Stall Speed and the S&P

As a student pilot, one of the most challenging moments early on was getting comfortable with stalls.  For those of you that are unfamiliar, a stall is when you basically create the conditions where your wings are unable to provide lift and you start going doing straight down fairly quickly.  This happens most often during takeoffs and landings, and as you can guess going straight down in either case is not recommended.

The best way to avoid stalls?  Go way up in the air and practice them.  The goal being that you become familiar with the sounds and sensations of a stall and get comfortable fixing it immediately so it doesn't become a major problem.  The sensation is fairly uncomfortable, sort of a sinking feeling in your stomach as you realize something bad might be happening in the very near future.  

So how do you make the plane stall?  For a "power-off stall" you basically throttle down to idle and hold the nose up.  You start to lose airspeed and eventually the nose drops suddenly as the wings lose the ability to provide lift.  

Why bring this up now?  Well, your flight path as you enter a stall feels similar to the current chart of the S&P 500.  Once you get to the right altitude, you sort of drift sideways to a little up.  What comes next?  The stall.

Classic bearish divergence from RSI, MACD and stochastics.

So how do you get out of a stall?  Easy.  Just ease off on the yoke (aka the steering wheel).  The Cessna will come out of the stall conditions and back to level flight.  

What are you *not* supposed to do?  Push forward on the yoke.  This puts you in a nose dive.  I tried it once, not on purpose.  Luckily my flight instructor jumped in and corrected the mistake and I had a fantastic learning experience.

Not anticipating a nose dive here but a nice stall correction feels about right.

RR#6,
Dave

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