First Stall

I had another lesson on 2/27 in the Cherokee. The wind had finally died down for the day and it was a beautiful day to fly. Scattered puffy clouds at about 5000' and Carolina blue sky. We went as high as 8000' and worked on flying headings, keeping my airspeed constant, and holding altitude.

Before my lesson Lorin talked about doing some stalls, not exactly what I wanted to do that day. As we were working on airspeed he began to pull back the throttle to show me how the plane felt as there was less power. "Notice how mushy feeling it gets?" he said. It wasn't long before the red light in the cockpit was flashing and I realized what was really going on; my first stall. We bobbed around as I tried to keep my composure and finally asked, "Can we stop this now?" He put the power back in and happily I was back to straight and level flying again. It really wasn't all that bad and I am actually glad he sort of surprised me with it rather than telling me we were going to do it. Thinking about the stall is much worse than the stall itself.

I think I mentioned in my last blog that the Cherokee only has toe brakes on the pilot side. That being said on landing I may have left a little bit of rubber on the runway this time...