Two years of whining, begging and pouting has finally paid off--my wife finally broke down and agreed to let me take flying lessons! I called the investigator for a local attorney, a former CFI, who recommended another CFI from a town 30 miles north of here with over 10,000 hours. His name is Larry Cramer. He returned my call a little while ago, and it looks like I'll be starting next Tuesday. We'll be using Cessna 150's. I feel that since I have the opportunity, I must at least give it a go or I'll forever regret passing it up.

I was really going to do it, really learn to really fly. There were reservations, of course. This was dream-chasing, pure and simple. Flying wasn't going to become a career. The odds that I'd ever use a license for a whole heck of a lot once I got it were slim. And there was this nagging slight fear of heights. For example, I never cottoned to carnival rides much--frankly, some of them scared me silly. But I'd taken an introductory flight about a year and a half ago and loved it. This slight acrophobia was part of my wife's hesitancy, too. Luckily, I'd saved a newspaper article about a local air show in which an A-10 aerobatic pilot had talked about having a slight fear of heights--he was unable to walk up to the edge of the Grand Canyon. Reading that article assuaged my wife's fear somewhat, as well as hearing about a retired Air Force navigator buddy with a similar problem. So I was on for my first real lesson. Some flightsimming friends had asked me to regale them with my flight training experiences, and this in turn evolved into something of a flying diary.

A time or two today I wondered what the hell I'd gotten myself into. Any doubts were obliterated shortly after my arrival. Larry is a smaller guy, maybe 5'7". He said he weighed 178 lbs., but some of that weight was probably from all the stuff he had in his shirt pocket. He looked like his picture, perhaps a little older, a little more weathered. He liked to talk (after all, I'd paid for that, he said) and kidded around some. But it was clear he meant business, that I'd undertaken something serious and potentially hazardous. "My main job is to make sure you don't hurt yourself while you teach yourself to fly and to sort of speed that along a little"...

Then I was in the cockpit of a real plane. This wasn't my comfortable computer rig. It was hot and a little cramped. But there before me were some of my familiar friends, the altimeter, VSI and the rest. I had to peek around the yoke to see some of them. The tachometer was way off to the right compared to where it was on my computer screen. I wish I could tell you that after settling into the cockpit there was some great sense of self-actualization or epiphany, but that would be a lie. The truth is we got down to business.

We climbed to 3000 feet in somewhat choppy air, 2500 rpm, probably only doing 300 fpm or so. Then we just flew straight and level for a time while he talked. Larry said a plane was more like a horse than a car; it just needed to be guided. This is when he was explaining trim, as I recall. He said one of the best things to do if I got into trouble was to just let go. Then we talked about turns and he had me do some. First 90° either way, then 180° either way, then a full circle. He wanted me to get the feel of the interplay between rudder, ailerons, and elevator (back-pressure to hold altitude). I can only imagine what this must have looked like from the ground. Then he told me to stop looking at the VSI and altimeter, to look at the horizon, to put the horizon at a particular point on the engine cowling. He took back control of the plane and handed me the checklist card, telling me to use it to hide those gauges. Then he turned a few times. We didn't drop or climb more than ten feet. He said not to worry too much about the altitude on turns at this point, that after a while I'd be able to turn the plane at a constant altitude without watching the gauges much...

Then we "glided", his term for a descent configuration, and went on to slow flight and stalls. For the next fifteen minutes the stall warning must have been going off nearly the whole time. The idea was to throttle back to 1500, aim for 50 knots, and then pitch the plane up slightly to keep altitude. Once the airspeed hit 50, we brought the throttle up to 2000 and just flew like that, the stall warning going all the while, while he explained stalls and angle of attack. He talked about and demonstrated just pushing the yoke forward to avert a stall, and that a lot of pilots had been killed simply from failing to remember this simple input. He said from infancy we are taught to grab for things as we fall, and that it is instinctive to do just that when the plane starts to stall. Then he asked, "What's there in a cockpit to grab?", and of course, there's the yoke right in front of me. He said, "That's right. It's hard to say how many pilots have been found in wreckage with the yokes back here against their chest." So he had me practice that a bit, getting the plane really pitched up, feeling the plane tremble from the burble, the sluggishness of the inputs, and then the return to normal flight with just a slight shove forward on the yoke. What a BLAST!

As I write this I have a whopping eight hours under my belt, and haven't soloed. Therefore, I'm probably no major expert on "What is the main difference between real flying and flight simulator?" I couldn't begin to count how many flightsim hours I have; I couldn't even count how many logbooks I've lost by reformatting hard drives or whatnot, and forgetting to back them up, since I started flightsimming back in the FS98 days. I've read books on aviation and have subscribed to both Flying and Private Pilot. So on that score I'm no newbie.

To me the main difference has nothing to do with G-loads or navigation or fuel consumption. To me the main difference is that real flying is so in-the-moment, so all-focusing. It's the same kind of focus one has while experiencing a car wreck, only it lasts a lot longer. There is just no way to reproduce that with a home computer based simulator. The folks at Microsoft can keep trying to make Flight Simulator "As real as it gets" from now until FS2030 or whatever, but as long as it's run on anything resembling a home computer, they're just going to be SOL as far as recreating that "rapture". Grizzly veterans of real flight may no longer view it the same way, but if they don't now I'd wager that at least early in their careers they did. (I'd bet even more that most of them still do, though). Standing on the tarmac after that first lesson I remember thinking how hard it was going to be to remember all the stuff I was learning while airborne because of how intense and enveloping it had all been. It was sort of a blur, sort of like remembering being in a car wreck.

...We did slow flight and some stalls, but then he added a twist: full power stalls. He described these as the kind of stall one might get during a climb-out, perhaps trying to get over a hill or row of trees too quickly.

We set this up just like slow flight and low-power stalls, by reducing thrust to 1500 rpm and raising the nose to maintain altitude while the airspeed falls to 50, then increasing power to 2000. Instead of staying level, one pulls back on the yoke, causing a more severe pitch-up, and then full throttle is applied while continuing to pull the yoke back.

When the stall finally occurs, it is sudden. Larry said it's the kind of stall that'll "reach out and grab you." There's no introductory burble as with a low-power stall, and the engine torque makes the plane roll fairly hard to the left. This is all counteracted with, of course, forward yoke input to get the nose down, but right rudder is also applied. I did the rudder both before and after the onset of the stall, beforehand to better control it, and afterwards because I wanted to experience more of the left roll and recovery. I must have done this pretty well, because he "accused" me of having done it in flightsim. I told him I'd done a lot of stalls, but had never done a full-power stall.

He showed me some more about trim as we were stabilizing for level flight after the last of these stalls. He showed me that if the plane was trimmed correctly, it might pitch up and lose airspeed, and then down and gain airspeed, but it would eventually stabilize. Then it dawned on me that he was showing me fugoid oscillation! Then I screwed up (more on this later) and asked him if that's what this was. He said, "Yes, you're right on the mark!"

Then it was time to head for home...When we were flying inbound Larry said we would do even trickier stalls next time, stalls while doing climbing turns and descents (he said these would be the stalls to be demonstrated in the checkride). I suspect these will be tricky because the ailerons will be much more in play. When we'd taxied back in he told me he was going to start pushing me a little harder--"You're not paying for a ride!" He said his tactic was to push the student, and pull back if the student began to have trouble. So maybe I should have kept my mouth shut with that fugoid oscillation business!

One has to give Microsoft a nod here, as Flight Simulator has become much better at reproducing the onset of stall and the rolling that can occur. In FS98 it was nearly impossible to get a plane to roll like that. Even though I got pedals and my primary flightsim mentor, Tom Goodrick, sent me a demo and flight for doing it, I had a hard time getting the Cessna 182 to spin. I've spun the FS2002 Cessna 172 all over the place. Most of this was done after the lesson described below. Before then, I had only tested the waters, so to speak, trying to get an idea of how FS2002 modeled stalls and spins. Part of this had been experimenting with trying to turn a Cessna 172 around, after an engine out, and land on the runway from which I'd taken off. A professor of aerodynamics at the Naval Academy had posted a paper positing that sometimes it was, in fact, better to try to go back. The flightsim 172 entered a short little spin before nosing into the ground most of the time. Larry and I didn't actually spin in real life, but this maneuver gets you fairly close to it:

For about ten seconds during today's lesson I thought it was going to be my last. Anyone who tells you they enjoyed their first taste of a full-power climbing turn stall is either a nut or a liar.L

I had advanced warning; Larry had told me last week we would be doing these. I had some apprehension, because I thought he might use this maneuver to introduce me to stall-spin recovery, and because, well, we were going to be stalling with the plane banked and the ailerons clearly in play...

Then it was time for him to demonstrate the full-power climbing turn stall. Honestly, I was afraid. I'm sure my heart rate kicked up a notch or two. Then he did it, and here's how it works:

This is set up the same as a full-power stall, but a medium turn is initiated, about 15°, and then the yoke is pulled farther back. The example he gave was of someone doing a climbing turn who was trying to clear a row of trees. Some opposite rudder is needed to keep the bank from going too far. The yoke goes back until the airspeed nears a stall.

OK, at this point the plane is already at something of an unusual attitude. You've been climbing, turning; the plane is pitched way up and banked. It's already slightly disconcerting.

The airspeed drops some more and the stall hits.

That's the surprise--the plane doesn't go in the direction of the turn, it rolls (and I think yaws) back over the other way! It reverses! So the recovery is to apply full rudder the way you had been turning and the nose has to be pitched back down pretty good, all at once.

My stomach did a little flip-flop and it took my brain about ten seconds to catch back up. It was during those ten seconds that I had serious doubts about how bad I wanted to be a pilot. I wasn't disoriented; it was more of a "Holy S---! What the hell was that!" sort of thing. I was hoping we'd just fly straight and level for a minute, but I guess I was more afraid of telling Larry that than of doing another one. Of course, he just looked straight out the windshield as he said nonchalantly, "Now you do one. Uh, go to the left."

What else was I going to do? So I did one. Mine was rougher than his, but it wasn't so bad. I knew what was going to happen, and there's something comforting in having the controls yourself--if nothing else you're busy and not just spectating. I did another to the right, and then he had me go the other way again.

Going back to the left, I apparently didn't apply enough right rudder to control the bank. I was using too much aileron to control it instead (cross-controlling is the term). Also, P-factor/torque is more significant doing this to the left. When the stall hit, the plane jerk-rolled to the left! It didn't reverse! I bet we were close to a 90° left bank. I instinctively floored the right rudder and pushed in the yoke, and we popped upright again.

Larry explained to me what had happened and went on to say we'd been pretty close to a spin. He had me do a couple more, and then explained I was overcooking it a little, but that that was to be expected from someone with so few hours, and then demonstrated how to do it more smoothly...

On the ground getting out of the plane I told him how at first I wasn't too sure about that full-power climbing turn stall. He said I'd done fine but went on to tell me to let him know if I was ever uncomfortable. He said he could usually tell when people aren't doing well because they stop talking and "the Adam's Apple starts to sort of bob up and down." I guess I hadn't been as bad off as all that. He said we were getting the rough stuff out of the way, that that stall would be one of the roughest things we did, if not the roughest.

I'm going back next week to further this conspiracy of getting a plane to do things it should never do. I have to and now believe I will get used to a plane when it's not in normal flight. Surely this is a lot of the purpose behind the steady diet of different varieties of stalls. And perhaps most importantly, I'm learning that flying is about not getting oneself into these predicaments to begin with-- there's no better way to learn that something should be avoided than to experience it. In a way, I've touched the hot stove.

Well, OK, perhaps that was a bit melodramatic. I've since learned that spin recovery isn't part of private pilot training, and these stalls are part of the checkride, after all. Looking back, I'm a little embarrassed that I was a little scared. Now I like doing climbing turn stalls, they're really fun. They're fun to do in flightsim. Just take the 172 or another light plane and follow the instructions above. In fact, it's been a lot of fun recreating the lessons in flightsim and practicing the maneuvers.

The sequence pictures below depicts a climbing turn stall with the Cessna 172. It should be noted that the empty weight Moments of Inertia (MOI's) in the aircraft.cfg file Weight and Balance section have been reduced at the suggestion of Mr. Goodrick. His suggestion was to reduce the pitch MOI by half, the roll and yaw MOI's by 20%, and to set the coupled MOI to 200. After some trial and error, I settled on a 35% reduction in the pitch MOI. Also of note is that the fuel is at 40% capacity, and my 209 lb. weight is set in the left seat and Larry's 178 in the right.

Figure 1: We're starting to push the plane up into the stall. The airspeed is dropping through 60, the vertical speed is 1700 fpm, and the bank is 10° right. Note the chicane in the road below and the tower, which may be used as reference points.

Figure 2: On the edge of the stall, with airspeed at 50, vertical speed already dropping to 1000 fpm, and a 21° right bank.

Figure 3: "Holy S---!" The reversal when the stall hits. Even banked at 65° or so to the left, the plane is still pitched up slightly and the vertical speed is still slightly positive (but it's dropping fast!). The airspeed has dropped to 45 kts.

Figure 4: The yoke's gone forward and right rudder applied, and the stall is no more. Airspeed is back up to 80 kts.

Figure 5: Straight and nearly level. I was surprised to see that even here the vertical speed was still -250 fpm.

Figure 6: Flunked the checkride; lost > 300 feet. But hey, I had to take screen shots, right?

Ouch. I swear on a stack of Pilot Training Manuals that in the real Cessna 150 I can recover from a climbing turn stall within the 300 foot allowance. I may have done it a time or two losing only a little over 100 feet. This may be another difference between real and simulated flight. Flightsim may be a little more extreme with these maneuvers. For example, one really has to pull the yoke back to induce this stall, but seemingly more so in flightsim. Also, even with the default MOI's, in flightsim if one is just a smidge slow applying the rudder, the plane can reverse back such that it is past a 90° bank, which is more inverted than not.

Now we get to the maneuver every flightsimmer has done over and over--the landing. It only seems fitting to wrap up this piece with a few comments about landing. Landing a real plane is...well, it's just harder. Of course, in Flight Simulator, we all have the luxury of bad landings, even crash landings, that isn't present in reality. This is not to say my real landings are very good yet.

If you've ever dreamed about being a pilot yourself, visit www.beapilot.com for more information.

The following post-lesson exchange may sum up where I am with landings better than anything else I can think of. Back on the ground, as we're starting to walk from the hangar back to the office, Larry seems a little perturbed at himself. He tells me it's not enough to bark commands at me, he needs to show me again. "You've been doing all the landings. You haven't seen me do one for about five hours. I need to show you." I mention that I'm surprised how hard it is to land a real plane, but that I feel I'm getting the hang of it. He says something to the effect of, "Yes, you're doing fine--you're doing landings. You're just not to the point of getting them down real soft and smooth"...

It takes a rare type of individual who can completely turn an aircraft he or she owns over to a novice and have the novice land it--while riding along! I can't explain why landing a real plane is so much harder than landing a simulated one other than the obvious fact that one is actual metal and gas and glass and the other is a simulation. It sort of harkens back to the in-the-moment comment above; there is so much going on in such a small amount of time. Maybe a lot of our flightsim landings aren't as good as we think they are because we can't feel the bump when the mains hit. In reality, you can't reset the flight and put the plane back up somewhere on downwind, base, or final. And can I have a show of hands from those out there who learned to land in flightsim with an off-center wind?

...As Larry finishes telling me I'm doing OK, a big grin crosses his face as he makes his parting shot about the current state of my landings. "You're kind of like a bear cub who's discovered his [appendage deleted] and isn't exactly sure what to do with it."

Joe Zuzul
jzzl@earthlink.net