Just when I thought flying couldn't become any more fun, I learned how to spin and recover a Cessna 172. Maybe we should all be a little bit scared that I found my first encounter with aerobatics to be an incredibly exciting, enjoyable and all around fun experience. Hmmm...do I see some spin and minor aerobatics training in my future?For the last three weekends, Rodrigo has been trying to spin me. Even though spin training is no longer required by the FAA for a private certificate, it isn't on the Cessna Pilot School curriculum and it is somewhat of a no-no in the eyes of the Wright Flyers administration. Rodrigo, as well as many of the other instructors, like to spin students so they can experience both the spin and recovery. I have to admit, I wasn't looking forward to this and I was relieved each week when we couldn't get enough weight off the airplane to drop it into the utility category.Today, however, Rodrigo assured me that a spin was in my future no matter how much the plane weighed at takeoff. We would fly until we lost enough weight (fuel burn) to make the maneuver safe. Hearing this, I unenthusiastically went outside to pre-flight N23203.Having spent most of our time in the south practice area recently, we decided to change things up a bit and head west. As soon as I started my takeoff climb, the tower immediately told me to start my turn to the right and contact departure. I only had about 150 feet below me and I still tend to forget that I can tell the tower no, but I went ahead and started the turn. Seeing his opportunity to point out my mistake, Rodrigo reached for the throttle and pulled it to idle while telling me I had and engine failure on takeoff.Without hesitation, I trimmed for 65 knots and made a quarter turn towards the only safe place to land which I thought I could make it to (I didn't have enough altitude yet to get back to the airport). The green grass of a long par 5 looked to me like an excellent place for an emergency landing. I then ran through my emergency checklist and simulated calling the tower to advise them of the situation.As soon as I finished my mock radio call to the tower, Rodrigo allowed me to recover. He then congratulated me for doing everything quickly and correctly. However, he also reminded me that I shouldn't have started my departure turn until I was at least another 100 feet higher. That extra 100 feet could have meant the difference of making it back to the airport or crashing just short! This was the first simulated emergency that actually made me a little nervous, but I was happy that I had done everything right. While you don't think it will be the case, training really does take over.Knowing that the simulated engine failure on takeoff had elevated my adrenaline levels, Rodrigo let me relax and site-see for the remainder of our 10 minute trip to the practice area. I spend so much time flying maneuvers, that I tend to forget how much fun it is to simply look down on the world passing below me. Ah...now my body and brain were back at peace. Too bad it wouldn't last for long!Once established in the practice area, Rodrigo, once again, had me don the Foggles so that I could get some simulated instrument time. As soon as I was situated, the controls were back in my hands and I was getting ready for unusual attitude recovery. Generally when we do this, Rodrigo flies the airplane while I have my eyes closed and my hands off of the controls. However, this time, he had me fly the airplane with my eyes closed. He would have me bank the airplane to what I felt was 30 degrees to the left and hold that angle. After just a few seconds of this, he would have me open my eyes and level the airplane. Even though I felt that I was in a nice bank, I would open my eyes to see us in a turning dive or climb. Of course, I would recover and then we would do it again. Eventually, it got to the point where I was doing what I thought and the exercise lost it value.Rodrigo then took over the controls so we could do more severe unusual attitude recovery. As soon as I closed my eyes, he started into a steep dive. Then, a hard bank one way followed by the other. Then a climb, more turns, and, finally, the directive to open my eyes and recover.After several of these without any problems, Rodrigo said it was time for some fun and we started again. After a few turns, he asked me if he had zero G'd the cabin for me yet. When I said no, he went into a climb. "Time for a little parabolic flight?" I said with my eyes still closed."We might as well have some fun," was Rodrigo's response before he topped out the parabola and started a steep descent. "OK, open your eyes!"I opened my eyes to see a sectional chart floating in the cabin right in front of me. I watched it hang there for about 5 seconds before Rodrigo had to pull out of the dive. "That's so cool!" I yelled! Then, like a little kid, I said, "Again, again!"After a couple more parabolas, I had the controls back and started in on a few steep turns followed by power on stalls. My steep turns were up to PTS, and my new trick with stalls had me cranking them out like a pro too. The trick was to do them as fast as possible. By spending a lot of time in slow flight, I was fighting the sluggish airplane all the way. This would cause me to drift of course or gain/lose too much altitude. Now, I just slowed to 55, gunned the throttle, yanked back on the yoke, stalled, recovered, and continued to fly. Rodrigo even commented that they were now up to commercial standards!After I recovered from my third stall, Rodrigo yelled, "ENGINE FIRE!"I, once again, went into action sending the airplane into a steep dive while cutting the throttle and simulating pulling the mixture to cut-off, pulling the fuel flow cut-off and checking the fuel pump is off. Once Rodrigo announced the fire was out, I trimmed for 65 knots, started to look for a place to land and simulated a may-day radio call.First, I picked a field to land in, but I knew San Geronimo airport was close so I noted the field and started to make a turn in order to locate a nice paved runway. As it turned out, I was almost directly above the airport. So, I made a radio call to let everyone in the area know that I was doing a straight in approach to San Geronimo on a simulated engine out landing. Since I had quite a bit of altitude to lose, I started to make turns until I was ready to head for the runway. It all went perfect. I cleared the trees and made a nice soft landing...to top it off, I had never landed as San Geronimo before. The 25 foot wide runway, was a little different than the 75 footers I had become accustomed to!We stayed at San Geronimo for four more landings. Three were soft-field and one was short-field. For some reason, I was having a very hard time with the soft-field landings. I would come in too fast or set the plane down to hard. All that I could attribute my problems to was the presence of row of tall trees right at the runway threshold. I think I was stressing over the trees and not concentrating on my speed.After seeing gradual improvement in my soft-field technique, Rodrigo decided we had burned enough fuel to try some spins. To confirm this, he recalculated our weight and balance from the sheet I had prepared before our flight. Rodrigo frantically worked the calculator while I slowly taxied back. Finally, he said we should be inside the utility category after one more takeoff, but, just to make sure, we were going to do a high performance takeoff known as the New Zealand Royal Air Force Departure (look it up on youtube!).Rodrigo handed me a camera and took the controls. I would be the videographer for this one. The takeoff started out like a normal soft-field departure. Rodrigo got the airplane off the ground and accelerated in ground effect. However, instead of doing a straight ahead, normal, climb-out, he did a steep banking climb to the right. This, of course, caught me by surprise and caused me to film the instrument panel instead of outside. Since it was so much fun, I guess we will have to re-shoot that one next week.Rodrigo then handed the controls to me and told me to climb to 5500 while he situated the cabin. While I handled the airplane, Rodrigo turned around and started re-organizing the cabin. He jammed my flight bag in between the front and back seat so it couldn't move and anything that was loose went into a pocket. He fussed with the contents of the back seat during the entire climb and didn't turn around until I notified him that we had reached our altitude. He then took the controls back to me and did a few clearing turns while explaining to me exactly what would happen.With my camera in hand Rodrigo set up for the stall and subsequent spin. With the power at full and the stall horn blaring, Rodrigo jammed the left rudder pedal just as the stall was about to break. The airplane rolled left and started to spiral down. After a full turn, Rodrigo recovered and we were back in straight and level flight."Whoa!" was all I could say. Although, if you turn up the volume in the video loud enough I believe you can hear a, "Holy Sh*T!" I then added that it took by surprise and I videoed the instruments again."Wanna do another?" was Rodrigo's response."Sure," I was surprised to hear myself say.Once again, I had my camera on video mode and Rodrigo set up for the stall. As before, he threw the nose to the left just prior to the stall breaking. We spun around and recovered.This time, my response was, "That's kind of fun!""One more?""Why not." I was again surprised to hear myself say.Rodrigo could tell that I was having fun. "This time, I'll let it go a little longer!"True to his word, Rodrigo let the airplane complete 2.5 rotations before recovering. All I could do was laugh.Then, Rodrigo asked if I wanted to try one. I suddenly became serious and quickly said, "NO!"However, with a little coaxing Rodrigo had me convinced that I needed to spin and recover the airplane by myself so that I would know that I could recover from the situation if I ever did it accidentally. We ran through the recovery procedure a couple of more times before I was finally ready. Rodrigo reminded me that he would be on the controls with me but I would be flying (unless I made a mistake).With that, I set up for a stall with Rodrigo talking me through the entire procedure. With near perfect coordination, I pulled back on the yoke and fire-walled the throttle. Just as the stall was about to break, Rodrigo yelled, "Full left rudder!"I stood on the rudder and the airplane immediately started to spin. I pulled the throttle to idle, neutralized the ailerons (mainly by letting go of the yoke), lightly touched the right rudder to stop the spin (although the airplane almost stopped spinning on its own), broke the stall and then pulled the nose back up to a level attitude. My first spin and recovery was a success."What do you think? Not too bad right?" I heard Rodrigo ask.I just smiled, laughed and asked if I could do another.After one more spin, we decided we were getting low on fuel and needed to head home. I attempted one more soft-field landing at SAT, and, while we were taxiing back to Wright Flyers, Rodrigo reminded me that by this time next month, I should be a fully certified pilot!While I was planning on taking spin training at some point just for safety, I'm now thinking about taking it right after my certification is complete. While it will still be for safety, I now know that I'm going to have a lot of fun spinning an airplane built for aerobatics. There's a Citabria in Houston calling my name!
Just when I thought flying couldn't become any more fun, I learned how to spin and recover a Cessna 172. Maybe we should all be a little bit scared that I found my first encounter with aerobatics to be an incredibly exciting, enjoyable and all around fun experience. Hmmm...do I see some spin and minor aerobatics training in my future? For the last three weekends, Rodrigo has been trying to spin me. Even though spin training is no longer required by the FAA for a private certificate, it isn't on the Cessna Pilot School curriculum and it is somewhat of a no-no in the eyes of the Wright Flyers administration. Rodrigo, as well as many of the other instructors, like to spin students so they can experience both the spin and recovery. I have to admit, I wasn't looking forward to this and I was relieved each week when we couldn't get enough weight off the airplane to drop it into the utility category. Today, however, Rodrigo assured me that a spin was in my future no matter how much the plane weighed at takeoff. We would fly until we lost enough weight (fuel burn) to make the maneuver safe. Hearing this, I unenthusiastically went outside to pre-flight N23203. Having spent most of our time in the south practice area recently, we decided to change things up a bit and head west. As soon as I started my takeoff climb, the tower immediately told me to start my turn to the right and contact departure. I only had about 150 feet below me and I still tend to forget that I can tell the tower no, but I went ahead and started the turn. Seeing his opportunity to point out my mistake, Rodrigo reached for the throttle and pulled it to idle while telling me I had and engine failure on takeoff. Without hesitation, I trimmed for 65 knots and made a quarter turn towards the only safe place to land which I thought I could make it to (I didn't have enough altitude yet to get back to the airport). The green grass of a long par 5 looked to me like an excellent place for an emergency landing. I then ran through my emergency checklist and simulated calling the tower to advise them of the situation. As soon as I finished my mock radio call to the tower, Rodrigo allowed me to recover. He then congratulated me for doing everything quickly and correctly. However, he also reminded me that I shouldn't have started my departure turn until I was at least another 100 feet higher. That extra 100 feet could have meant the difference of making it back to the airport or crashing just short! This was the first simulated emergency that actually made me a little nervous, but I was happy that I had done everything right. While you don't think it will be the case, training really does take over. Knowing that the simulated engine failure on takeoff had elevated my adrenaline levels, Rodrigo let me relax and site-see for the remainder of our 10 minute trip to the practice area. I spend so much time flying maneuvers, that I tend to forget how much fun it is to simply look down on the world passing below me. Ah...now my body and brain were back at peace. Too bad it wouldn't last for long! Once established in the practice area, Rodrigo, once again, had me don the Foggles so that I could get some simulated instrument time. As soon as I was situated, the controls were back in my hands and I was getting ready for unusual attitude recovery. Generally when we do this, Rodrigo flies the airplane while I have my eyes closed and my hands off of the controls. However, this time, he had me fly the airplane with my eyes closed. He would have me bank the airplane to what I felt was 30 degrees to the left and hold that angle. After just a few seconds of this, he would have me open my eyes and level the airplane. Even though I felt that I was in a nice bank, I would open my eyes to see us in a turning dive or climb. Of course, I would recover and then we would do it again. Eventually, it got to the point where I was doing what I thought and the exercise lost it value. Rodrigo then took over the