Not my best work

I'd performed the slow flight maneuver once before. Today, I did it under the hood. I had a hard time with the high pitch attitude since I didn't properly set elevator trim. Under the hood, the mushy response to control input was not expected. I also did my 360 clearing turn under the hood. I didn't hold altitude very well without trim in a 30 degree bank. One of these days, I will learn.

Then there were stalls. I heard that a student recently failed his checkride because he recovered when the stall horn started blaring--the call of the Chickenhawk--rather than after the airplane actually stalled. So I was intent on making a dramatic pitch break before recovering. Didn't happen. I'd get to about 35 degrees pitch in the power-on stall. When a wing dropped, I'd try to level it with aileron, still holding lots of yoke back pressure to get a clear break. Not good. It was much better when I just broke the stall with down elevator.

I had terrible altitude control performing steep turns without the hood today. Again, the poor results were mostly caused by poor elevator trim. My CFI demonstrated the steep turn with no hands on the yoke, driving home the point that I am making it more difficult than necessary with my death grip on the yoke.

He showed me the emergency descent maneuver, where we dropped about 1300 fpm while maintaining about 100 knots airspeed. Pretty cool.

Monday morning will be better.

Flight time this lesson: 1.3 hours dual, 0.2 hours simulated instrument
Total time to date: 7.8 hours dual, 0.6 hours simulated instrument