Flight Training - May 2013 - 8

LETTERS

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CONFRONTING
STALL FEARS

OUR STORY BROUGHT BACK MEMORIES

I

read Ian J. Twombly’s article about stalls (“The ‘S’ Word”) in
the March 2013 issue and can only have wished that he were
my instructor instead of the fool I did have. On our first flight
to show me stalls, we reached an altitude of 3,500 feet and
the instructor said, “This is a power-on stall.” He immediately applied
full power, and pulled the control column straight back really hard.
The nose snapped up, my stomach ended up in my throat, and I almost
passed out. I have an acute sense of balance and the sudden change in
attitude messed me up. When completed he said, “Easy as pie!”
Without any further instruction or
comment he told me to do it. To say I was
scared would be an understatement (at
the time I was in my early 60s). I applied
power and pulled back the column—not
as aggressively as the instructor, though.
The nose went up and the airplane rolled;
something about centering the ball, which
I was never told about. I counted three
complete rotations as we descended and I
passed out.
When I came to we were at 3,000 feet
and headed back to the airport. Doing
stalls after that has always been a challenge and will probably continue to be.
After we landed, all I could think about
was that if I had been alone, I would have
been a hole in the ground. Needless to say
the instructor was not the greatest and he
was all macho. He would sing little ditties about the mistakes you made or your
state of mind at the time something went
wrong. The bad thing was that my other
available instructors were not much better.
Name withheld by request

I was very pleased to see an article that
talked about how clinical psychology
can have a positive impact on the aviation industry in general and pilot training
in particular. My only quibble was to
note that if a person has a true phobia
of stalls, he or she will evidence panic
attacks when exposed to this feared situation. This is far beyond what we typically
think of as fear and apprehension, and
instead can be paralyzing.
However, the general principles of
graduated exposure (or finding ways to
expose the student to stalls in a fashion
that moves from least to “most” threatening) and combating irrational fears with
real information and experience is a way
that any flight instructor could help that
person who has a general fear.
Mitchell Hicks, Ph.D.
Evanston, Illinois
My fear of slow flight and stalls was broken by three simple things:
1. I figured out that “the wing” does not

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Flight Training - May 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Flight Training - May 2013
