User Guide

Learning To Fly with Rod Machado

You’re in the beginning of a stall when the stall horn activates (it’s an audible cockpit warning

that activates when the airplane is at or near the critical angle of attack). In the simulator, the

word STALL appears in the spot plane view window. At that point:

5. Return the joystick to neutral and let the airplane cycle through two up and down pitch changes.

6. Press P to pause the simulation when done.

You’ve just witnessed the reason aeronautical engineers get paid the big bucks. They design

airplanes to pitch forward after exceeding the critical angle of attack. And this allows most airplanes

to recover from stalls all by themselves. Neat, huh?

Here’s What You Observed

Pulling way back on the joystick caused the wings to exceed their critical angle of

attack and stall. During the stall, airflow burbles instead of flowing smoothly over

the top of the wing. This results in insufficient lift for flight, causing the airplane to

pitch forward (if the baggage, passengers, and fuel are loaded properly in the

airplane). This automatic nose-down pitch is somewhat like doing the Heimlich

maneuver on yourself; the airplane reduces its own angle of attack to less than the critical value and

regains its ability to fly.

If airplanes are built to recover from stalls themselves, why do you need to learn any of this? The

problem is that pilots often do things which prevent stall recovery. You need to know what these

things are so you know not to do them. Also, an accidental stall close to the ground requires that you

know how to quickly recover in order to minimize your altitude loss. Let’s try another stall, but this

time, let’s see what happens if you prevent the airplane from pitching forward on its own.

Doing the Wrong Thing in a Stall

We’ll stall again but prevent the airplane from recovering from the stall. Since we’re kind of low out

there, let’s reset this simulation before we go through the window of that downtown high-rise over

there.

1. Press Ctrl+; to reset the simulation; then press Z followed by Ctrl+V to activate only the

autopilot’s wing leveler.

2. Press P to resume the simulation.

3. Reduce the throttle to flight idle, raise the nose, and slow the airplane to 70 knots while in level

flight. Once done, lower the nose a little and begin a descent at 70 knots. Make sure you use

trim for the descent.

4. Slowly pull back on the joystick and this time hold it all the way back (this is what you shouldn’t

do in real life!). The airplane will eventually stall.

5. While still pulling the joystick back, let the airplane pitch up and down once or twice, and then

press P to pause the simulation.