29R - Nothing but blue skies...

Weather: KBJC 282148Z 12004KT 15SM FEW200 22/M03 A3040

So my lack of recent posts is only an indication that I haven't been flying recently. I have made two flights since my last post. One more practice flight to get ready for my Stage 1 check and then finally the stage check.

The weather hasn't been conducive to flying, as anyone on the front range in Colorado will have noticed. The winds have been working recently and, of course, it snowed a week ago Sunday. But the past week has been very nice. I scheduled my practice flight on Monday and got a good hour in the air practicing slow flight, power on and off stalls and steep turns. I flew decently for not having flown in over 10 days and when I was done, I felt ready for my stage check.

Skip ahead two days and I have my stage check planned for that afternoon. The winds are calm and the sky is perfectly clear. I head into the office of the chief flight instructor and ace the oral portion of the check. So I'm starting on the right foot already for this check.

Now for some flying. I pre-flight the plane and we are scheduled for a northbound departure to the practice area. We get to the practice area and start with a power-off stall. I almost forgot to do my clearing turns before starting the maneuvers but remembered just in time. Fortunately that was the only thing I almost forgot to do. My stall went well and I set up for a power-on stall after that. I have been having trouble actually stalling the plane in the power-on stall, but for this one, I pitched the nose up aggressively and made sure I stalled it quickly. Power-on stalls are always kind of fun because they are easy to recover from, and the nose of the plane is pointed so high, all you see is blue sky out of the cockpit windows.

After that I completed slow flight and steep turns without problems and we were ready to head back to the airport. On the flight back we practice a simulated engine failure. There wasn't anything special about practicing this one, except we recovered the plane at what felt like well below 500' above the ground. General aviation planes are supposed to stay above 500' AGL when flying in the airspace we were in, so it was fun to fly lower than I normally get to. Although I didn't look at my altimeter specifically, we may have been close to 500' but I'm pretty sure we were below.

Anyhow, we came back to the airport, landed, and that was it. All in all a decent flight, but I felt good about knowing I was going to pass this check before the chief flight instructor had to tell me.