User Guide

Flight Simulator
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Microsoft
The airplane stalled and remained stalled with the joystick held full aft. It did not
climb, not matter how hard you pulled on that joystick. Think about this carefully.
You could remain stalled all the way to the ground while the joystick is pulled full
aft (that’s all the way back). Which doesn’t bring you much joy, right? Holding
the joystick full aft keeps the wing’s angle of attack at or beyond its critical
value. Unfortunately, this is what some pilots do after stalling an airplane.
Stall recovery requires that you do just the opposite of what caused the stall in
the first place: you must release any back pressure on that joystick and move it
forward until the wings are at less than their critical angle of attack.
With a few exceptions, this is the way pilots have always recognized stalls and
recovered from them. You’ll also want to add full power immediately after
reducing the angle of attack. This helps accelerate the stall recovery process. Be
careful not to let the nose pitch up as you add power. This might, once again,
increase the angle of attack sufficiently to induce another stall.
Doing the Right Thing in a Stall
All right, let’s see what it’s like to do the right thing in a stall. Here’s how we’ll do
it (remember, you’re still in a stall from the last demonstration).
1. Press P to resume the simulation.
2. Lower the nose.
The proper attitude for recovery is subject to many variables, so we’ll use a
5- to 10-degree nose-down pitch for simulator stall recoveries. You don’t
want an excessively steep nose-down attitude since it results in excessive
altitude loss and airspeed increase.
3. Add full power to help with stall recovery.
4. When the airplane is no longer stalled (i.e., the stall horn stops blaring),
raise the nose to climb attitude and establish climb airspeed.
For this demonstration, assume you’re no longer stalled when the stall horn
is no longer heard, and the airplane is once again controllable.
5. Press P to pause the simulation when you’ve completed a single stall
recovery.
Be careful not to get over-enthusiastic when recovering from a stall, or you’ll
end up in another. This happens after you initiate a recovery from the stall, then
pull too hard on the joystick before the airplane has time to accelerate to a more
normal speed and attitude. We even have a special name for this kind of stall.
It’s called a secondary stall.
How do you know
if you’ve decreased the
angle of attack
sufficiently? In a
simulator, you should
sense these things: the
stall horn stops
blaring, the word STALL
disappears from the
screen, the airplane
begins to fly again,
the airspeed begins to
increase, and the
flight controls become
more responsive. If
your instructor were
onboard, his or her
voice would also reduce
in pitch and whales
would no longer be
inclined to beach
themselves.