Flying the Cessna 172 | Real Lesson with CFI & Student Pilot
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We continue with David, a student pilot, in his aviation journey to becoming a private pilot. We’ve been flying together for several weeks now in our flight school Cessna 172, and he’s doing a great job. There’s a lot of flight instruction in this video and plenty of cool flying lessons you can take away for your own flight training. There’s a handy guide below to skip ahead to sections that you want.
TAKEOFF PROGRESS!
1:50 David is learning to counteract those left turning tendencies on takeoff. We do really well putting everything together, from the takeoff roll all the way to the initial climb, which is so important. It’s all about getting that flying attitude set correctly. UPSTAIRS AT THE APARTMENT
3:03 Now we get used to transitioning from climbing the aircraft to a level off. I do this in the APT acronym. We’re climbing upstrairs to the apartment, so it’s ATTITUDE, POWER, TRIM, in that order. Set the attitude first and hold the pressure, reduce the power for cruise to your desired setting, and then trim off the pressure to maintain altitude. There’s a little bit of a back and forth but it doesn’t take long to get it dialed in. Getting that flying attitude first is the most important part. TURN EXERCISE
4:08 Another tool I use as a CFI — connecting a student pilot with their feet is one of the most important things to do early on in their training. You could call this stick and rudder flying. When turning an airplane, you’re trading a bit of the vertical component of lift for the horizontal component of lift. That’s to say that you’re using part of your upward lift in the wing to go sideways, or into a turn. Because of that, you need to pull back, depending on how steep your bank is. The steeper the bank, the more back pressure will be required to maintain altitude. SLOW FLIGHT EXERCISE
6:22 This is the first time introducing slow flight to David. We’re on the backside fo the power curve, creating a lot of drag, and it takes a lot of extra power to do ANYTHING we want. But it’s also a very good chance to connect the feet, once again, to the rudder. The whole airplane and be turned with the rudder, which makes for a great exercise. This type of flying is particularly useful for the pattern where a lot of these techniques will contribute to successful landings, in this case in a Cessna 172. This is perhaps the best flying part of this video. USING THE FEET
9:55 We get the airplane down to the minimum controllable airspeed (MCA) where the stall warning horn will start to sound off. Our bank angle is particularly important at this phase. Eventually I have the student pilot fly completely with his feet. These Pedal Turns are a fantastic exercise. I certainly suggest you try this out with your flight instructor, CFI. We stick with the stick and rudder for a while, and just keep flying with our feet. This is very doable and fairly easy to fly the plane this way in a Cessna 172. LOAD FACTOR EXERCISE
12:29 Now I show a load factor exercise for when we’re turning. This is helpful to get used to the amount of back pressure needed on the flight controls to maintain altitude. We start with 10º, go to 20º, 30º and eventually a 45º steep turn. Understanding load factor is very important when working in the pattern you basically don’t want to feel that ‘load’ any time that you’re flying slow. We’re also putting together the coordination of the rudder with this, adjusting for adverse yaw, and applying opposite pressure on the aileron for overbanking tendency. ACCELERATED STALL
17:25 To dispel the myth that airspeed has ANYTHING to do with stall, we do an accelerated stall. We can stall at a much higher airspeed as long as we go past the critical angle of attack. Here we abruptly do that to show that you can do it at a much higher airspeed. As a CFI, I show this very early on in flight training to drive home the concept. TRAFFIC PATTERN
19:29 To finish the lesson I did a couple patterns with David. He’s doing a great job out with our airwork, so we introduce him to those initial thoughts and important procedures to be setup for landing. The traffic pattern, as always, is a very important phase of flying.