that’s not the time to learn how to land.)
Today’s training did not go well from a textbook point of view, but I did learn two things that made it a valuable session. Focus on today’s lesson, and don’t book a one-hour lesson that ends right at dusk.
It was after this lesson that I thought it would be a good idea to take notes after each flight. I wrote the first few from memory; now I take a notepad with me so I can write the notes in the car before leaving the airport.
Today: 0.9 hours
Total: 2.4 hours
