Last saturday morning I called Steve and he gave me the good news. The propeller on C172 (N25ES) has been replaced and the test flight was to be later that afternoon. So I called him again on tuesday and when he confirmed the test flight was successful, we scheduled the demo flight for today. Srinath and I met Steve inside the Livermore airport and we drove to the hangar.

Steve walked me through the preflight inspection after which we towed the plane out of the hangar. I had my GoPro camera ready to shoot a video of the flight. A few days ago I purchased the GoPro Aircraft Cable by Nflightcam for $49.99 from Amazon.com in order to directly record audio on the flight intercom. I couldn’t figure out a way to clamp the camera within the cockpit so I planned to later get a suction mount. Today I will have to hand hold the camera with the audio input plugged in.

Srinath took the controls, he walked through the checklist before starting the engine. Once the checklist was completed, we looked out and Steve noticed that I had left the oil tank door open on top of the cowling. Running a “final walk around” before starting the engine could have caught this issue. We closed the oil tank door, Srinath communicated with ATC to get clearance for taxi and after an uneventful takeoff, we turned crosswind and then downwind.

As we neared Byron, I noticed a streak of smoke above the runway and thought that must be a jet exhaust. Steve quickly spotted it and called to our attention that it was an aerobatics pilot below us. We quickly changed our heading south east towards Tracy. Srinath maintained 3000’ altitude and Steve asked him to stall the plane and recover. The first time he showed Srinath how to reach a stall by asking him to pull back the throttle, then pitch up. The stall horns went off and I was getting nervous in the back seat since I hadn’t expected to be stalling the plane on our very first flight. Soon stall was reached, the nose pitched down as I had read in the books and watched on videos. Srinath eased back pressure, gave it full throttle and I felt like I was on a roller coaster. First the acceleration as the nose pitched down and the aircraft descended, then a sudden surge up as the full throttle generated lift. After recovering lost altitude, Steve asked Srinath to perform another full stall and recovery.

Steve intended to dispel myths about flying and demonstrating stalls was one of them. He next simulated engine out. At 3000’ altitude, he pulled back the throttle to idle and trimmed the aircraft to a gliding speed of 65 KIAS. While the aircraft glided downwards, he talked us through the process of identifying a suitable landing area. Better to land on a brown field than a green field. Better to land along the furrows than across. Be sure to look out in all directions, including on the right side which pilots typically overlook.

It was time to land the plane at Tracy, bring it to a complete stop and turn off the engine. I traded places with Srinath, started the engine, taxied for takeoff. It was my turn to do a couple of stalls. On my first one I was a little slow in recovering from the stall so the nose dropped quite a bit, accelerated downwards before I gave it full throttle to climb back up. The second recovery was quicker. Now it was getting fairly late in the evening and I was flying into a stiff headwind. The sun was pretty close to setting and I was thinking about landing the plane before the “59 minutes after sunset’ regulation. Our ground speed was noticeably slower and as I approached the Livermore hills the ride got quite bumpy. The aircraft was trimmed so I let it fly by itself for the most part through the turbulence. I learned to land “with my feet” using the rudder to stay lined up with the runway instead of using the ailerons as the aircraft descended. Steve took over when we were about a hundred feet above ground. I taxied the plane to refuel, and then back to the hangar. Today’s lessons were Preflight, Climbs, Turns, Stall, Engine out.