Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Advice on Full stalls!

I'd been wanting to do full stalls for ages. Here in Turkey anyone who is half decent has done them, and I've flown at Ölü Deniz a few times now, so it was well due.

I took off from the 1700m take-off and managed to thermal up 1,200 ft which was a first. I glided from this altitude to over the 1968m summit along the ridge, and bounced around a bit in quite strong air, and then head out over the sea (thinking it would be safer doing a stall!), arriving with 1,500m to make use of. I did a couple of B line stalls first, and then went for the full stall. A wrap, slow down speed, pull down to try to find the stall point, and then WHAPPP! Total loss of control for a heart stopping second, falling backwards, losing sight of the wing behind you completely, arms locked down as though your life depended on it, and then the wing re-appears, nice stable position with wingtips tucked above you. I recorded I was falling at about 16 m/sec. Hold it for a while, then release, and whoooh big SURGE forward, jam on the breaks, then another surge and then stable flight again. Heart pounding. Now try again: pull down symmetrically, fall and chaos, wing stable overhead, raise hands slowly to chest height to inflate the wing-tips a bit (almost tail sliding here which Matt thought I should try), and then release, surge, break, and away - nice and cleanly. Much more control than the first time. Sweet.

Advice for doing the stall. DO A B LINE STALL FIRST. It's like half way between the two, but it's much safer. In fact my Gangster is less stable overhead when it's B-line stalled than when it's full stalled - so it's good practice for releasing the breaks when the wing is in front of you since the wing oscillates a lot. I measured a descent rate of 6m/sec with a B-line stall. It feels like you're falling faster.

Here's a guy doing a B-line stall on YouTube for an idea.
Here's a guy doing a stall correctly. (although it looks messy to me.)
Here's a guy who screws up by releasing the breaks as soon as he stalls.

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