Flying Lesson #117 - Stage Check I Part II

So I arrived at DCT on another pleasant day but with building winds.

Winds were initially 10-12 knots from 180 then through the flight swinging and blowing 10-15 from 140-150.

I pre-flighted N1689H and meetup with Marcus who would be doing my stage check.

Startup and run-up were fine and I did a nice crosswind takeoff. We flew out to the northeast and then he had me do slow-flight, power off and power on stalls and steep turns.

My slow flight was quite nice today - held the altitude pretty much, got back some in a climb when I lost a bit, did the turns and had no issues.

Power off stall was fine but he wanted me to do it again to a full stall rather than the buffet, so I did.

Power on stall he wanted done at full power which I did and the power on stall in an Archer is practically a non-event, no snap like on a 172.

Then I did steep turns and they were better and he gave me a nice pointer to improve them a bit.

He then cut the throttle and said your engine just quit what do you do? So I set best glide, looked for a decent field and stating a spiral approach and restart flow and he was happy with that.

Overall I'm certainly more comfortable with the aircraft at this point.

Then I flew us back to Pontiac and we did a normal crosswind landing that I handled quite nicely.

Then on the next short final, he had me do a go-around just before I touched down, which I did fine.

On the next one he had me do a power off 180 which I had not done mby myself before. You get to the end of the runway on the downwind, chop the throttle and don't open it up again. Then you turn in towards the runway and using your best glide speed get there and then pop in your flaps when the runway is made and land accordingly. Quite fun and I did it well enough that he was quite satisfied with my performance.

Then we finished up with a couple more patterns and landings, and that was the stage check and he let me know I passed. I still need to work on my steep turns and crosswind landings a bit s he could tell that while I did them i didn't like them much, but apparently I'm good to go on.

1.6 and 4 landings.

Now where did I put that Hachimaki?....