Practice stalls on your own?

wrote in message
oups.com...
Ok, so say you are post-solo and approved to perform stalls OR you are
a private pilot.

What about commercial or ATP pilots? How about recreational or sport
pilots?

Is it smart to go out and practice stalls on a normal basis? For
proficiency and for fun?

If you have some requirement to demonstrate stalls coming up, then I can see
a proficiency motivation. Other than that, I don't; generally, a stall is
something to avoid. I think it's more important to be proficient in
avoiding stalls, rather than in performing them. (I am, of course, assuming
normal every-day flying...for some kinds of flying, stalls are a critical
skill and should be second-nature).

If you want to do it for fun, I don't see anything wrong with that, though
of course you should only be practicing stalls solo when you have been
sufficiently trained in stalls in the aircraft you're flying. That should
be part of any new aircraft checkout anyway, so that requirement usually
would be met.

Or are stalls something you should only being doing for training?

IMHO, if done safely there's nothing wrong with doing stalls for whatever
reason you like. Of course, in some airplanes stalls are inherently unsafe.
But that's not a common situation.

As far as proficiency goes, I think that slow flight is a MUCH more useful
thing to practice. It's good to know how to stall an airplane, and to know
how a given airplane will react in a stall. But being able to control the
airplane, even when the airspeed is just above stall speed, and avoid
getting into a stall in the first place, is a much more useful skill to
have.

All that said, if you are already well-practiced in avoiding stalls and have
some practice bandwidth left over, certainly there's no harm in getting good
at recovering from stalls as well.

Pete