User Guide

LET’S HEAD FOR THE BARN
At this point, you’ve been exposed to all the maneuvers and
skills you need to land the airplane, so let’s try one. We’ll be using
our “four fundamentals” to fly a series of turns and descents
around the airport, culminating in a descent to the runway and an
approach to a stall just above it. How far above it, in case the air-
plane actually stalls? Oh, six inches or so…
First, of course, we have to find the airport.
For the moment, we won’t worry
about radio communications or other
traffic, but we do need to know the air-
port’s elevation above or below sea
level. If you’re using one of the San
Francisco Bay area scenarios, any of
the major airports right around the bay
are near enough to zero not to matter.
We’re going to use a pattern altitude of
1000 feet above the airport, so check
its elevation (printed below the airport
symbol), then start a gentle descent to
an altitude 1000 feet higher. We’ll also assume, for the moment,
that there’s no wind, so it doesn’t matter which runway we
choose; in the real world, of course, we’ll always choose the run-
way most nearly aligned into the wind.
Take another look at the airport
symbol, which will have at least one
runway depicted as a light-colored line.
If there are several, pick the one most
nearly aligned with the direction from
which we’re approaching. Even though there’s no wind, we’re not
going to land straight in, but rather fly a standard pattern. This is
partly to develop good habits, but even more because the pattern
offers you a lot more opportunities to judge distance, altitude, and
descent rate.
As we get closer to the airport, level off at pattern altitude
and set power for around 90 to 100 knots. Don’t fly straight at the
middle of the airport; instead, aim a bit to the right. We want to
start the first, or downwind, leg of the landing pattern at 1000 feet
above the ground and about a mile to the right of the runway, so
that you’ll be able to see it out the left side of the airplane.
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What we’re about to do is called an “approach to landing stall.”
We have the airplane configured as if we were going to land, and
we’re descending as we would in the landing pattern. Pick an altitude
a couple hundred feet below where we are now, and when you
reach it, apply back pressure to try to level off without adding power.
You’ll notice it won’t take much back pressure to stop the
descent - indeed, you’ll be able to do so with the nose still percep-
tibly below the horizon. Moreover, with all the drag of the flaps,
speed will bleed off pretty quickly.
By now, we’re well below the bottom of the green arc - the
speed at which the airplane would stall with the flaps up - and, as
we approach the bottom of the white arc, with the horn moaning
away, the airplane will stall. Considering how much lift we’ve been
trying to produce, and how quickly it goes away, the “break” may
be surprisingly brisk, and it will most likely be accompanied by a
pretty quick wing drop (usually to the inside of the turn unless
you’re a real lead foot on the outside rudder).
How to recover? As always, by relaxing back pressure, adding
full power, then gently starting to bring the nose back up to mini-
mize the loss of altitude. Use rudder as well as (or even more than)
aileron to help raise the lower wing. As soon as you start the recov-
ery, you can bring the flaps back up to the first notch to help accel-
eration - but don’t bring them all the way up until the airplane is
both accelerating and climbing, because there’ll be some settling as
they come up the last ten degrees.
What are we trying to show here? Among other things,
that the nose doesn’t have to be above the horizon for the airplane
to stall - his time, it let go with the nose down. Also, this maneu-
ver shows that the flaps-down stall can be fairly brisk, and that it
can take a good deal of altitude to recover…and since the real-
world scenario for this type of stall is in the landing pattern, at less
than 1000 feet above the ground, this is a type of stall that should
be avoided at all costs.
Flight Instruction
Flight Instruction
SimTip
Hit the M key to
turn on the map
display, then turn
the airplane until
it’s pointed at one
of the blue airport
symbols.
Airport
Symbol