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Which flying skills (VFR) to practise without a FI?

A good reason is to determine a plane’s stall speed under the conditions of the day, so when you know Vso you can fly 1.3 x Vso on final.

For many vintage planes this is better than relying on some value in the manual.

Last Edited by Rwy20 at 11 Jan 19:16

Also, there are so many other aircrafts that one can use to learn basic vfr flying skills for a fraction of the cost of a touring aircraft, I don’t think it is wise to try chandelles or 45 steep turns while on slow flight on a Cirrus SR22 or spining a fully loaded PA28…

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Safe escape manoeuvre: simulate going into IMC unaware, then move your eyes to your instruments and perform a 180° turn without losing any feet or knots.
Do not look outside.

Don't get too slow
LECU, Spain

MedEwok wrote:

I just stay inside the envelope at all time. Might be blasphemy to some here but it is just my personal way of risk management while.

Don’t know about blasphemy, but IMO this is plain wrong and makes no sense. Safety on GA, in particular light GA (SEP), is all about having margins on your side. If you for some off reason never fly anything but straight and level, you will essentially have no margins left in case something ever so slightly out of the ordinary should happen. If, on the other hand, you train slow flight, stalls, emergency landings etc regularly (at safe alt, well prepared), then you suddenly have made yourself good margins for your normal flying (touring with passengers or whatever you do).

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

dejwu wrote:

Just to be straight forward, if you start thinking to practice on your own there is a reason why it came into your mind. Before talking on syllabuses, first find the reason and cause of your thought. Most people don’t think of training on their own because they don’t feel it is necessary (sometime right, sometimes wrong). Once you find your trigger thought, practice to mitigate exactly that.

During the training, I had my senses were overwhelmed. Now I would like to be more conscious of flying and understand what is happening. I suppose that is why people say that PPL is a license to start learning. I would not often practise the skills that some mention above because I love flying longer distances. Doing this for a longer period wouldn’t prepare me for unlikely/unique situations.

Moreover, whenever weather or check-out slot at the club limits the flying opportunity, why not make bimble around a bit more useful

EDMB, Germany

Just to be straight forward, if you start thinking to practice on your own there is a reason why it came into your mind. Before talking on syllabuses, first find the reason and cause of your thought. Most people don’t think of training on their own because they don’t feel it is necessary (sometime right, sometimes wrong). Once you find your trigger thought, practice to mitigate exactly that.

Generally there are some notorious things as we already read in the thread. Most common, practice slow flight is never wrong and so is stall (no spin!) recovery. Depending on your area and aircraft I would add crosswind landings and short field techniques. If the original thought came from boredom, get the next level of rating or finally take your beloved to that ‘nice’ dance theater she wanted to get you to for years ;-). There is life outside the cockpit, I guess.

Last Edited by at 11 Jan 07:24

Many people fly too fast on final which can devour runway. This was a problem I used to have with my landings. If you plan to spend your life flying into really long hard runways in low wind conditions in perfect weather, I suppose it’s not needed. But what about short field over obstacles or during an engine out, when you may be landing off airport and want to touch down as slowly as you can without stalling?

There are so many situations in which the feel of the plane at slow speeds is critical, it is quite right that this is taught to PPLs, and a good idea to practice the skill. The main reason of course is so that you understand and react early to an impending stall before it happens.

Last Edited by WhiskeyPapa at 11 Jan 02:12
Tököl LHTL

Why fly slow? The short summary to Jacko’s list is to “maximize flying time”, touring is probably about “maximize flying distance” ;)

Looking at 6 & 3, a stall warner would make that J3 the most advanced and noisiest in history !

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Why would anybody fly slowly?

1. As a proficiency exercise (for those of us who, however reluctantly, turn off our autopilots from time to time).
2. To minimise landing and take-off distance on flat fields/runways (for safety, and utility).
3. To fly in formation with a J3 Cub or Hughes 300 (for companionship).
4. So that, after turning final at a real airport, we have time for a last mug of coffee and a chocolate brownie before landing.
5. So that we don’t exceed the aerotow Vne of the vintage glider that’s attached to our tail.
6. So we can enjoy the funky music of the stall warner.
7. So we can check for beach bunnies before landing.
8. So we can fly much the same visual approach path and speed as our helicopters (just have to flare a few feet lower and drop the lever instead of pulling it).
9. So we can read road signs.
10. So we can shoot the “NO WATER-SKIING” signs in Cumbria which we don’t like.
11. …better stop there…

It’s dangerous!

ROFL!

Glenswinton, SW Scotland, United Kingdom

The question was what flying skill to practice, the obvious ones involve fly slow and climb/descend steep no?

The other one I learnt is to be able to fly a constant heading or toward a feature far ahead on the horizon for long periods, it helps you to keep wing level without having to look left/right at wings nor glancing the AI (don’t ask me how it works) and later it will improve your “traditional nav”…

But it is true that afterwards one will never flies anywhere close to the stall when doing A to B flying (except when climbing at VX? or 2 seconds before landing?) nor fly without a gps/moving map

Last Edited by Ibra at 10 Jan 21:06
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom
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