Flight 10 N824LB, 1.4 hours (14.3 total). stalls, steep turns, landings

Another beautiful day for flying. The weather is going to turn next week so this may be the last flight in a week. Today's plan was to do steep turns and stalls over Los Gatos, then some landing practices at SJC. I took us to Los Gatos all by myself - well, almost all by myself. On the ground I heard the squawk code wrong and Mark had to correct me :P He also reminded me of radio communications at various points. But I almost felt I was flying by myself :P

Today we are doing 45 degree bank turns. When the turning gets that steep the perspective from the pilot's seat is skewed. Since the pilot's seat in the 172 is on the left as opposed to in the middle, when you turn left you get below the nose of the plane and it looks like the plane is in a climbing attitude when you look at the nose and the horizon. It's the opposite when turning right, when it looks like the plane is headed downward. I had to referred to the instruments several times during the turns to make sure I have the correct attitude. The G force is also quite evident during the turn, while it's almost non-existent during normal turns. This is probably what it feels like to be in a roller coaster :P Another thing to remember in steep turns is to add power in the turn, since quite a fraction of lift is used to make the turn.

I did a full 360 to the left than a full 360 to the right. I actually managed to control altitude relatively well. Steep turns are fun. I felt a bit like a fighter pilot :P The fast turning rate actually made a a little dizzy, well, just a tiny teeny bit :P and I told Mark I wanted to do another one. The 2nd time when I level out from the left 360 turn, I felt a little bump, the tell-tale sign that I just flew into my own wake. Yeah, a perfect cirle! The following right turn didn't do so well, though. I lost about 200 feet after the turn. Proof that the altitude control in the first one was coincidental :P

After the turns we did some power off and power on stalls, and a turning stall. Still took me a long time to get the plane into a stall, while Mark kept telling me "pull back more, some more, some more..." It takes a lot to get the 172 into a stall. Well, that's a good thing :)

For landing practice Mark asked me to fly low over the runway. I entered left base directly for runway 30L, and flew a normal final approach, but in the end instead of reducing power to idle Mark asked me to add some power and fly down over the runway. Flying so close to the ground without touching down is hard. I kept pulling up and Mark kept asking me to push down. We went around and did it again. This time I flew even lower and at one point actually touched the ground. It would have been a very soft landing if I had intended for it :) The 3rd time we were going in for a touch-and-go. But this time there's a jet coming in for landing and ATC asked us to do two right 360 turns for spacing. I kept my altitude very well during the turns, dead on at 1000 feet. During the turns Marked pointed to me where Valley Fair is. I tried to find our house from there but failed. The touch-and-go went well, too. It's certainly nice to have a long, wide runway to practice landing.

We departed left crosswind towards Palo Alto. When SJC tower asked me to contact Moffet tower I put in the Moffett frequency, pressed the switch button and request transit to Palo Alto, to which I got this response "4 Lima Bravo, this is still San Jose Tower, please contact Moffett at 119.55". Oops, damn the sticky switch button :P Moffett handed us to Palo Alto quickly and I got cleared for straight in landing again. Again I came in a bit high, but not too bad and I managed to get the plane down with a little bounce. The perfect final flare still eluded me. But now I am quite relaxed during landing. Couple more lessons and I should be able to land consistently in calm wind.