I’m just going to skip over most of getting out to Morris in the first place, and pre-flighting and stuff. Obviously, I do all those things, but in print it gets boring and repetitive. Gets sort of repetitive in real life, to be honest, but at least there it’s necessary.
Traffic did seem light, but then, it’s a holiday weekend, even if not the actual holiday yet. Between that, and a couple fewer construction zones, I shaved about 30 minutes off the drive time out to Morris. Whoo-hoo! Beautiful day sky-wise (the ground cover was still dull grass and skeletal trees early in the morning), thought I’d have a half an hour of airplane watching and relaxing before I got off the ground myself.
Of course not. Why should anything go according to plan, right? At least this time the deviation from expectations was a good thing.
J came up to me with the rather unusual statement that although he had finished early with his prior guy, he was already running late for the student after me. Um… OK… J’s a wonderful guy and a great instructor but his scheduling skills seem in chronic need of some work. I think he had been counting on me to show up early (which I tend to do). Hey, no problem, I’m here to fly, if the airplane’s available I’ll get an early start.
Off to pre-flight. When I came in to the airport office to ask for fuel I noticed J was having a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. I teased him a bit about being settled in, but really it was probably his longest break all day. He said as soon as the fuel truck came back he’d come out to the hangar.
Which is what happened. Although by the time he got out to the hangar the airplane was pulled out onto the ramp and I was sitting inside, all belted in and ready to go. J starts to get in and notices the present left in the back seat - “Ooo! Easter eggs! I like chocolate!” Well, yeah - he didn’t have to come out to the airport on a holiday weekend, most of the rest of the instructors were taking both days off, seemed like a nice thing to do. All the colorful-foil covered eggs and the basket were carefully swathed in layers of plastic wrap, because I hate having loose objects rolling - or flying - through the cockpit careening off things like the back of my head and the controls. While I was running the pre-starting and starting procedures I not only heard the sounds of safety harness buckles behind me but also the crinkle of foil and munching noises.
Is it considered bribery to feed one’s flight instructor?
I started up the Citabria, did all that boring pre-takeoff checklist stuff, and made mention of the rather brisk breeze. At which point J said “Yes, 10 knots and more of direct crosswind. You need the practice.” I see – we’re going to have an educational morning.
Just taxiing took more effort than usual. Because the center of gravity on a tailwheel is in the “wrong” place, they really do want to swap back to front. In calm conditions this is merely a tendency. In a cross wind, it becomes obstinance. In addition to using my feet to direct the airplane, and the rudder to keep the fuselage under control, the wind was also tugging, pushing, and pulling at the wings which required me to use the stick to keep them under control. The top and bottom half of this machine want to go in two different directions, and you have to steer both simultaneously. Rather like patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time. Of course, with practice this gets much easier, but even with time and experience higher winds and gusts require more thought and concentration than calm days, so there was less chatting going on than usual. Put the wrong control inputs in and the airplane will let you know you did wrong in a hurry by trundling off where you don’t want to go, rocking to and fro, and otherwise showing contrary tendencies.
It was still a beautiful morning, though, and I’d seen lots of small airplanes on my drive out to Morris. So where was everybody? Well, in part it was because we weren’t on the usual schedule. At airports with flight training there’s a tendency for activity to become clustered around certain times on the clock, then get very quiet for 60-90 minutes at a time. We were taking off at a time that’s typically in a quiet zone, about 30 minutes off from one of the usual high activity peaks. The other factor was the wind - too much for primary students to pactice landings, so they’d be off working on ground reference manuvers or navigation. Advanced students working on a cross country had departed and wouldn’t touch down again for hours. That just left a very few folks like me - more advanced pilots specifically working on crosswind take-offs and landings - to use runways. And perhaps I was the only such at Morris that morning.
J requested a wheel takeoff - that involved holding the airplane to the runway even after we had enough speed to lift off, in order ensure we’d have enough airspeed to keep flying even if we hit a lull in the wind. With the wind perpdendicular to the runway and the tail wanting to swing around under its influence I was doing a lot of rudder work to keep us on a straight line as we rolled down the pavement. Not only did the tail want to swing left due to the wind but up on two wheels you have to balance in the pitch axis. The tail wants to keep rising up, which pushes the nose down. Don’t want to push the nose too far down, because if you do the prop is going to hit the ground and that would completely ruin your day, not to mention the airplane. So you have to counteract those forces with the stick without messing up your acceleration or losing directional control. Again, time and practice improves things but this does require some attention on the part of the pilot. In this manuver you are not in a ground vehicle, even if you’re touching the ground. You really are flying, and you really are controlling the airplane as if it were entirely airborne. It’s just that instead of an altitude of 100 feet or 1000 feet or 10,000 feet above the ground your altitude is 0.
After we acheived a comfortable “excess” of airspeed I pulled back on the stick and climbed above ground level. It was a warmer day than we had had in months, and it showed in a reduced rate of climb. It also showed in that I was in a t-shirt and J in a sweatshirt instead of both of us wearing winter coats. And the “air conditioning” was back on - the air vents that had been blocked off all winter were open again, providing a very brisk airflow up the legs of my jeans and through the airplane interior. We climbed up to 2500 feet of altitude and headed off to Cushing for some turf-runway warm up landings.
As we approached Cushing I could see open hangar doors, which indicated there might well be traffic around, but I didn’t hear anything on the radio, which is nothing unusual. Cushing tends heavily towards ultralights and hang gliders, niether of which is in any way required to have a radio, and frequently do not. As I dropped down in altitude, though, we did hear an approaching Cessna 172. I think both parties were surprised to have a radio call to Cushing traffic actually answered by Cushing traffic, but hey, it happens. Being a little further out and slower than the C172 I swung in behind him in the traffic pattern.
One thing about landing an airplane is that you need to slow down. The downside to that is that the slower you go the less effective the controls are. This is particularly problematic in a tailwheel airplane where the ideal landing is to stall the airplane just a few inches above the runway - that means very slow, right on the border of flying and not flying. Now, combine this with a wind from one side trying to push you off course, and the airplane wanting to weathervane into that wind, both of which need to be counteracted. It’s doable, but the pilot gets busy those final few hundred vertical and horizontal feet. Of course, if you came in with a little extra speed you’d have a little extra control - but wheel landings present control problems once you have those wheels on the ground. On top of that, the Citabria is not forgiving of excess airspeed while landing - the darn thing just wants to float, it won’t come down once it hits ground effect and you’ll find you’re running out of runway while still airborne. The end of Cushing’s somewhat short runway involves things like barbed wire fencing, buildings, trees, and powerlines. Not things you’d want to run into, particularly not in a cloth covered airplane. Imagine falling into a barbed wire fence while wearing a cloth jacket - even a fairly thick one. Now imagine falling into said fence with that same jacket at 60 mph/100kph. This would be a Bad Thing. I felt quite motivated to NOT let things get to that point. Attempting to force an airplane down onto the ground can lead to violent bouncing or hitting at the wrong angle or various other less than ideal situations that can lead to accidents and great expense, not to mention a potential for great physical pain, so in the event one does float a mile or two in ground effect you’re generally much better off going to full power and taking another lap around the airport to try again rather than forcing the issue.
Actually, the landings at Cushing were all pretty good. Even the one where I came in a little too fast I still managed a good, straight landing and maintained control, even if I ate up some runway bleeding off airspeed.
J and I were both starting to notice something about the landscape in the meanwhile. Winter had been a long stretch of either white/gray near monotone, or gray/dun monotone depending on whether we had snow or just bare ground. When I had started out that morning things were starting to green up, but – well, we were on downwind on our second landing when we both looked down at this one farmfield and said “Look at THAT!” The field wasn’t just green - it was glowing, almost like a cheap special effect in a B-grade monster movie. A really, really pure and vivid green. So green it was distracting. It just suddenly popped out of the background of the landscape. And all day it was like that - fields and trees suddenly going poof and acquiring color. Or we’d pass over a spot for the fourth or fifth time and - “Hey, that bush is blooming - I don’t remember the flowers being out 20 minutes ago…”
And the ground squirrels were back at Cushing, still running zig-zags to get away from the big roaring machine-things.
And the hawks were out.
And a turkey vulture.
Didn’t see the neighborhood bald eagle - he or she had been discovered about three weeks ago, caused all sorts of distraction aloft - but it wouldn’t have surprised me.
I guess it’s officially spring. 
We finished up at Cushing, the whole pont of which had been to let me warm up my crosswind skills on a more forgiving surface than pavement, and headed back to Morris. And on the way back J ordered me to demonstrate some stall recoveries. Well, I knew that was coming.
OK, carb heat on, pull back the power, pull back the stick, nose goes up, great view of a clear blue sky, glance off to the horizon to see the angle of the wing vs. angle of horison, keep the wings level, rudder-rudder-rudder-rudder… feel that buffet and shake as the air over the wings gets turbulent, the nose starts to sink ever so slightly, lower the nose, increase power…
“OK,” said J, “that was a nice roller coaster ride, but you didn’t stall the plane. I want the stick in your belly and the nose falling.”
“Damn - I can’t get anything past you!”
“No, you can’t. Now stall this airplane.”
OK, OK - pull back power, stick back, nose up, rudder-rudder-rudder-rudder-RUDDER-rudder…
The critical angle of attack in the airplanes I fly is about 18-22 degrees - call it 20, it’s a reasonable number given that I have no direct way to measure the angle of attack anyhow. From where I had started, under these particular circumstances, the angle of wing to horizon was going to be pretty close to that number, and it’s really not that extreme an angle, although more than you’re used to seeing in a vehicle. You do feel your weight supported by your back and buttocks against the seat, rather than resting on your fundament and thighs as you do sitting in a chair on the ground. So your legs have a sense of being up in the air, higher than your hips as you work the rudders. The entry into this manuver, from level flight and with the engine at idle, isn’t too bizarre. I mean, you’ve got the stick pulled back, the nose pointed up, the airplane is trying to go upwards…
Then you get the buffet. That means you’re right on the edge of flying, as the air “unsticks” from the upper wing surface. The flow switches from smooth and steady to turbulent, like water changing from a smooth current into rapids. This rough air mostly shakes the wings but you can feel vibrations from the tail and in the airframe, and sometimes in the stick as well. This isn’t violent, mind you, but it is different, like a car going over a mildly bumpy road. Then, as you continue to pull that stick back the airplane gets all contrary - the nose drops, falling down past the horizon and giving you an excellent view of the landscape below, which is now approaching at a fairly rapid speed. Instead of sitting on your backside you now have more a sensation of standing on the rudder pedals, and typically you’re reminded of the safety straps across your hips and shoulders holding you in the seat. Meanwhile, the airplane is wanting very much to roll to the left - the engine torque is no longer counteracted by aerodynamic forces working on the wings, so Newton’s law of motion concerning equal and opposite reactions comes into play. Even at idle, there’s an engine and prop rotating clockwise (from the pilot’s viewpoint). Thus, everything else wants to rotate counter-clockwise along the same axis. You need to counteract this tendency through use of the rudder, which in this state is the only steering mechansim “gripping” enough moving air to be functional. And it is functional, but due to very reduced forward speed (as opposed to your vertical speed, which is more than sufficient but not very useful at the moment) it’s not very effective. Just as well your weight is now on your feet, as the extra force it allows you to generate is quite welcome. The stick will not help you now - at best, it’s useless. Seriously. Deep into a stall you can bat it around with absolutely no effect on your direction of travel. Well, I lie - use of the stick will actually make your problems worse, by possibly geting you into a spin. The point is, the stick is not your friend here, you can not use it to lift the nose of the airplane back up relative to the horizon. Use rudders to keep the wings level and the airplane under control.
Done properly, the wings do stay level and a passenger won’t see any roll to the left. The “break”, when the nose drops, can be a surprisingly gentle thing, just a gentle lowering, particuarly if you recover quickly. This day, since I was required to show a “full” stall, I let the nose drop I little more than I really liked to make a point.
OK, so we’re sitting here in a fully stalled condition. The air has come unstuck from the wings, which are no longer generating significant lift. We’re not flying anymore, we’re falling. Really. Proper use of the rudder makes it a controlled fall, but we are, nonetheless, descending rapidly, accelerating until we reach whatever is terminal velocity in this particular configuration. How do we fix this?
It’s actually really simple. You release the back pressure on the stick, dropping the nose further forward. This is counter-intuitive. You’re already falling - you want to point down even MORE? Are you CRAZY?
Nope. See, a stall occurs when you exceed the critical angle of attack. The angle of attack is the angle between the wings and the direction of travel. If that angle is too great, you stall - the angle at which that happens is the “critical” angle. You unstall by reducing that angle below critical. Since, in this sort of stall, your direction of travel is down, to unstall you need to bring the angle of the wings more into line with that direction of travel. That means even more nose down than what you’re looking at. The human animal is not really geared to react to a fall by pointing more downward, but there you go. Stop pulling back on the stick, the nose drops even more, and all of sudden you’re flying again. It’s a distinct change - you go from no resistance at all in the stick to very suddenly feeling a back pressure. Yep, you have now regained full steering control and you’re flying again!
For quite awhile now (like 80+ years) airplanes have been designed to be slightly nose heavy, for specifically this reason. If you stall the nose tends to want to drop, which automatically reduces your angle of attack (barring exceptional circumstances or weird aircraft we’ll ignore for now) and gets you flying again. Stall recovery is designed into the machine itself. It won’t save you if you get truly stupid, or panic and use the wrong control inputs, but it is a very helpful safety feature.
