Right now, it's good that stalls scare you. That's why they're introduced
now, early in training, so you won't make the classic mistake of getting too
slow on final approach and stalling near the ground.

Pay very close attention to the sensations you feel just before the airplane
stalls: controls go "soft," you need a lot of rudder to keep the wings
level, the deck angle is odd; and when it comes time to solo, be ready to
take recovery action BEFORE the stall happens.

Don't worry about X-wind landings right now. I take it your airport has
only one runway. When you solo, your instructor will pick a calm day, or
one with a light breeze right down the runway. You won't be asked to do
X-winds seriously until your skills are much better than they are now.
Right now, just concentrate on coordinated turns, straight and level, and
stable consistent descents. When your instructor sees that you can do these
things without sweating, he/she will move on to the kind of fancy footwork
it takes to make smooth crosswind landings.

Seth
N8110R

"John Doe" wrote in message
news:ag10f.57708$8q.9073@lakeread01...

"Bubba" wrote in message
...
Hello everyone,

I'm sure you probably read at least 50 "newbie" messages a week and I
apologize in advance for this one. But as the subject reads, I'm a new
pilot in training. I've only been flying for about a month now, but I
only fly once a week, so really, I've only been up four times now. I
feel comfortable with my instructor and confident in his knowledge and
experience, but I have to admit, learning to fly is much more difficult
than it sounds/looks.

So far, I feel confident in my ability to pre-flight the aircraft, taxi
on the taxi-ways, and take offs. I feel pretty good about those three
things. In other words, I can get myself in the air and establish a
steady altitude and fly (which I really enjoy). However, my instructor
is now showing me "stalls." These scare the living hell out of me!!
We've done power-off stalls for two sessions now and I know what they
feel like and can recover from them ok, but I really, really don't like
these.

Also, last session, my instructor introduced me to landings. Now, my
log book only has about four hours of flight time in it, so you can only
imagine how this went. I'm really surprised the Skyhawks landing gear
held up to my abuse. Plus, for my first attempt, I was trying to land
with an unbelievable cross-wind. The wind was blowing from right to
left and from what I can tell, my instructor had the right rudder pedal
pressed all the way down. Again, this was scary as hell. I'm still
amazed we didn't crash.

So I guess my question would be this: Can any of you guys offer some
advice on how to get through stall training and landings because right
now my confidence is shot.

Thanks in advance,
Terry

Just think back and realize how cool it was that you were up there flying
while the rest of this planet was stuck on the ground. Then realize that
it takes everyone several hours before they get the hang of it and stick
with it. Don't give up. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and
if everyone was doing it, we'd have alot of stupid pilots up there flying
planes scaring the crap out of the rest of us.

Relax and enjoy it, you'll get it with time. You don't even have enough
hours yet to wipe your ass, don't worry about your landings.....