The one where WMAP screams like a girl

So the dreaded stalls lesson today. Now this isn’t the first time I’ve done stalls but it has been a while, especially since we did any “aggressive” stalls. And I will admit I wasn’t the biggest fan of them the first time around. In fact I distinctly remember the lesson where Bob demoed a power on climbing turn type stall. The left wing dropped. I screamed like a girl and Bob proved that a good instructor can fly with a screaming women attached to his left arm. I was mortified at my reaction and had a hard time looking him in the eye for the best part of a week.

No surprise then really, that I’m not looking forward to repeating that. To be fair, it is the stalls I’m aiming to repeat not the whole clinging-on-for-dear-life thing. The problem is I can’t. Do the stalls I mean. My mind will simply not let my body stall that plane.

I know how to recover from stalls. It’s actually relatively easy but my mind rebels in trying to achieve the stall in the first place. I hear that stall horn, I think “baaaaad noise” and make it stop. Meanwhile Bob is telling me “keep pulling back WMAP, actually make it stall.”

Last lesson I actually said “No, won’t. Please don't make me” I sounded like a petulant school child. You couldn’t make this stuff up; Farce writers have nothing on me! Bob proceeded to “assist” me by pulling the control column back even more. I may have been pushing forward. I was certainly whining more than the stall horn. I may well have screamed like a girl at one point as well. This is truly ridiculous as we were doing the most gentle of gentle power off stalls. The ones with full flaps you could barely feel the stall break. I did admit to Bob during our debrief that I suspected we weren’t actually properly stalled.

During our debrief I was my usual brutally honest self. I told Bob that I was building up a “high level of anxiety”* about power on stalls, especially with a wing drop. I also told him that, perversely, I wanted to do them again and soon. Because I know that if I don’t my anxiety will build up to a level where it will get unmanageable. In other words, I need you to be the bully again to force me into this. (But I also need you not to tell people I scream like a girl, deal?)

 

* my code words for sh#t scared!