Help me get over stall anxiety

abqtj

abqtj

Pre-takeoff checklist
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abqtj
Very low-time student pilot (<5 hours).

How can I get it through my head that performing stalls is normal and fine, and everything will work out?

I haven't done them yet, but my instructor demonstrated a bunch during my lesson yesterday. I know I have to do them and logically I know there's nothing to it, but I have a mental block or something. One he showed me what happens in an uncoordinated stall and that one really didn't do me any favors!

Any tips, tricks, things to think about that have helped you in the past? Thanks.
 
Demoed a bunch of stalls but didn't have you even try one??


Sounds like your CFI is probably a little scared of them or making them into a bigger deal then they are, and that's rubbing off on your attitude towards them.

Frankly they are quite fun, stalls, spins, just go up with a experienced CFI in a aircraft certified for them and have fun!
 
What Jim said - they're fun! The thinking is worse than the doing. Nothing you can do that you're instructor can't get you out of. Plenty of altitude.

Part of the adventure, man! Go have fun.
 
Practice hands off flying in cruise so you can get used to controlling the airplane with your feet, then try a falling leaf stall, where it works just the same.

Most importantly, discuss with your instructor.
 
James331 said:
Demoed a bunch of stalls but didn't have you even try one??


Sounds like your CFI is probably a little scared of them or making them into a bigger deal then they are, and that's rubbing off on your attitude towards them.

Frankly they are quite fun, stalls, spins, just go up with a experienced CFI in a aircraft certified for them and have fun!
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No, he wanted me to do them, it was me who chose not to yesterday. He loves them! In his defense, he's been a great CFI and is very patient with me. Everything else I've done so far has been pretty good (I like to think, anyway). Did some foggle time yesterday and it went perfectly (and that was something I was intimidated with before I did it...I'm hoping the same will happen with stalls).
 
Stalls are no big deal. Once you learn that you're in control your anxiety will go away. Learn to recognize what it feels like as you approach the break. That's the point of the exercise. Hopefully you get a chance to do turning stalls, falling leaf stalls, etc as you progress.
 
In that case, just suck it up and do 15 or so stalls back to back, ain't no thing.

I'd also do a falling leaf stall.
 
ntinkle said:
What Jim said - they're fun! .......Part of the adventure, man! Go have fun.
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they are NOT fun! until they're fun. then they're a shtload of fun.

you'll get past it after you do a few. and think of it this way......everyone on here has done a ton of em, so yeah, it'll work out just fine. and yeah, they're fun.
 
It's normal to be apprehensive doing stalls. Hopefully your CFI is going to allow you to perform stalls soon. You need to convey to your CFI your feelings about this. There are ways he/she can help you on this, such as power off falling leaf. Try to realize that if you just let go the plane it will recover itself. And if you aggravate it the worse thing that could happen is a spin, which are easy to recover from. So if you could do some spins I think that would give you confidence performing stalls. You'll get over this hurdle. Good luck!
 
Best to understand that the airplane will do exactly what you ask it to do. It will stall. It will recover. The whole purpose of stall and spin training is to recognize the various scenarios that lead to them. Then you won't get yourself into those situations.
 
Practice, practice, practice.

Schedule spin training @ your flight school. I guarantee you'll feel better afterward.
 
Intentional stalls for practice and demo purposes are a non-event really. Some people get wary of the feeling of lightness you get as the stall occurs, kind of like going over the top in a mild roller coaster.

What airplane are you training in? I ask because I did my training in PA-28-161's and on my checkride my examiner demoed something that I would have never tried myself. He got the airplane in an arrival stall configuration.. then just held the yoke full back. The airplane oscillated between one mushy stall break after another, descending at about 1,000 ft/min on average. Only a little rudder was needed to keep the wings level (not aileron!), but other than that it was just a joke. Takes all the scary right out of that maneuver. I've duplicated this many times since in my airplane since, and it puts a smile on my face. Piper built a hell of a safe design. I'm fairly sure all airplanes wouldn't behave in such a docile manner; many might drop a wing and perhaps develop into an incipient spin, so do this only with a CFI until you know what to expect in your type.

The other thing you could do is take a couple glider lessons. Thermaling in a glider is slow flight to the extreme, and it isn't at all uncommon to encounter a stall in turbulent thermals. You learn quickly to recognize and recover, and in general gliders bite harder than trainer airplanes seem to.
 
Once you learn how the plane behaves (and to center the ball!) they are a piece of cake. Just takes practice.
 
I had the same fear of stalls early on also... I hated doing them, and always pushed away from them. It als make s a difference in what type of aircraft your in... PA-28's are mushy, and not a fast clean brake. my current aircraft is nose heavy, so stalls are really mushy and a non-event unless I have severial hundred lbs in the back. I did some of my training in a Cessna 152, and we did stalls, nowhere the same as in the Piper!... and spins. I still do not like spins...

But after starting flying again last year after 20 years off, it was again hard to get back into stalls..... now I'm good with them..
 
I think part of it is a mind block, something that happens way before you get to the airplane. You hear about them and the mind is set up for fear.
Start by realizing that:

-a stalled condition is more normal & common than a flying condition.
-way more objects (and attached people) are stalled at any one time than not stalled on this earth.
-you are stalled right now (unless reading this from an airplane).
-every single airplane out there enters a stalled condition, at least once, on Every Flight.
 
It's normal to fear what you don't know and haven't been trained to control yet. But if y our CFI hasn't mentioned it (and I'm sure he/she has), remaining coordinate is KEY. But you need to have faith that the airplane wants to fly, and that it will continue to fly.

I don't know if your aircraft has a stall horn or Angle of Attack monitor. But if it does, perhaps you can have your CFI demonstrate slow flight where you're approaching stall and have the horn active, but the plane is still flying. If no horn or AoA monitor, still have the CFI fly the aircraft in slow flight configuration. This way you can feel the angle of the aircraft and get over the anxiety of the higher pitch of the aircraft. Then stall is just raising the nose slightly higher and feeling the buffeting before airflow is broken over the wing. You just have to remind yourself that lowering the nose and using rudder to keep the aircraft coordinated is all that's needed. This will help you overcome the nose high orientation of the aircraft and reduce some of the components in your fear of a stall. What's left is just the buffeting and the stall itself... that just takes practice.
 
Just do a ton of them. I had a student who hated stalls so we just spent the whole lesson doing them and eventually he got used to them.
 
tell your instructor to get his hands off the f.... yoke and let you fly the aircraft.tell him to just talk you through it. this goes for all or most of your training. or find a old school instructor.
 
hotprops said:
tell your instructor to get his hands off the f.... yoke and let you fly the aircraft.tell him to just talk you through it. this goes for all or most of your training. or find a old school instructor.
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Doesn't quite work that way.
 
hotprops said:
yes it does
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Hmm interesting. I'll rephrase it for you then. It wouldn't work with me if I were the CFI and/or PIC. Then again I have never had a student react like that. If one did that would terminate the lesson and we'd land and discuss.

You're probably thinking you're paying for it and in charge but you're not. The CFI is.
 
hotprops said:
tell your instructor to get his hands off the f.... yoke and let you fly the aircraft.tell him to just talk you through it. this goes for all or most of your training. or find a old school instructor.
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If you said that to me, I would never fly with you again.

NEVER EVER try to intimidate a pilot out of a safety decision. Perhaps discuss it. Intimidation, or attempts at such, are a serious safety issue.
 
I suspect when the comment is run through the reverse-cyber-filter, it comes out more like: Mind if I give it a try and you walk me through mistakes? Just don't let me kill us.

People are always Clint Eastwood on the internet.
 
Hi abqtj.

You are getting good advice here, but is likely coming from pilots who are not apprehensive about stalls. Based on what I have read, there are a LOT of experienced pilots who don't fit into this category and are terrified of stalls. A lot of landing accidents happen because the pilot is afraid of stalling and flies too fast. What I am trying to say is that you should not feel like the Lone Ranger if you are nervous about stalling. But, as many of the guys have already said, just doing them is the best way to get over that. It sounds like you have already voiced your concern to your CFI, so just go up with him again and practice a few.
 
ntinkle said:
I suspect when the comment is run through the reverse-cyber-filter, it comes out more like: Mind if I give it a try and you walk me through mistakes? Just don't let me kill us.

People are always Clint Eastwood on the internet.
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Except the phrase wasn't even close to being that congenial.
hotprops said:
tell your instructor to get his hands off the f.... yoke and let you fly the aircraft.tell him to just talk you through it. this goes for all or most of your training. or find a old school instructor.
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Most CFI's wouldn't tolerate a student with a mental like that. You'd be walking away like a skinned rat with his tail between his legs. Contrary to your thinking, flight instruction does NOT work that way.
 
I still don't like stalls. 10K hours.

I used to race cars and I never practiced crashing.

And I know, I am not learning how to stall the plane, but learning to recognize how not to get into a stall and recover if it happens.
 
Honestly - I don't know how useful the practice is. You're not likely to stall at altitude unless you're iced up; then you have bigger problems. If you stall, it's likely something like base-to-final, and practice isn't going to save you from a stall in the pattern.

But I still enjoy doing them from time to time. And my 10 year old loves them!
 
hotprops said:
tell your instructor to get his hands off the f.... yoke and let you fly the aircraft.tell him to just talk you through it. this goes for all or most of your training. or find a old school instructor.
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Lolz, if he's a real "old school instructor" you're likley to get the taste slapped out of your mouth, most CFIs like me would just say my aircraft, terminate the flight and fire the student, the only instructors who are meek enough to say "ok" you wouldn't want to fly with, and are the ones likley to get themselves and their students killed.



ntinkle said:
Honestly - I don't know how useful the practice is. You're not likely to stall at altitude unless you're iced up; then you have bigger problems. If you stall, it's likely something like base-to-final, and practice isn't going to save you from a stall in the pattern.

But I still enjoy doing them from time to time. And my 10 year old loves them!
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Stalling in the pattern is ether absolute slop flying or just a CFI OWT, if you're flying it like me, high and tights, you more or less always have a nose down attitude anyway.

As for practicing stalls, for me it's being very familiar with the backside of my power curve and exactly when she'll stop flying, mostly used for backcountry ops.
 
Zeldman said:
....I used to race cars and I never practiced crashing....
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Did u practice drifting?*

I don't know if that's a thing, 'practicing' them. I know sometimes it's done, but isn't that kinda sorta getting used to 'just before the crash' kinda sorta thing so u get proficient at it and actually avoid the crash? Kinda sorta? No? Ok wtf do I know.
 
James331 said:
As for practicing stalls, for me it's being very familiar with the backside of my power curve and exactly when she'll stop flying, mostly used for backcountry ops.
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Now slow flight practice is a very useful thing - especially with short field targets in mind.
 
ntinkle said:
Honestly - I don't know how useful the practice is. You're not likely to stall at altitude unless you're iced up; then you have bigger problems. If you stall, it's likely something like base-to-final, and practice isn't going to save you from a stall in the pattern.
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Stall/spin accidents in the pattern do baffle me a little. It would seem to take a huge amount of distraction/lack of SA to have the airspeed get so low and angle of attack so high. The big thing about stall practice is to ingrain the instantaneous response of lowering the nose, adding power and working the rudder to keep the wings level, so it's merely a stall that takes 150 feet to recover instead of a spin that puts you into the ground.
 
I could see huge distractions in the pattern. Ever have a near miss?

Most recently, I had departing traffic turn crosswind right at me as I was entering right downwind, per Tower's instructions. I intentionally dodged with a descent, full power, and hard left turn, to get the airspeed up (to Vno -- the point was to get out of there). I could see a student not doing that....
 
MAKG1 said:
I could see huge distractions in the pattern. Ever have a near miss?
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Yeah, but it didn't stop me from flying the plane. You did well in your situation...saw and avoided. :eek:

As for spin avoidance, I think there's a huge chasm between knowing the theory of what to do, and instinctively doing it. Therein lies the value of practice.
 
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SoCal RV Flyer said:
Stall/spin accidents in the pattern do baffle me a little. It would seem to take a huge amount of distraction/lack of SA to have the airspeed get so low and angle of attack so high. The big thing about stall practice is to ingrain the instantaneous response of lowering the nose, adding power and working the rudder to keep the wings level, so it's merely a stall that takes 150 feet to recover instead of a spin that puts you into the ground.
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Baffles me as well. The base to final overshoot seems to be the most common scenario. Misjudging a tailwind on base, which pushes you through final and it gets over corrected with too much aft elevator and rudder. Standard rate turns and coordinated flight is key.
 
SoCal RV Flyer said:
Stall/spin accidents in the pattern do baffle me a little. It would seem to take a huge amount of distraction/lack of SA to have the airspeed get so low and angle of attack so high. The big thing about stall practice is to ingrain the instantaneous response of lowering the nose, adding power and working the rudder to keep the wings level, so it's merely a stall that takes 150 feet to recover instead of a spin that puts you into the ground.
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It's usually an accelerated stall that kills on final, is it not? You overshoot the centerline, then try to tighten it up, then add top rudder, etc. for the classic base-to-final spin. You have to be uncoordinated to spin, so I heartily agree about working the rudder! When my old girl is airworthy again it will be time to practice accelerated stalls, which are a non-event if one is flying coordinated.
 
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