[Mishmash] flying

[Fred Atkinson]

Carole, 

    Actually, I never got as far as soloing.  My health went to pieces (from extreme heat exposure during a nationwide heat wave in the late eighties.  I made the mistake of going on vacation in the middle of it when my car had no air conditioning).  And I never got back to it.  

    Regards, 


                                                        Fred 

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Carole 
  To: Mishmash 
  Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 8:52 PM
  Subject: Re: [Mishmash] flying


         is there any thing you don't know how to do fred?  you constantly amaze.

        -------Original Message-------

        From: Fred Atkinson
        Date: 2/2/2007 6:56:13 PM
        To: Mishmash
        Subject: Re: [Mishmash] flying

            Years ago, I was taking flying lessons out of Columbia, SC airport.  My instructor was a young kid at least four or five years my junior.  He had no patience.  

            He was teaching me to stall and recover the aircraft ('stall' when refering to an aircraft is to put it in the condition of no longer flying, but falling).  And he was doing a poor job of teaching me.  He finally gave up on teaching me the stall and decided to teach me to do the accelerated stall.  

            I didn't like the sound of that at all.  But he instructed me to put the plane into a forty-five degree bank, lower the flaps, then pull the stick back until the plane stalled.  

            In the middle of this operation, I apparently did something that he didn't like.  He started yelling and screaming.  I couldn't hear myself think for all of this behavior.  By now, we were too far into a bank and going down like a rock.  I told him he'd better take over the aircraft.  

            I watched the attitude indicator reach ninety degrees before he bottomed out.  The cushions under our seats collapsed under our weights from the extra G forces.  

            Then he brought the nose up and dropped it level.  As we leveled, we both floated above our seats (from the negative Gs) with only our seat belts keeping us from floating into the top of the aircraft.  

            When he leveled off, we plopped down on the seats and he told me to take it back to the airport, which I did.  

            It was the last time I flew with that instructor.  

            Feeling any better now?  I can tell you about a commercial scare I had once (while I was taking private lessons, by the way).  

            Regards, 



                                                                    Fred 

       
               
       



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