Slow Flight
Yesterday was the first day of ground school, so I decided to leave work a bit early and get out in the afternoon for another flying lesson.
I got down to Boeing Field about a half hour early to give me some time to brush up on some of the material before my CFI showed up. When she got there she made some friendly jabs at me on whether or not I was going to be “OK” today (referring to my last lesson when I got nauseous in flight). I assured her I was operating at 100% and that I was excited to get back in the air.
After we went through our pre-briefing she sent me over to check the weather. During previous sessions she would pull up the weather on the computer and give me a high-level overview and that apparently wasn’t going to be the case today, she wanted me to check the weather and do so without using the weather computer. This essentially meant I needed to call the Flight Service Station (FSS) and get a weather briefing. I don’t know where all this came from but as soon as I got off the phone with the briefer I was able to cite the area forecast for the next several hours, weather conditions both at Boeing Field and Bremerton National, winds aloft, and the notices to airmen (NOTAMs). All the information that was somewhat cryptic to me in the past I was able to collect and sum up with short one liners such as “BFI conditions, few clouds at 7,000\scattered at 12,000; visibility 10 miles; 220@Niner (winds from the SW at 9 knots)”. Also, to give an idea of the importance of the NOTAMs there was one in particular which was informational of active skydiving at 12,000 feet at ¼ mile west of Bremerton National which happened to be where we’re headed to practice – good information to know!
Once we got up in the air and over towards Bremerton I started running through maneuvers related slow flight – apparently when the CFI says slow flight she really means SLOW FLIGHT. We got to a cruising altitude of 4,000ft and we started inducing low power scenarios by reducing throttle, enabling carb heat, and attempting climbs. The plane was in a constant nose pitch up and we were just barely maintaining our altitude while at 60 KIAS. After completing some other maneuvers we got into the real fun, we brought the plane back up to speed and then started deploying the flaps after we had full flaps deployed we reduced throttle and kept the plane with the nose pitch up. As the plane slowed the stall horn started sounding at ~50 KIAS we proceeded to continue slowing and I then spent the next ~30 minutes maneuvering at ~40 KIAS. To put this in perspective, the Vs1 stall speed (no flaps) is 44 knots and the Vs0 stall speed (full flaps) is 33 knots. Ironically the entire time the stall horn continued to blare and at no time was I concerned about actually stalling, I think this is an indication that my trust in the aircraft is really building.
After a while we decided to go make some landings which would happen to be my first real landings! We went over and did a couple of touch and go’s at Bremerton National before making a final landing at Boeing Field – my flare was off and I ended up bouncing all three landings. I’ll get the hang of it with more practice and although the bounced landings aren’t elegant at least I can get the plane back down on the ground. 
Overall, this was definitely my favorite lesson thus far not only did I learn so much but I’m enjoying myself so much more now that I’m starting to gain trust in the aircraft!
