After the first spin and stall lesson I spent the whole week going through the lesson in the flying book, talking to pilots and generally boring everybody with my questions. I went through each step in my head,
I was at the flying school at 6.30am on Sunday, handed over my car keys (you give them your car keys, they give you the keys to the plane. You bring it back you get your car back) did the pre-flight checks and headed out to the GFA.
We told everyone where we were, checked for vultures, other aircraft, altitude and got started. My palms were already sweaty. Oscar demonstrated. Twice. With my heart racing I took the controls and started the exercise. Up, stall warning, wing drop, correct. Twice.
Feeling a little more confident I went for the third time (to convince myself I would be able to do this, alone, if necessary) Then I got a little cocky - "Let's try for the other wing" Oscar, a little surprised, said "Sure - but it won't be easy, each aircraft has its own spin direction" I'm not going to go into the technicalities here, but I wanted to make the other wing stall first which required some interference on my part.
What happened next was, without a doubt, the most terrifying thing I've experienced in the air, it was so fast! It felt like it flipped over (almost like a loop, I guess) and I hesitated, disorientated. We went into a full spin at high speed, towards the ground. One, two, three rotations. Oscar, barking instructions, helped me stop the spin and then I over-corrected, pulling back way too hard (terrifying G-force) which can cause another stall, obviously. I don't think I took a breath the whole time - it felt like forever but when we were finally straight and level and I realised we were still alive I let all the air out at once. Oscar just looked over at me and said "Do you see how pilots who get cocky kill themselves?" I just wanted to throw up. Lesson learned.
ZS-PMK, I loved this plane. Sorry
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