Power-on stalls - confidence zero, can't feel them or hear horn

As you increase your angle of attack, and apply power the plane has a left turning tendency, to keep coordinated (ball centered) you will need to add right rudder, A LOT OF RIGHT RUDDER as you bring the nose up into the stall. If (when) a wing drops you want to apply opposite rudder agressively to lift the wing for the reasons the others have stated. Keep ailerons NEUTRAL.
 
Do some stalls with less than full power but all else the same. Feel the airplane running out of energy. The warning signs of an impending stall break are what you're trying to learn to recognize. It's just like a power off stall but the nose is higher and recovery is as simple as relaxing some back pressure.

A power on stall in real life is a total eff-up.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
If the horizon is "level" in the windscreen, the wings are level. If the horizon is tilted in the windscreen the wings are banked.

I have to ask - did you spend a lot of time on flight simulators games?
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I tend to agree with the OP and Brian, during a power on stall everything in the windscreen is usually blue. You cant rely on clouds for a horizon and it takes a long time to get the seat of the pants feel of coordination. I look outside till it all turns blue and puffy white, then its AI and ball till the break, then back outside to deal with the impending death spiral;). My instructor was also a "use full power" and "keep pulling till it stalls" guy, for whatever reason, right turning 20* power on stalls are still interesting for me. I do more of those now when I practice.
 
mikeinbama said:
I tend to agree with the OP and Brian, during a power on stall everything in the windscreen is usually blue. You cant rely on clouds for a horizon and it takes a long time to get the seat of the pants feel of coordination. I look outside till it all turns blue and puffy white, then its AI and ball till the break, then back outside to deal with the impending death spiral;). My instructor was also a "use full power" and "keep pulling till it stalls" guy, for whatever reason, right turning 20* power on stalls are still interesting for me. I do more of those now when I practice.
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You might be able to see a horizon in front in a 152 but its been so long since I've flown it I can't say for sure. The taller panels in later 172s, the 177 series and the 205 all you see blue sky so its useless looking up there.
 
Don't make it complicated. Add throttle, pull nose up slowly, keep the ball centered.

You will feel it break, then let the plane nose over. Add a little power and level off.
 
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Keep the ball centered, feel when you are pulling the yoke up and not just out (it happens on a Cessna), and find and read "Stick and Rudder" to actually learn how the controls work.
 
As a low time pilot, I had to rely on the ball, as I had not yet learned what being uncoordinated felt like. Dutch roll exercises can help here. My instructor tried to teach me how to them, but I did them wrong (and he didn't catch it), so I didn't learn anything at the time; only later did I learn how to do them right, and things made a lot more sense.

I found many of the cues (coordination, adverse yaw, gyroscopic effects) to be subtle in a 152/172 type airplane. You'll figure them out with time, especially as you fly other aircraft types.

As a student, I don't think any instructor ever accused me of having too much right rudder. I would always slice off to the left when I flubbed a power on stall. It was easily my least favorite maneuver. It did not help that I had absorbed the mantra of "uncoordinated+stall=spin=death".

The apprehension melted away pretty much immediately after I did falling leaf stalls and spins.
 
To the OP, hearing the stall horn isn't important. Feeling the airplane is. Cessna stall horn reeds are adjustable. No two airplanes are the same. Don't count on the horn to announce a stall. Fly the airplane and feel what it's doing. Making the plane break at the top is not the lesson. Understanding that it will break if you take it too far into the mush is the lesson.

Also be aware that what a plane does at the break has much to do with that plane's rigging. One plane may drop the left wing and another may drop the nose straight and level. Sometimes that has nothing to do with having the ball centered. There should be nothing to fear in any case assuming the airplane is loaded within CG limits.
 
Wow, from all these "nothing but blue" comments, one must assume that no airplanes have side windows.

Having your nose in the air will give you trouble if you're fixated straight ahead. That's pretty limiting. Hell, it's a problem even for a power OFF stall (especially with no flaps), or even a normal landing. In a 172 (less so for a 152, much more so for a 182), if you can see the runway ahead at touchdown, you're landing flat.
 
Part of this is it sounds like our OP is fairly new to the whole airplane thing. A knock I give to most CFIs is the first thing they go out and do in an airplane is stalls. I understand why, but I truly don't think they are really all that instructional until you've got a bit of the "feel" of the aircraft. That takes awhile. I'd advise our OP patience. If he doesn't want to do any more stalls, so what? Fly around, learn to land, and have at it later when the aircraft is more familiar.

The whole idea behind the training is stall awareness, i.e. knowing what the airplane is going to do as it gets into one. Most stalls are when the pilot gets uncoordinated turning base to final, and are unrecoverable.

You want to try something jarring try a cross control stall. Really fun in a 150 too. If you're into that sort of thing. I doubt I'll even try one in the Mooney. I've read bad things about what happens to Mooneys when they spin.
 
The point of doing stalls is to so that you recognize what is happening if you inadvertently enter one. Inadvertently doing one you probably aren't hearing the stall warning anyway. Hence the comments it doesn't matter if you can hear it or not.

If your instructor will let you, just look straight ahead and slowly start raising the nose of the airplane. as the nose blocks the horizon, start looking to the left to verify you aren't turning and how high the nose is. Keep the wings level with the Horizon. Use the Ailerons to keep the wings level and the rudder to keep it from turning. Keep slowly moving the control yoke back until the plane either starts doing something you didn't tell it to do or the yoke hits the stop.

The 152 will often start to roll left or right and adding aileron won't stop it until you push the yoke forward.
Some planes will start to bobble the nose or the nose will start dropping. It can be hard to push the yoke forward when the nose is already pitching down, but that is what you have to do to recover.

If the bank angle exceeds 30 degrees of bank bring the power back to idle for your recovery to prevent over speeding the airplane.

Note: if the plane rolls more than 30 degrees before you recover, it will probably scare the cr*p out of you. And if you instructor isn't very proficient at stalls is may scare him as well and may be the reason he won't let you go that far. If that is the case it might be worth while to ask if there is an instructor that demonstrate more aggressive stalls to you.

Of course the idea for your checkride is to recognize that the plane isn't responding normally as soon as possible and recover as soon as you recognize this with as little bank, heading and pitch change as possible. I.E. the same thing you would do if you suddenly realized you were starting to stall while doing a short field takeoff.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
 
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What I was getting at, if you were my student.

1. We would do a simple power off stall, 1 demo, you'd do 3-4

2. We would do a falling leaf stall, 1 demo, you'd do about 2-3

3. We do a power on stall, I demo one, you do 3-4

4. We do spins, I'd do one or two, you'd recover from two I put you in, and enter and recover another 2 or so.


If a student is really scared, I just start off with a spin demo and one recovery by the student, after that I go to power off stalls, it helps knock some of the fear of a simple stall.

If a student isn't keeping the ball centered I will let him enter a spin, and have him recover.

A good CFI will let you make mistakes and let you correct them, there are two hats, showing you what to do and just being the crash preventer and letting you learn from experience.
 
Still learning here, FYI, step on the ball didn't work for me when I started doing power off stalls. I was fixating on the ball, and it got off to one side, when I tried to step on it, the wing dropped out on that side. Maybe I added too much, not sure. After that my cfi said stop looking at the ball and look outside and showed me the falling leaf and stepping on the high wing. After that I did a better job with stalls.
 
MAKG1 said:
Having your nose in the air will give you trouble if you're fixated straight ahead.
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That's it in a nutshell. Bend your neck back, so you can see the horizon on both sides of the nose. Notice yawing by reference to landmarks close to the cowl and correct with rudder (don't look at the ball). Keep your heels on the floor!

dtuuri
 
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Never understood why CFIs are so obsessed with power on stalls. Do one and forget about it. If you can't recognize a nose up attidue that will lead to a stall then you are in the wrong businessess. This is for your PPL, not acro, IFR, commercial. They should teach you what to see and avoid and stop terrorizing students.

JMHO
 
dtuuri said:
That's it in a nutshell. Bend your neck back, so you can see the horizon on both sides of the nose. Notice yawing by reference to landmarks close to the cowl and correct with rudder (don't look at the ball). Keep your heels on the floor!

dtuuri
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To what end? Why do we do power on stalls? What are we trying to teach students for their PPL? :dunno:
 
Geico266 said:
To what end? Why do we do power on stalls? What are we trying to teach students for their PPL? :dunno:
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Two places folks tend to stall, departure and arrival, thus those are the stalls we drill, heck I got to do them myself on my company check rides, and I'm way less likely to get into one than most GA planes.

I got zero beef with power on stalls, power off and spin training.
 
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dtuuri said:
That's it in a nutshell. Bend your neck back, so you can see the horizon on both sides of the nose. Notice yawing by reference to landmarks close to the cowl and correct with rudder (don't look at the ball). Keep your heels on the floor!

dtuuri
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This is another good one, heels on the floor. I discovered after some sore legs that I had my heels up(like in taxi position) the whole time, and was pushing against the other foot adding a lot of stiffness. Good tip.
 
Geico266 said:
Never understood why CFIs are so obsessed with power on stalls. Do one and forget about it. If you can't recognize a nose up attidue that will lead to a stall then you are in the wrong businessess. This is for your PPL, not acro, IFR, commercial. They should teach you what to see and avoid and stop terrorizing students.

JMHO
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You can do a power on stall with negative or zero pitch as well.

A classic example is the screwed up canyon turn, especially if done too slowly. Try it at 50 knots instead of 80, and you'll stall at full power if you pull hard enough, with the nose quite close to the horizon.

Not all stalls have your nose in the air.

If it's terrorizing students, they are in the wrong business. A student must be able to handle an emergency without freaking out. Especially a simulated emergency.

The real point about exposing students to this is so they don't F up a departure. That is, they know what a stall looks like. So, when the trees are coming at them taking off from a short runway, they know what not to do.

There are a number of emergency maneuvers (like getting cut off in the pattern) where you might need to take your airplane to the stall buffet, but not further. That's when you get the most lift.
 
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Hi Topperdoodle.

Stalls can be kind of scary for everybody, especially when you are just learning and even or some more experienced pilots. Don't let this minor impediment get you down. The FAA's emphasis is on stall avoidance, not stall proficiency. However, you will have to demonstrate both power off and power on during your checkride, which is a ways off.


Two keys, as many have already said, is keeping the airplane going straight. You can do that by reference to instruments only (which I had to do while working on my instrument rating) or you can do it by just looking out the windows. If the nose gets so high you cannot see over it, turn your head and look straight out the left wing at the horizon. If the wing is moving backwards it means you are yawing left -- add right rudder to pull it back and vice versa. This sounds funny, but it works because the airplane is moving forward (in a 150/152) slower than the yawing is turning you. Don't use aileron despite feeling like you need to. Try this with your instructor, telling him what you want to do. As long as you keep the airplane moving straight ahead, you can keep pulling back on the yoke until the stall breaks. The nose will go down all by itself. Then you let off on the back pressure and very soon the ailerons will start working to control roll as you said.
 
I use Vx departures and higher speed departures over trees. Sometimes I catch a sinker. Knowing the edge of up control input is essential. I'd rather drag gear through the treetops in a climb than hit the tree trunks in a stall. Actually I'd rather not hit the trees but you get the point.
 
Geico266 said:
Never understood why CFIs are so obsessed with power on stalls. Do one and forget about it. If you can't recognize a nose up attidue that will lead to a stall then you are in the wrong businessess. This is for your PPL, not acro, IFR, commercial. They should teach you what to see and avoid and stop terrorizing students.

JMHO
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I tend to agree with this. The point the FAA wants you to know is that you can't just pull up on take off when you are coming up fast on those trees at the end of the runway on a high density altitude day in the middle of the hot afternoon. You had best make sure you have done your performance calculations before you get yourself in that situation. And if you do get yourself there, pulling up isn't your answer. But by then, there probably isn't anything else to do anyway other than look for the soft bushy parts of the trees. So recovering from a power on stall isn't really a maneuver that's going to be saving your bacon, and it follows that learning the skill isn't that critical. The real lesson is not to put yourself in that situation in the first place. The other lesson is learning the signs that you have run out of additional lift to be gained by pulling back any further so you don't enter into a stall at all.
 
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GeorgeC said:
As a low time pilot, I had to rely on the ball, as I had not yet learned what being uncoordinated felt like. Dutch roll exercises can help here. My instructor tried to teach me how to them, but I did them wrong (and he didn't catch it), so I didn't learn anything at the time; only later did I learn how to do them right, and things made a lot more sense.

I found many of the cues (coordination, adverse yaw, gyroscopic effects) to be subtle in a 152/172 type airplane. You'll figure them out with time, especially as you fly other aircraft types.

As a student, I don't think any instructor ever accused me of having too much right rudder. I would always slice off to the left when I flubbed a power on stall. It was easily my least favorite maneuver. It did not help that I had absorbed the mantra of "uncoordinated+stall=spin=death".

The apprehension melted away pretty much immediately after I did falling leaf stalls and spins.
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I need to try a falling leaf stall, and get spin training. As with most people, I've never spun an airplane.

I do agree about the subtle cues in a 172. I just don't get that seat-of-the-pants feeling of being uncoordinated in a 172.
 
nddons said:
I need to try a falling leaf stall, and get spin training. As with most people, I've never spun an airplane.

I do agree about the subtle cues in a 172. I just don't get that seat-of-the-pants feeling of being uncoordinated in a 172.
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Sit in the right seat while someone else flies.

It can be hard to separate from your own muscle movements. When someone else has their feet on the rudder, it's a lot more obvious. Especially for big (more than one ball width) departures.
 
Geico266 said:
To what end? Why do we do power on stalls? What are we trying to teach students for their PPL? :dunno:
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Well they're required, for one. Students must demonstrate "satisfactory proficiency and safety" before solo -- and of course they are part of the checkride.

Obviously, stall prevention and recognition is one part. Recovery is another part, and it takes a lot more than one demo for the student to understand that the elevator has to be moved forward to recover from a stalled condition. The instinct as the aircraft stalls and the nose drops is to pull back more. This instinct must be changed.

Additionally, stall training develops the student's coordination, stick-and-rudder skills, ability to maintain positive aircraft control.
 
Have you done power off stalls as well? You should start with those. Its the same recovery and same sensation just at a lower intensity.

You really should be eyes out, side windows, front windows, occasional peeks at the ball. If you cant feel a stall in the seat of your pants than you dont know what youre looking for and need to just experience it hands off a few more times.

152s are a solid airplane and stall nicely, there is a competent pilot right next to you so you should try and relax and find what works for you. Remember that the instructor works for you, not the other way around.
 
The real lesson is that it possible to get the plane into a situation where the controls don't act normally.
I used to teach in a champ that if you got it a bit slow during slow flight it would slowly start dropping the right wing. A number of students and even rated pilots I flew with would start adding left aileron and wing would drop more and the nose would start dropping, they would add more aileron and elevator until they hit the stops with the airplane in a descending right turn and the controls full left and up. Usually that with they would say something like "Brian!" which my response would be "push forward on the stick." As soon as they would do so the ailerons would start working properly, the airspeed would increase and the elevator would start working again.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
 
One training tool I used when my student was having this trouble was to do a lot of slow flight in various configurations. That seemed to help them recognize an imminent stall. Then moving on to the stall was just the next step. This usually builds confidence and awareness of just how the plane feels entering a stall either power on or power off.
 
Power on and off stalls are required and are part of the PTS. But only the power on stall was asked for during the checkride. The DPE wanted a turning stall. Had not seen or done one prior to the checkride.
 
So to the OP Topperdoggle: How did your flight go today? I hope you went and I hope it went well.

Wanna feel better? I wanted to throw in the towel the first hour after today's lesson. I had a lesson yesterday in crosswind landings...pretty humbling. Thought I'd figured it out, and did the same lesson today. But I think I actually got worse. I was so defeated. My instructor said next lesson we're just going to go out to the practice area and just have fun and do maneuvers.

I hope you got back on that horse. Honestly? There was one day a few weeks ago when I just said "screw it" and cancelled my lesson. Take a break, but not for too long.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
So to the OP Topperdoggle: How did your flight go today? I hope you went and I hope it went well.

Wanna feel better? I wanted to throw in the towel the first hour after today's lesson. I had a lesson yesterday in crosswind landings...pretty humbling. Thought I'd figured it out, and did the same lesson today. But I think I actually got worse. I was so defeated. My instructor said next lesson we're just going to go out to the practice area and just have fun and do maneuvers.

I hope you got back on that horse. Honestly? There was one day a few weeks ago when I just said "screw it" and cancelled my lesson. Take a break, but not for too long.
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So I turned up, and when I met my instructor I told him about my concerns and that I hadn't slept. His response: "Don't worry, we'll do lots more stalls, now let's talk about simulated engine failure". It was then that I decided he didn't "get me", he was more focused on getting me through the factory so that he could get on with his medical and preparing for his upcoming airline job. He doesn't know this, but as I left, I heard him say "I'm free". He signed me off for four Part 141 lessons, and as I skimmed the screens, I could see there were items there that we hadn't really covered.

I've cancelled the rest of my (accelerated) course, for this and a number of other reasons. Also, every day so far, we've cancelled a 1/3 lessons due to IFR weather, and it's not getting better. This means that 1) what was already an aggressive timeframe had become stressful. 2) Time that I sit around at the airport waiting for the skies to clear, is my holiday time.

That's not how I want to spend my holiday, stressed and in an office staring at clouds. I feel happy about the decision, I'm not losing any sleep (quite the opposite, just had the best sleep in days). It was a massive undertaking to get to the US for this, but for a combination of reasons it's just not for me, and sometimes you have to know when to cut your losses. I'd like to try flying again in the right environment, with the right instructor, at the right time.
 
Sorry it didn't work out for you.

I might suggest another shot with a less aggressive schedule and better preparation.

I had a good time training, but I took a year to do it.
 
I see you attended a Part 141 school, unfortunately some are more worried about getting through the checklist curriculum in order than actually slowing down and reworking lessons for individual students.

I personally went with a private instructor and learned under Part 61. My instructor is middle aged (so am I) and instructs because he wants to, he was not instructing to build hours for an airline career. I really liked that when I had difficulty with something, he would see me get frustrated, move onto something else, then on a later flight we would revisit the lesson usually using a different approach / method.

Once you had a chance to breath and you are thinking about picking up lessons again, I would encourage you to look up some highly experienced independent instructors, I really like working with someone that teaches because they want to, not because they only want to build hours quickly.
 
After a couple of years of owning a high performance airplane (ok, low end) I'm finally getting used to stalls in the old Bo.

Really glad I spent a lot of time stalling a c172 and a da20. Nothing to it. Stalling a high performance airplane requires footwork. Not understanding what happens in a stall in a high performance aircraft? I'll let you find the videos...
 
d5by5 said:
Power on and off stalls are required and are part of the PTS. But only the power on stall was asked for during the checkride. The DPE wanted a turning stall. Had not seen or done one prior to the checkride.
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Exactly my point. Why are instructors not teaching what the check ride is going to require? Why all the power on stalls straight ahead when the check ride requires something different?
 
For the OP: you made the right decision based on your circumstances I think. Now, flying isn't for everyone, but don't scratch yourself off of the list until you have experienced a different instructor and a different approach to teaching. You should understand that a decent amount of time in training is putting the plane (and student) in uncomfortable situations.

Power on stalls can be unsettling. I know I didn't love them. But as pilots we have to be familiar with the boundaries of flight. Not long after getting my license I have found myself in one uncommanded descent and one uncommanded climb, both due to weather situations. The climb was particularly unsettling as it took me about 3000 feet upwards, above 14K, which is higher than I've ever been in a 172, and I really didn't have any say in the matter except to keep the wings level.

All of the maneuvers, slow flight, and stalls done in training help prepare the future pilot to not panic in adverse conditions. If you do get back into it, you will have to realize that it's all meant to keep your butt safe when you are solo.
 
Geico266 said:
Exactly my point. Why are instructors not teaching what the check ride is going to require? Why all the power on stalls straight ahead when the check ride requires something different?
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So how are you going to teach all the different potential stalls with your suggested method of instructor performs one, student performs one and you move on? Doesn't that require repetitive stalls and stall practice? :rolleyes2:
 
Not to mention "proficiency" which at least to me means a student should be able to perform a maneuver safely to PTS without instructor assistance.


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