Flight Lesson #8

1.7 Stalls

30-01-2026

to be determined date in the future

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Stalls theory
• Stall Approach Recovery
• Full stall recovery
• Homework Altitude vs. Distance
  • 1. Flaps and Flapless at take-off
  • 2. Flaps 10 and Flaps 30 at take-off
  • 3. Zero wind and 15 knots headwind
  • 4. 65 knots vs. 75 knots
  • 5. Descending with and without flaps
  • 6. Descending with and without headwind
  • 7. Descending – 1700RPM and 1500RPM
  • 8. Descending – Power Idle to touchdown
  • 9. Descending – Best glide speed heavy and light aircraft

Introduction

Today it was my first flight lesson in 3 months, after succeeding in the following items:

• Radio Telephony rating
• Navigation PPL theory exam
• Communication PPL theory exam

The weather was our bottleneck, once again today. It was a cool and cold winter day with snow from earlier this week. This gave us beautiful winter sights from the plane. At around 2000ft (600 meters) after take-off we decided to not do the exercises today because of the cloud front coming to our way. This gave us a great and nice airliner-like view of flying above the coming cloud layer. We have descended and then headed back to our base for a butter landing by my instructor.

Stalls theory

We did some theory about stalls, what they are and how they happen and must be answered. We can have 2 stages of stalls:

• Stall approach -> A stall is coming, some symphons are available
• Full stall -> The actual stall where you will feel a result, like a wing dip, nose dip or airspeed loss

I will describe both of those further.

Stall Approach Recovery

In the Stall approach, we are close to a stall and are in the phase that the full stall can be avoided by taking action. In this situation, we can identify a stall approach by looking for these symthoms:

1. Stall warning beep (around 5kts before the actual stall)
2. Buffet, this means that the aircraft shakes a bit due to the disrupted airflow on the wings
3. Airspeed indicator, the end of the green arc, or white arc if flaps are deployed

When having these symtoms, immediately do the following actions:

1. Release yoke back pressure and maybe some forward pressure to end the stall
2. Full throttle power
3. Disable the carb heat to have the highest engine RPM
4. Level the plane

Then we do some checks from bottom to up to the left to double check if we doing things right:

1. Fuel Selector (both unless instructed otherwise)
2. Mixture rich
3. Throttle
4. Carberateur heat
5. Ignition
6. Magnetos
7. Engine instruments (Oil temperature, pressure, ammeter and suction/vacuum)

And complete the exercise with some outside checks:

1. Altitude
2. Position
3. Orientation
4. Sky 180 scan for traffic/weather

Full stall recovery

In the full stall, we are stalling and one of these three things are happening:

1. Nose drop
2. Wing dip (always one of the 2)
3. Altitude loss

When having these symtoms, immediately do the following actions:

1. Release yoke back pressure and maybe some forward pressure to end the stall
2. Full throttle power
3. Disable the carb heat to have the highest engine RPM
4. Level the plane

Then we do some checks from bottom to up to the left to double check if we doing things right:

1. Fuel Selector (both unless instructed otherwise)
2. Mixture rich
3. Throttle
4. Carberateur heat
5. Ignition
6. Magnetos
7. Engine instruments (Oil temperature, pressure, ammeter and suction/vacuum)

And complete the exercise with some outside checks:

1. Altitude
2. Position
3. Orientation
4. Sky 180 scan for traffic/weather

Homework Altitude vs. Distance

Because of the bad weather in the past weeks and no chance to do the stalls elsson, I was asked to do some homework. This concisted of these questions to get a better understanding of power, pitch, speed, flaps and range.

1. Flaps and Flapless at take-off

In the first question, I was asked to draw a graphic of what happens with the altitude and distance at the start of the take-off till rotation and somewhat after that.

In this graphic, I drew 2 lines, one for flaps 10 and one for flapless. As we have less lift without flaps, we will need a longer runway and therefore climbing later than with flaps extended. Both at a speed of around 65 kts.

2. Flaps 10 and Flaps 30 at take-off

The second question was about answering what would perform better at take-off, flaps 10 or 30.

Flaps 10 is in terms the most efficient take-off flap setting, as this is a nice combination of lift and drag. Flaps 30 has an earlier lift-off point of the ground but at the cost of a low speed as result of the enormous drag it creates. We only use Flaps 30 in case of a short field take-off or needing to avoind objects at the end of a (short) runway.

3. Zero wind and 15 knots headwind

In the third question, I have to display the difference of a headwind. I chose an headwind of 15 knots, as this displays a nice difference and its a moderate wind speed for a better lift off.

As you can see, with 15 knots headwind, we will lift of earlier because of the extra 15 knots true airspeed. The horizontal flow of air is already 15 knots, so our plane could lift of at about 40-45 knots instead of the normal 55-60 knots.

4. 65 knots vs. 75 knots

In the 4th question I was asked to draw the difference of 65 knots and 75 knots.

For the Cessna 172, these are exactly these values:

• Vx: Best climb speed for short distance -> 65 knots
• Vy: Best climb speed for short time -> 75 knots

So I drew these graphic where you see that to clear a certain distance, 65 knots is a better speed but when you take time, 75 knots is a better speed.

5. Descending with and without flaps

In the fifth question, we switch to the descending process. Here I was asked to draw the difference between descending with 1700 RPM and 95 knots with a speed of -500fpm vertical.

As Flaps increase or drag and lift and decreases our speed, we are able to descend faster in the same period of time.

6. Descending with and without headwind

The 6th question was about the descending distance. Here we talk about horizontal distance we clear during descending.

As we want to descend, and we have 15 kts headwind, we are able to descend steeper. In the same time, we are descended further while flying less horizontal distance. This means a faster and steeper descent.

This is a result of the headwind decreasing our ground speed.

7. Descending – 1700RPM and 1500RPM

When descending with 1500RPM and 1700RPM, we have a little difference in terms of power. We have less forward trust, so somewhat more drag and a lower ground speed. This makes it possible to descend a bit faster relative to the ground distance.

8. Descending – Power Idle to touchdown

When descending with 3 different speeds, some strange will happen without knowing the theory behind it.

• 50 knots: You will descend steeply as you fly at the edge of a stall, this makes you descend fast relative to the ground and you have lots of parasite drag
• 65 knots: this is the best glide speed of the Cessna 172 and gives you the best distance to altitude ratio, and in this graphic so the furthest distance. You are perfectly in the middle of parasite drag and induced drag at this speed
• 75 knots: this is faster than best glide speed and makes you descend too fast, too much induced drag

9. Descending – Best glide speed heavy and light aircraft

In a cessna 172, the default best glide speed is around 65 knots. However, if we increase the weight of the aircraft, we have to also increase the lift to compensate for the extra weight. To create this more lift we need a little more speed. Heavier aircraft means you need a higher best-glide speed.

However, a higher speed relative to the ground means that we need more horizontal distance than flying in a light aircraft, so you need to descend earlier.

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