Since I started flight lessons a few weeks ago, Bryan had occasionally mentioned coming along with me on one, but since my lessons are always during the day, he was always at work. Yesterday was a holiday, though, so he came along (after making me promise not to kill him). Fortunately, he brought along Cat's camera too, so he took some pictures and videos during the flight.

It was a relatively exciting lesson too, since we were practicing stalls and stall recovery. A stall occurs when a wing pitches up so high that the airflow breaks up and the wing suddenly stops producing lift. It tends to happen during slow flight, at times when you're flying just barely faster than the plane's minimum speed, such as takeoff and landing. The recovery involves adding full power and pitching down briefly to break the stall, then smoothly pitching back up to stop the plane from descending.

Essentially, you purposely make the airplane fall out of the air, and then you catch it and start flying again. So that was exhilarating. Of course, while a stall itself isn't too dangerous provided you have enough altitude to recover, an improperly-performed stall can result in a spin, which is a lot more scary:

The textbook is full of big scary warnings about how a private pilot student should never attempt a spin. They tell you how to recover from one, and your instructor may demonstrate one at some point, but as a private pilot you're not expected to be able to recover from one. You just learn how to make sure you never find yourself in one :)

Unfortunately, Bryan didn't get any video of the stalls we did, but he did take some pictures during the steep turns, and then he shot some video of one of the touch-and-go landings we practiced (10MB Xvid video).

Man, I'm loving this. The decision to finally take flight lessons was the best I ever made.