Take it slow

“Let me know when you believe you are established in slow flight,” Bob-the-pretend-examiner requests.

I take a look around, I’m well in the 40 knot range with full flaps, the stall horn is blipping in the background, I’ve nudged up the power slightly and the VSI is staying on the zero mark. Mildly wary that this may be a trick question, I bite the bullet and announce “I’m in slow flight,” concentrating so much on keeping the ball centred that I’ve genuinely forgotten that I hate this.

I make the requested turn to the east, making sure to keep the bank angle small, possibly a little too small as the plane takes an age to come around but better to err on this side of caution than whip it round and stall the damn thing.

That’ll come later.

To be honest I could do with slowing a whole load of my flying down. Some of the mistakes I’m making out there are a direct result of trying to rush through airwork stuff. Pulling out of the dive before I’ve leveled the wings on a spiral dive recovery, flinging the flaps up from 10 to 0 before I’m established on a positive rate of climb in the overshoot.  

The reason that I failed to make the field on my forced approach was that I pull the turn in too tight. The 360 method is a wonderful technique but it has its basis firmly in the rate one turn. Turn too steeply and you have no hope of dropping the height you need. And that’s exactly what I do and why I end up high.

Now that I know I can do this stuff, I need to focus on adding some breathing space. Take each manoeuvre one step at a time and add some pauses in. The flight test isn’t a race. It’ll take as long as it needs to and I should give myself space to think and plan.