Also since it's a "stock answer" but no one's mentioned it...
Go find an instructor and aircraft someday (doesn't have to be now, unless you're REALLY nervous... early in your flying... preferably before you have 100 hours in the logbook...) who'll either show you spins in the Utility Category in a similar aircraft to your own...
Or just go whole hog and get in something Aerobatic-rated with appropriate safety gear strapped to your butt and go see what happens if you take that stall past the point of where you should have released the back pressure...
... and you'll be a LOT more comfortable in slow-flight.
Then get them to do it (if the aircraft is rated for it) from that accelerated stall Alan mentioned, and see the difference. (Usually more violent entry, but not "scary"... unless you really hate roller coasters and motion and such.)
I thank my lucky stars that my Primary instructor taught spins to every student, and still does to this day. Slow flight isn't the "scary place at the edge of the envelope" at all, once you've been on out a little bit further in that envelope to regular spins.
In Cessnas rated to do them, they're quite benign unless you work REALLY hard to get an accelerated, "over the top" spin entry, and even then, they're not eye-popping like in something Aerobatic rated with a higher wing loading and perhaps some significantly high engine HP and torque behavior. (Most properly rigged Cessnas do spin faster/better to the left though... try both.)
After about ten of those, maximum... you'll probably be able to exit them to a known heading with ground references. Or at whatever number of turns you like (watching altitude, of course). Especially if you have an instructor like mine who'd see that I was already "ho-hum" about it and offered up the challenge... "Bet'cha you can't recover and be headed straight north at wings level!" I didn't the first couple of times, but I was close! Eventually I got it there, in that airplane.
Most training spins done in Cessnas aren't even what most test-pilots would call "fully developed" and can be stopped at will. Quite fun.
The guy who holds the world's record for number of spins in a Cessna 150 knew at which turn the engine would quit... I found an interview article with him once where he talked about it, but have lost the link. Up around 12 or so, if I remember correctly...
At that point, the fuel has been held away from the feeds at the wing root by centrifugal force long enough that the fuel from there through the selector switch/valve and on up to the engine compartment is all used up... and the prop stops. He went waaaaaay past that for the record.
It freaks me the heck out that someone here locally shared with me that a DE flunked a Private ride once, because the student got the aircraft into a spin. I have no other details, but that's a heck of a lot of horsing the controls around to even "get there" in most typical trainers. Might depend a bit on what you're flying... I'm a Cessna guy.
After a typical spin session in a Skyhawk, I could get a little arm shake going by the fourth from pulling... even with the trim set all the way up, trying to cheat a bit in the entry. It takes some doing.
But I'm not exactly Lou Ferrigno when it comes to upper-body strength either.
Anyway...
Find an instructor who'll let you get down to slow flight and then keep pulling. And of course, do it in an appropriately rated aircraft and an appropriately skilled instructor. Many younger CFIs, no insult intended, haven't even done this.
Get her slowed all the way up, and then get her cross-controlled. Find an instructor who can help you get it to simulate both a "Departure stall" scenario where you're climbing out and letting the nose just keep coming up and up and up (you'll be surprised how far "up" you really need to go) and you're ham-footed on the rudder on purpose, maybe the controller called out traffic he/she wasn't expecting right off your nose, opposite direction, right after takeoff.
Then do the accelerated stuff to see how the margins change, and learn how the kids who think low, fast fly-bys with that "airshow pull" at the end at the local airpark end up dead at the end of the runway. Find that point where angle of attack no longer has anything to do with indicated airspeed in an appropriately rated aircraft, someday.
Like I said, you still have to work at it a bit in most training aircraft.
And remember, many aircraft manuals prohibit accelerated stalls... the forces on the airframe (and you) are typically higher. (Read the book, don't wait for the movie!)
If you fly one particular type a lot... and it's rated... try to do some spins in that type. Otherwise, try to get an aircraft as close to what you're flying so you can use the warning signs coming from your butt, inner ear, the eardrum (sounds), etc... back in your own aircraft.
This is more to your advantage, in my opinion, than doing everything in an Aerobatic-rated aircraft. Do it in something similar, so you can use your head-knowledge of what you see, hear, and feel... to avoid inadvertently doing it on a "normal" flight in your bird.
I'm very lucky in regards to slow-flight... Not horsing back and causing an accelerated stall, but nice and slowly transitioning to slow flight, I can slow the Skylane up, since we have the stall fences from the Robertson STOL kit, and dirty or clean... but it does this REALLY well with about 20-40 degrees of flap... just hang there with all 230 HP going full tilt boogie, and the yoke all the way back to the rear stop, and it'll mush along mostly straight ahead with little jabs of rudder to lift a wingtip from time to time, while losing about 700-800 fpm.
Our poor imitation of a high-Alpha jet demonstrator maneuver, I guess. Feels like a massive deck up-angle, but it's not as high as you think it is.
[Side-note... our O-470 won't do true full-tilt boogie up here at any altitude that's safe in the practice area to be doing this stuff. My home airport is at 5820' MSL.]
The Skylane's not rated for spins... prohibited, in fact... so I don't ever even tempt myself there... just keep it level with the rudder and it'll hang there with the airspeed indicator bouncing off the bottom peg. If a good gust truly drops a wing, release back pressure and recover, right now.
Once I worked my way up to that in our bird, "normal" slow flight speeds are a breeze... in fact, since most CFI's have never flown the Robby-equipped C-182, they're usually quite surprised just how slow we can get it beyond where
their "butt"
thinks we're in "slow-flight".
You have to consciously make it a point to ask them if they're looking for minimum-controllable airspeed, or if they just want you down around 30-40 knots indicated ... 'cause some just haven't seen a Skylane fly that slow.
Usually it's most fun to get it down to 35-40 knots where they think you're going REALLY slow, hold it there solid as a truck for a bit, and then say... "It'll go slower. Want to see?"
The air work to see if it'd get that slow without dropping a wing or exhibiting any other weird behavior was done with plenty of altitude, and in personal preparation for trying out the "Robertson Method" takeoff in the POH Addendum added to the aircraft with the STOL kit.
Full power, brakes release, select flaps 30 (!), and it'll come off the ground in ground-effect at about 35 MPH indicated. It's crazy! And it happens quicker than I thought it would.
Only did a few of them exactly by the book, for a number of reasons... first, you're so rediculously behind the power curve that if the engine so much as hiccups, you're going to re-arrive at the runway, however far you're down it... toot sweet, like... right now.
Next, the nose stays so low you worry that you're going to skip the nosewheel off the pavement, and nosewheels and heavy loads are not good on Skylane firewalls. It tries to lift off mains-first, and it works out better to have far more nose-up trim than the "Takeoff" indication in our aircraft, I've learned. That first one, I was hauling back on the yoke trying not to let the aircraft do it's best wheelbarrow imitation.
Finally, the whole full-power thing with brakes on is always hard on everything, and tends to find every rock, pebble, and grain of sand on the runway, and throws them into the prop or something. Hard on stuff.
You can mitigate this by rolling forward a little bit, but I was trying to do it "by the book" just to see where the max-performance of the aircraft was.
Now that I've seen it, and know I'll almost never truly NEED it, I don't really need to abuse my poor airplane that much anymore. (And I picked as clean a runway as I could find and a darn long one, at that... to do these tests.)
Once off the ground, you hover along in ground effect, letting it accelerate to a speed where you can start milking the flaps out... 20, then 10... and up and away at Vx or Vy at that point. With 230 HP (derated by our altitude and whatever temperature it is outside... density altitude...) it'll immediately start to accelerate, but there's a second or two where you're way back there in the power curve. Not all the way back, like out in the practice area, but... hey... you see where this is headed?
Is fun and important to note with the STOL kit, that it'll come off the pavement sooner, but the obstacle clearance numbers are actually worse. All that drag with the flaps hanging out, means you can't accelerate as well, thus, you can't point the nose skyward.
You have to be very patient (or so it seems, since in "real-time" it's only a second or two) and wait for airspeed, and THEN you can start to climb.
If you need climb, or it's a hot/high day, the STOL kit does you zero good... leave the flaps up (or 10...) and get more acceleration.
Okay I drifted off into STOL kit stories there for a reason...
But they were to talk to the original point.
I wouldn't have EVER attempted those takeoffs without first going out to the practice area and getting really really REALLY comfortable with power-on slow-flight... because that's EXACTLY what you're doing for the book numbers Robertson STOL takeoff.
The only "surprise"... was that the stall horn came on as the aircraft lifted off at the book-published speed and squeaked at me a couple of times. Of course, I realized that max performance means max performance, but... just kinda wasn't expecting the horn. A tiny little jolt of adrenaline that first time... as you wonder... "Oh man, this is slow! Did I miss something in these numbers?"
Furtive glances at the airspeed indicator, while my rational brain screamed, "It's okay... you have to get the nose a LOT higher than that to mush it back into the ground... you've seen this in the practice area already, idiot!"
And a little pilot-induced-oscillation on the first one... horn on, release a little back pressure almost instinctively, horn off, realize you are accelerating like crazy up to Vx, pull a tiny bit again, horn back on, fingers instinctively stop pulling again, horn off, pull a little more... realize you're at Vx and going up very nicely, level off and start milking out the flaps (no detents in our 1975, so you can be a huge chicken and also very smooth bringing them up just a touch at a time, it's just awkward to be leaning over that far for an what feels like an extended period of time with your right hand on that handle...)... and away you go!
This whole thing took roughly 5-10 seconds. But that lovely time-compression you get with that adrenaline shot, means you remember that first one very... very well. Same thing with your first spin or two.
No way I would have even attempted those takeoffs without:
a) A couple of hours wallowing around in slow flight (with appropriate breaks to let the poor engine get some cooling air)...
b) Spin training and lots of slow-flight during that years before.
c) No one else on board... or only a CFI willing to do it. (Hey, it's a high-performance maneuver... I'm not taking friends/loved-ones along on the first flight to explore the envelope of my airplane... get some time under your belt doing it first, just like normal flight.
You gotta be comfortable with slow flight, for later fun. Expecially if you can find a buddy with a STOL kit on their Cessna. So... have fun with it... and don't worry so much. Slow flight is cool!
Some pilots say...
"She may be ugly, but she sure is fast!"
In our Robby Skylane, I proudly say...
"She may be pretty, but she sure is slow!"
Maybe someday I'll get to fly my dream slow-flyer... A DeHavilland Dash-7!
