Logbooks as a means of preserving precious memories of flight are way overrated because most of us just jot down the basics, rarely making note of how scared, excited or inspired we were by a particular flight or lesson. So even if I could find my first logbook, it would be of no use in helping me remember if, as a student, I was scared of stalls. I don’t remember being scared, but I do recall my instructor telling me I’d never solo if I didn’t learn to do them correctly. (I had a military instructor; everything was by the numbers.)
But I’m surprised at how many people are nervous about performing stalls and terrified of anything other than a plain-vanilla, power-off, wings-level stall. And then just once, please. A couple of months ago, I was giving some taildragger stick time to a young student about to solo in a tri-gear airplane. A mutual friend said she was interested in Cubs. During the stall series, over the clatter and swirl of the Cub’s typical stall, I could detect definite unease. Not fear, but noticeable discomfort and a request to move on to something else.
All instructors have strategies to deal with this, but it’s not something that can or should be swept under the rug in hopes that the student will wobble through the checkride and never see a stall again. Loss of control, stall, stall-mush and stall-spins are still a leading cause of accidents, many of them fatal. The current fashion is to believe angle-of-attack indicators are the magic technology that will finally solve this problem and I hope the people who believe this are right. I’m not among them, yet.
It will be years before AoA indicators are fielded in sufficient numbers to have much effect so in the interim, we’re left with teaching stalls the same way we always have-by feel, sight picture and airspeed indicator. The Cub, if you’ve never flown one, is a unique classroom for stalls. You can do them at 500 feet if you want, but stalls are a whole body experience. Weather permitting, almost everyone flies the Cub with the door open. As the alpha comes up, you feel and hear the wind flow change and the elevator loses bite as a function of lower airspeed.
The slipstream pattern changes and the lower door floats up just as the stall is about to break, such that it does break, which isn’t much. The Cub has a unique and mistakable lightening in pitch force right at the stall if the stick is full back, where it should be. It’s exactly the same feeling you have on sticking a perfect three-pointer and you’ll know, beyond the slightest doubt, that the airplane lacks the energy to bounce and you won’t even think of using brakes to stop, you’ll be going so slow. Which is good, since the stock brakes in a Cub pretty much suck anyway.
Compared to the more abstract stall sensations in even a light trainer like a Cessna 152, in a Cub-or an open cockpit anything-the experience is more visceral. There are multiple cues, not just a whining horn or an airspeed indicator or a little buffet. Despite that, people still stall Cubs and make smoking craters. Despite the smiling bear on the tail, they will bite if abused and ignored. But compared to stalls in a glass-equipped airplane, which I’ve done from the left and right seat, Cub stalls are just more involving and more educational. It’s one thing to see the glass tell you which direction to point the nose to recover, quite another to feel the air swirling up your nose with a whiff of exhaust gas.
But back to stall fear and what to do about it. I don’t have any genius solutions for this. My strategy has always been to discuss it with the student and explain that the Practical Test Standards require the would-be pilot to explain the factors involved in a stall and demonstrate same. So I flip roles and have the student take over the white board and explain stall theory and how we’ll demonstrate them in the airplane. And I generally keep my hands off the controls for that demo because I have always believed that people mostly teach themselves to fly. The instructor is there to advise, consult and keep the airplane out of the ruts. (On our Cub flight that day, I didn’t do that second part worth a damn, but that’s a story for another blog.)
On flight reviews with interested pilots, I have sometimes spent most of the flight portion fooling around with stalls-turning stalls, high-alpha departure stalls and accelerated stalls. And I’ve flown with other instructors who know far more than me about this subject and enjoyed the experience, passing it on to others who, I hope, have benefitted. I make no claims about having stall proofed anyone. But you can’t learn to avoid what you can’t recognize, so what the hell…go fly some stalls. In a Cub, if you can find one. You won’t regret the experience.
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