The Breitling Jet Team

From France, and consisting of seven performing L-39 Albatross aircraft and an eighth that acts as a photography/videography chase plane, The Breitling Jet Demonstration team is the largest privately owned jet aerobatic team in the world.

The team is mostly composed of former French military pilots.

The L-39 Albatross, made by Czech manufacturer Aero Vochodny is a former Warsaw Pact jet trainer, with more than 2,800 being produced and it is still in use today and a new variant has been announced to be produced.

The team took off and then entered into a unique initial formation - flying with the MiG 17, and this was announced as the only time the Breitling team would fly with a MiG 17.

After flying with the MIG it was time for their own show.

First there was some tight formation flying.

Each formation maneuver they perform is named after a watch in the Breitling line.

Then they performed some dynamic aerobatics:

Complete with a low level pass:

Lots of cool aerobatic skill was on display by this team. This is part of the first tour the Breitling Jet Team has done in North America, and hopefully in the future they will visit again.

The MiG 17

One of the stars of the show was the MiG-17.

Done up in Polish colors, this two-seater MiG-17 was a serious crowd-pleaser.

The afterburner certainly caught your attention, click any and all pics to embiggen and enjoy it in larger size.

The MiG was seriously maneuverable and did some impressive flybys and quick rolls.

The low passes to finish its performance were seriously low, allowing for some great pics:

Then in for a perfect landing.

The Scooter Jet And The Bomb Truck

Two Navy bombers from the piston and jet ages flew together at Thunder Over Michigan.

The Grumman TBM and the A-4 Skyhawk.

It was an amazing formation flyby from two classic warbirds.

Flying Lesson #71 - Soft And Short Landings In Gusting Winds

Lesson 71 started on a pleasant day with the cloud cover happily getting well above pattern altitude.

It was also quite a gusty day out, most of the time with the winds in accord with the active runway but often shifting to a cross wind at an inopportune moment, giving some real fun rollers especially on the upwind after some takeoffs or right on final.

Ray decided it would be a pattern day with practice with short and soft field landings in the gusty conditions.

It was quite busy at Pontiac today with a lot of traffic using the pattern and the controller kept things quite tight making it a little nerve-wracking at times in terms of spacing.

The short field landings went pretty well, and with the very strong headwinds the landings were indeed pretty darn short. I certainly hit my point with all of those and on one landing thanks to those winds stopped so short due to the winds I didn't really need to even brake to stop. Probably had a ground speed down to 20 knots or so when the wheels hit the ground considering a 21 knot gust of a headwind.

The soft field landings I did ok on, but not quite as well as i would have liked. I need to flare a lot more, and especially I need to slow down as I started getting ahead of myself in procedures even as I felt behind the airplane at times.

Overall not a bad lesson but not particularly great either.

That's 10 landings and 1.2 hours.

Thunder Over Michigan 2016

Another epic Airshow at Willow Run Airport has taken place.

Sadly, my usual sidekick for such ventures was occupied elsewhere and unable to attend.

Going with a friend who had a fitbit device, I learned that at the airshow I walked over three miles to see all the aircraft not to mention to and from the car's parking spot. Legs aching and over 2,000 pictures taken later, it was worth it.

Lots of blogging material to follow but here's just a few shots to whet your appetite.

Lots more cool pics to follow.

Nero Fiddled While Rome Burned

Obama golfs as Louisiana Flooded

Heck, the only way we even know via the mainstream media outside of Louisiana that there even is a flooding disaster of immense proportions during the One's golf vacation is that Trump, unlike Obama, has actually gone to Louisiana. Obama doesn't deign to disrupt his vacation for such little things as the flooding out of thousands of homes on a scale rivaling Katrina yet receiving scarce coverage as Bush is no longer in office. Now Obama interrupting his golf vacation for a Clinton fundraiser is de rigeur, for showing any recognition that thousands have been flooded out of their homes, not so much.

Flying Lesson #70 - The Loudest Sound In The Air

The lesson started off with a preflight of N73455, back since last week with it's registration certificate renewed and now a functioning transponder. The preflight showed some water in the sumps, which I drained till it was all gone. That's why we always check and it did take a couple fuel sample cups to drain it off, and I drained the fuel strainer for an extra long time and checked it multiple times to be sure and that all that was left was 100LL. Water does not work well in an engine, at all.

The preflight of N73455 showed a couple interesting issues besides the fuel:

Yes, both the Attitude Indicator and Heading Indicator are inoperative, as is the beacon and the second radio. Luckily we can use the strobes in place of the beacon and you can fly VFR without the gyros and just use the compass.

The engine started up with no issue and everything checked out fine.

I do a good takeoff and we head to Romeo and Ray says we'll do some work on emergency procedures and such. Ok, I've got those engine and electrical fires in flight procedures memorized so I should be good to go.

So we get to Romeo, overfly the field, check the windsock, and enter the down wind for Runway 18 and then....

The engine goes to idle. Yes, the loudest sound in the air is when the engine gets quiet.

"I've got the throttle" says Ray, "your engine just quit".

So I immediately set for best glide speed, 65 knots. Then I do a close in base to final and bring it in to land. Not too bad but I almost get going too fast on final so we went over that and then back taxied to start again.

"Normal takeoff", says Ray.

I begin the takeoff, we just get in the air and have a positive rate of climb and the engine goes idle again. "I've got the throttle" says Ray, "Engine failure on takeoff".

So I keep the nose down, we're still in ground effect, and I make a bit of a bouncy landing but get it down on the runway. The big thing is too many newer pilots instinctively try to pull back during an engine failure on takeoff and that's a quick stalling path towards disaster. Having just read about the phenomenon I knew to push forward if necessary, not pull back and that helped prevent an instinctive and wrong response.

Ray then goes over the technique a bit more and notes that in the phase of flight I was in, being in ground effect, I just had to hold it off and then flare to land.

We do it again a couple times and I get it down, including one from a little higher than ground effect to get the nose down as an important step.

Then we do a takeoff and I actually get fully airborne and then "I've got the throttle" says Ray, "Engine failure on takeoff, you have no runway remaining".

So I keep it at 65 knots, basically pick a spot pretty much straight ahead as there is neither altitude nor airspeed available to turn safely, and prep to land in a corn field, which will probably suck. Ray puts the throttle in and we get back to pattern altitude and then we do another engine out on the downwind.

Then back to Pontiac for a nice normal landing that had a sudden bit of left crosswind to make life interesting.

Lots of good practice. The first time the engine went idle on downwind certainly got my heart rate up, as did that first engine out on takeoff drill.

Ray stated I will not need to demonstrate these skills on the checkride, but need to experience them to be able to handle them if they occur in real life flying.

That's 1.2 and 7 landings and lots of emergency simulations for a very valuable lesson indeed.

Wayne County Keeps Messing With CPL Applicants

So one of the students in my most recent CPL class lives in Wayne County, the Democrat stronghold where Detroit is located.

Even now, years after shall-issue reform was passed, they are only grudgingly issuing CPLs and try to make it as unpleasant as possible. Given some newer rules preventing their unreasonable time delays of the recent past, they're now apparently trying to get more creative.

So my student went to the clerk's office application and NRA Certificate form the class in hand and the clerk starts making all new requirements.

First, she wants to know when my credentials expire, which is not on the certificate, nor is that required to be on the certificate.

Second, then she wants the NRA's training division phone number to be placed on the certificate. Again, that's neither required to be on the certificate nor needed to be provided.

Third and most impressively, the clerk states that he can't apply for a CPL because he took his training in Oakland County, not Wayne county so his certificate can't be used to apply for a permit in Wayne County.

Legally and factually wrong. It's a statewide triangle standard, for a statewide CPL permit, and the course is a nationally recognized and specifically Michigan state recognized course. He could take the class up in the Mackinac Peninsula for all that it matters and it would still be valid applying for a CPL in any county in Michigan.

My student calls me from the clerk's office asking me about this and I provide that info to the clerk even though it is not required. I also set her straight that the course is in fact valid for his application. Apparently a Sheriff's deputy at the clerks office is overhearing this and also told her to quit messing around and process the application as she is supposed to do.

She finally and grudgingly did so.

Had she not, a nice, fast, and likely very effective mandamus lawsuit would have caught their attention methinks.

Seriously Wayne County Clerks, get with reality already. Shall issue is here, has been for 15 years without your fear-mongering predictions of blood in the streets. Just do your jobs already and quit trying to put up improper obstacles for people exercising their ability to carry concealed firearms in accordance with the law already.

Someone Turned Double Digits Yesterday

Leah turned 10 yesterday.

My how time flies.

We had an action-packed day.

She awoke to the traditional cherry cheesecake for breakfast and the singing of happy birthday and she blew out all 10 candles quite handily.

She got a nice array of presents, many of them horse-themed or Harry Potter themed, including a Harry Potter trivial pursuit game that she can ace like a champ. The kid is Harry Potter and Horse crazy - if they ever combine these two themes, like Harry Potter dueling death-eaters via a cavalry charge - world watch out.

So she set up her horse stuff (A barn, some horses and a vet clinic) and played with them for a while and then played the Harry Potter trivia game with her sister.

Then we had lunch and took her out for a trail ride on horseback at Mayberry State Park. There was a long waiting time which we dealt with by playing the Harry Potter trivia game. Luckily, we got to ride just before the weather closed in. It was a near-run thing considering they almost cancelled our ride because of the storm coming in on the radar but we chanced it and it was a great ride. We were in a nice line of horses and had a very picturesque and pleasant western-style ride for an hour on the State Park riding trails.

Then walking slightly bow-legged from our time in the saddle, we fled the incoming storm after getting off our horses, then battled traffic, and took her to Black Rock for dinner. At Black Rock, we started with a tower of Onion rings and then went on to their feature - cooking a steak on a 750 degree stone right at the table.

Basically they bring you a chunk of sirloin on a sizzling hot stone and you then cut it into pieces and sear it on the stone to your desired level of doneness, which can take seconds. Basically it was awesome and a fun way to have dinner. The kids shared a sirloin and each got their own rock to cook it on and had a great time. We finished up with a Black Rock volcano - a huge ice cream/brownie/whipped cream mountain surmounted by a huge waffle cone and a sparkler on top for her birthday. Note: That one dessert was more than enough for all 4 of us.

Then to home to relax for the kids and some more salvage work for me to continue what I had begun before the horseback ride.

I had not yet mentioned that our sump pump had apparently missed a beat last night or early last morning, even though it is running fine now, and that led to some water in the basement?

Not Baton Rouge levels of flooding by any means and we got off quite lightly with only a small section of about two hundred square feet of carpet and stuff getting wet with only groundwater and not inches of it, but there's nothing like doing your kid's birthday at the same time you're extracting water from the carpet, throwing stuff that is wet out, drying what can be salvaged and running fans to dry the area. So yeah, it got a little bit complicated there but we pulled it off. Overall, since we responded very quickly and discovered it fast, it looks like the carpet will be ok and we''ll just be out the cost of renting a ton of high powered fans and the carpet water extractor. Nothing like getting up in the morning of your kid's birthday to discover that a section of your carpet is squishy.

So even with complications, Leah had a great birthday and turned 10 in style.

Why We Can't Build Nice Roads - Because To Even Fix 18 Miles Of Road Will Take 14 Years

Yes, you read that right, for a stretch of 18 miles of I75 in Michigan, it will take 14 years at a cost of 1.3 billion dollars, or 72 million dollars per mile to fix.

Oh, and it will take 14 years to do it, giving a snail's pace of an average 1.3 miles per year.

Of course by the end of 14 years they're going to have to start fixing what they started 14 years ago...

The Detroit News: I-75 work launches between Troy and Bloomfield Twp.

Yes, it will include fixing quite a few vehicular and pedestrian bridges over the highway and adding a lane so it's not a little job, but still to schedule a repair of 18 miles over 14 years is certainly the very opposite of an aggressive schedule.

Speaking of the addiitonal lane, while the added lane would be a darn good idea and badly needed, they're going to take away a lot of the benefits of the additional lane in reducing congestion by making it an HOV-only lane, not to mention that in 14 years when this is finally done they may need to add yet another lane.

A Visit To Lake Huron(istan)

Since we already visited Lake Michigan this summer, we decided to explore a beach on the east side of the state and swim in lake Huron now that summer is passing by. Some year we'll swim in all five Great Lakes in one season, just for the heck of it.

Located at Port Huron this beach offered some decent sand, a bit of a pebbly shore, and nice swimming.

Quite a popular place, lots of boats anchored close by on a sandbar, and there were multiple examples of just cause you can buy a boat doesn't make you able to operate a boat on display - including one goofball that drifter into the swim area of the beach, running over the no entry buoy in the process.

There were also some interesting sights

First of course are the lake freighters that pass close by:

Lots of them passed by during the hours we were there and they were quite impressive.

Then the other sight was a bit more jarring and unexpected.

Burqinis.

Yep, there was a ton of ladies young and old swimming around in full on burqinis at the beach.

Lots of them swimming with full headscarves and complete flowing pants. Interestingly enough, the whole modesty requirement clearly did not apply to their menfolk with them who were wearing swim shorts, some of whom really could have used some covering up themselves.

Quite a few of the headscarves needed to be readjusted while swimming and the outfits sure were not very well streamlined so it was more wading than swimming for the most part.

It was an interesting juxtaposition of bikinis and burqinis on the same beach. Everybody seemed to behave themselves, but there was quite a visible police presence.

I was not expecting this at Port Huron.

So after swimming, people watching, and hanging out at the beach, we went to an Italian restaurant, Great Lakes Italian that was a short hop from the beach for dinner - great friendly service and the pizza was awesome. Not a bad way to spend one of the last Sundays of summer.

No Flying Today

Unfortunately the flying portion of the lesson was cancelled due to low cloud layers.

Instead we did some oral exam prep, mainly aircraft systems as they are now hitting those pretty hard on the oral exam such as the fuel system, carburetor and how a 4 stroke engine works.

We also discussed airspace again and I've got it mostly down and all the questions right except for a few trick areas dealing with Class G that I'll be ready for next time.

Not a very exciting lesson but the stuff needed to be locked in.

P30 Hits 1,200 Rounds And Still Flawless

I taught a CPL class for a couple friends today.

Good class, attentive students, and at the range they did very well.

We did all the required drills for the class and once all of them were done successfully, we practiced shooting some steel plates which they found a tad challenging and a lot harder than it looked when I had demonstrated it. But, with encouragement and instruction, they were doing quite well by the time we were done.

I used my P30 to demonstrate each of the drills and to do the steel plate shoots and 200 more rounds were fired with zero malfunctions.

Externally, it was showing some oil seepage after being in the intense heat and humidity at the range. Internally, it's getting a tad grungy as 1,200 rounds with no cleaning will do that.

I got to handle a Ruger LC9s as one of my students had just bought it as his intended carry gun and had it to the range for the first time. With a single 7 rounds magazine he got lots of practice reloading for it. He fired 100 rounds through it with no failures. I fired a further 21 rounds through it and had no failures either and found the sites to be perfectly on and knowcke a full plate rack down with no misses. The trigger which is the Glock-lke arrangement of a trigger nub (longer than the Glock nub) inside the trigger. The trigger felt lighter, a bit shorter and a bit smoother than a Glock trigger. It's comparable in size and just slightly larger than the Kahr PM9. For under $400 he got a good deal on it and it should do well as a CPL pistol for him.

That was a very good day.

Well That Was Rather Surreal . . . . .

Just got a call requesting representation from someone who is a rather (in)famous felon, at least in certain firearms-related circles.

After an extremely long-winded conversation, and after much talking on his part, I finally get enough info to pull up his case history, and I determine I can't help him as he's already been well and truly hosed. Yes, there were likely quite a few nasty machinations that led to the charges including some interesting reinterpretation of some regs that truly nailed him, but he's well beyond where that can be effectively challenged, except perhaps maybe if you buy his story for an ineffective assistance of counsel argument and it may very well be too late for that. In any case, I don't do ineffective assistance of counsel cases.

I noted I could not assist him as his case was quite far-gone, and most especially I could not assist him on his offered terms of payment only if everything happened to work out in his favor.

Here's a few quick tips that may save you a lot of grief:

First Quick Tip: Pleading guilty to a federal felony based on the advice of a public defender, and losing your appeal, and serving your time, and then only after that deciding to contact a new lawyer to fight your case really doesn't give you a lot of leeway. In fact, you have pretty much no leeway at that point.

Second Quick Tip: Lawyers do not work for free -- Surprise!

In fact, on hopeless cases where you've already screwed, blued, and tattooed yourself, we're actually going to have to charge you quite a lot considering the impossibility of the task you've asked us to do. No, we're not going to work on the basis that you might have some money coming in later if everything works out, especially when the chance of everything working out is between slim and none with slim having been seen leaving town. There is no contingency-fee based arrangement for criminal-related matters, and for good reason.

Third Quick Tip: Do not, I repeat, do NOT be in possession of unregistered NFA-type item(s) and then definitely do not do stuff to draw attention from the authorities, it will not go well for you.

Korean BBQ - It's What Was For Birthday Dinner

Last night after work, Tash and the kids took me to Dae Jang Keum, a Korean BBQ restaurant in Troy.

The four of us ordered the BBQ combo for 3, (the waitress said the combo for 4 would be way too much food for us and she was right, the combo for 3 resulted in us taking home enough for a lunch for me for today) which comes complete with many Korean side dishes:

The side dishes were great including some very tasty kimchee.

The meat and veggies are then cooked on a BBQ pit on the table right in front of you which is gas fired but has charcoal inside for flavor, first the thinly sliced beef, then the pork belly (Think huge thick strips of bacon), then more beef and marinated beef:

To say it was awesomely tasty and filling would be an understatement. Great food, great service and a great time had by all.

Flying Lesson #69 - Happy Birthday Flying To Me

This birthday started with the kids excitedly singing happy birthday to me and a nice cherry cheesecake with the morning coffee. Not a bad way to wake up.

Leah, when she was at camp last month, made a beautiful hand-made pottery leaf bowl that looks amazing as a opresent for me.

Abby bought me a nice polo shirt which I put on after I had gotten ready to face the day and it fits perfectly.

Then to the airport to fly N755PR.

All other aircraft are down for various reasons which now makes scheduling a major problem (N757MK had a mixture control linkage problem that's being worked on and it's getting its 100 hour inspection. The RG had an engine failure on takeoff with an emergency landing the same day and it's being worked on. The Diamond had an alternator failure, and N73455 while it now has its registration renewed has a transponder failure. That's a good run of bad luck for the flight school's planes.

So without a lot of options, N755PR was it, and thankfully it ran just fine.

Ray and I worked on landings and he's now having me hold the yoke only with my thumb and first two fingers to lighten up. Very weird feeling but it seems to be working and I'm starting to get used to it.

We did soft field takeoffs and soft field landings, and while I still need to polish it up, the sift field takeoffs are pretty good, and the soft field landings are getting better.

It was a nice flight of 1.2 with 8 landings.

Flying Lesson #68 - If Flying is A Bowl of Cherries, This Is The Pitts!

Lesson #68 promised to be special indeed, and even sweeter after the washout of the morning lesson.
I would be flying this:

The Pitts S-2B, a biplane with 260 horsepower of aerobatic awesomeness.
 
Since part of the ACS is that students need to have demoed to them the different types of stalls, including the cross-control stall that tends to lead into a spin, we decided to do it in style.

In fact, instead of sitting passively and having the stalls and spins demonstrated to me, I would be the one doing them!

Don, a top-notch aerobatic performer and instructor would be in the back seat and I would be in the front.

I was the second of two students to go up with Don today. The first one came back looking a little green and he told Don to do the same takeoff he had done for him. . . oh boy.

First you have to put on your parachute.

Then you need to strap on the plane.

You actually ratchet the lap belt tight and pull down the shoulder straps and it's a rather tight space.

Then comes the headset and leather soft helmet so it doesn't hurt when you bounce off the canopy.

Then the engine start and taxi out, this is my video of the other student, but you get the idea:

Then we were off.  Good taxi, which Don let me try - let me tell you, it's very different in a tail dragger especially one with the rudder this one has got. Then a quick runup and we were off on 27R - the tower knows Don: N69SZ requesting tight departure to the north.  Tower:  N69SZ - for you, no problem, approved short departure and right turn departure.

So with engine to full throttle we hustled down the runway, and Don then held it  just above the runway until the airspeed really built up and at 120 knots did a zoming climbimg turn to the right!  This lesson was starting out fun.

Then I got the controls and I flew us outside of KPTK's Delta airspace, found an area clear of clouds and started maneuvers.

First I did some stalls and stall recoveries which again were quite different from a Cessna 172 and need a lot more rudder during the break to keep it level.

Then on to the spins.

The first spin I chopped the throttle held the nose back and then gave it full left rudder at the stall - I didn't have the stick all the way back so we went into a spiral followed by a wicked spin.

I got it under control with opposite rudder and neutral ailerons to counter the spin and once the spn was broken we were still pointing right at the ground. I then pulled out, and my hauling back on the stick gave us a 4G climb!  That was intense, my first spin ever.

Don had me do it a few more times, starting with the stick all the way back and I got pretty darn good at spin recoveries, with only 2G pullouts and it was a lot of fun.

I'm proud to say I neither screamed like a little girl nor blew chunks in any of the maneuvers, but after 3 sets of spins I was starting to get a bit queasy, and after the 4th set of spins I was more so - all that spinning around with the earth rushing to meet you will do that.  So I flew us back to Pontiac and Don took it from final onto Runway 36 and taxied on back to the flight school.

In short, flying a Pitts S-2B is just about the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

That's .6 of tail-dragger, high-performance, aerobatic awesomeness.

While I don't need any more for my private pilot cert, some more flights with Don to work on recovery from unusual attitudes and some more aerobatics in a Pitts S-2B is definitely in order.

When Good Planes Go Bad

So I get to the airfield this morning and preflight N757MK.  Ok preflight except the oil is quite dark. Ray says today will be the day to polish up my landings and the weather couldn't be better.

I do a start up and the engine while it catches immediately is not sounding right at all. Throttle to idle turns the engine off unless throttle reapplied immediately. We take it to the run up and things start to get weirder.

Applying carb heat results in an increase of 500 rpm! This is really not right. Oil pressure is in the red and any setting throttle to idle results in the engine shutting down. Carb heat keeps giving weird increases.

We terminate and take it back to the flight school and it will not shut down - mixture all the way out and it still runs, fuel flow to off and it still runs, prop at idle and it still runs. Finally off with the ignition key. This is really not good as that's a hot prop situation waiting to bite someone.

Ray taxied it to maintenance and that was that.

A Quick Question - If Trump Was A Stalking Horse For Hillary Acting To Throw The Election Her Way . . . . .

How would Trump be acting any differently?

This is a ridiculously winnable election after eight years of Obama

The Democrats have put forth a scandal-ridden, constantly lying, tired, barely unindicted due to politics alone, Democrat candidate that most people would crawl through broken glass to vote against whose only appeal is the historic first that would be a female president and who, without the machinations from her party faithful, would have lost her primary to an aged communist.

The multitude of issues that can be used on a daily basis to hammer her many failings are legion.

And we get the one candidate that is instead making a busy spectacle of himself with the media focused, with his encouragement, on his multiple failings, scandals, and outrageous and stupid statements, with the result of driving hers completely out of the spotlight.

Trump seems to be in the act of throwing it big time with so many unforced errors and faux pas that it's a good and valid question as to whether he's doing this on purpose.

Add to this his flip-flopping on multiple positions, with many of his policy pronouncements turning from either over the top exaggerated caricatures of conservative positions that are then modified towards a Democrat or Democrat-lite policy, or policies only a RINO could love, and you have to ask what the heck is he actually doing, and why?

Flying Lesson #67 - Back In The Cockpit Again

After a couple weeks of not flying I was a little leery of seeing how badly my skills had dropped off and how many steps back I would be taking.

The plane had just been brought back by another student so I called for fuel as it was quite low and did the preflight carefully by the checklist as I always do, and no problems presented themselves.

Ray arrived and I started the plane up, got permission from the tower to taxi and did an excellent job of taxiing all the way down to Runway 9L.

A goo run up and I did an excellent takeoff with the tower calling the turn to the north due to traffic.

After we were clear of KPTK's Delta airspace plus a few more miles for safety, I did a clearing turn and then it was maneuvering time.

My steep turns were excellent, I didn't lose any altitude, maintained the airspeed, and rolled right out on the original heading and hit my wake. ThenI did the turn in the opposite direction with the same result. Ray was impressed. Yay me.

Then it was time for minimum controllable airspeed - we did it under the new ACS rules, which is to keep the stall horn from blaring at all, which is quite different than the old PTS standards. I did it with no issues.

Then it was power off stall time. On my first try I could not get the airplane to break even with full back-pressure - the airplane was essentially practically stalled and losing altitude but had no pronounced break nor any indication that it was not still flying. Apparently I was too gentle and smooth with the backpressure and need to be more forcefull at the start to get the angle of attack up to cause the full stall. Recovery was no problem - full power, ease off the backpressure and start taking the flaps out as the airspeed comes up, get a positive rate of climb going and climb away from the "ground".

So Ray demonstrated it with a more abrupt angle of attack to get a clean break for the stall, and I did it again and got the break, and I lost less than 200 feet in the recovery. I then asked to do it again to make sure I had it down and again had a good stall, break and recovery well within test standards.

Then we headed back, and being cleared by the Tower to enter the downwind, I did a good pattern entry and a very nice landing, and the tower instructed us to stay on the runway and roll all the way to the end by where the flight school is, which was quite nice of them. Then I did the short taxi back and parked the plane perfectly, shut it down and all was well.

This was very happy-making.

Ray figures I'm getting darn close to testing.

An excellent 1.3 hour lesson.