Slow flight and the flight characteristics demonstration

What this lesson is for: teaching slow flight and the flight characteristics demonstration from the right seat, and being able to keep a Student at the slow end of the envelope safely while actually teaching them something.

This is the foundation of the stall series and it is not a stall lesson. Nothing today is taken to a stall. If one happens, that is a finding about monitoring rather than a bonus demonstration.

Read:

• FAA-S-ACS-25, tasks AI.X.A and AI.X.B, in full. Write down the tolerances and the airspeed the slow flight task specifies.
• FAA-H-8083-3C, the chapter covering slow flight and the approach to a stall.
• FAA-H-8083-9B chapter 2, on workload and how much a learner can absorb under stress.
• Your lesson 14 notes on angle of attack indicators, and whether today's airplane has one.
• standards/MANEUVER-LESSON-SHAPE.md, addition 2.

Deliverable: Two things. First, write the preflight ground lesson you will teach on slow flight and the flight characteristics demonstration. This is one of your seventeen P3 plans, covering slow flight. Second, look up the stall speeds in every configuration and the flap limiting speeds for the airplane you will fly, in that airplane's own approved material, and bring them written down.

It is worth thinking about before you teach it, because it changes how you teach it.

Slow flight is where a Student first discovers that the controls are not switches. Everything gets sloppier, the nose wants to wander, the airplane answers late, and coordination stops being optional.

A Student who has spent real time here arrives at stalls unafraid and arrives at landings with hands that already know what mushy feels like.

Teach it as a box to tick and you produce Students who are frightened of the slow end of the envelope. They will carry that into every landing they ever make.

1. Establishing slow flight: configuration, power, airspeed.
2. Control effectiveness and control feel when it is all slower.
3. Left-turning tendencies at high power and low airspeed.
4. Coordination as a requirement rather than a refinement.
5. Maneuvering: turns, climbs, descents, configuration changes.
6. The flight characteristics demonstration.
7. Stall warning recognition, and how it differs from the stall.
8. A power loss from slow flight, and what your Student's instinct will be.
9. Teaching somebody who is uncomfortable and near their capacity.
10. Angle of attack as a margin you can watch, rather than a number on a placard.

A Student in slow flight for the first time is working hard and slightly stressed. Their capacity to take in anything new drops sharply.

If you deliver a paragraph while they are fighting the airplane, the paragraph is wasted. Worse, it adds to the load.

One idea. Short sentence. Then let them fly. Today you are graded on that specifically, and if you deliver a correction longer than two sentences while your Student is at high workload, it does not meet the standard however correct it was.

You will also be given a Student who goes rigid and stops absorbing entirely. Noticing that, and reducing the workload rather than adding instruction, is the skill.

You will be briefed that a simulated emergency is coming, and not when. That is how this program teaches simulated emergencies, and you will teach it the same way at lesson 38.

The scenario: power loss while established in slow flight. Slow, nose high, high power, and the throttle comes back. Your Student's instinct will be to hold altitude with the elevator, which at that airspeed takes about two seconds to become a stall.

The nose comes down first and the altitude is spent. You have to have taught that before it happens, and say it fast enough for it to matter when it does.

1. Teach your preflight ground lesson on slow flight and the demonstration.
2. Demonstrate establishing and maneuvering in slow flight, narrating throughout.
3. Demonstrate the flight characteristics at various configurations and airspeeds.
4. Talk your instructor through slow flight, including turns, climbs, descents, and a configuration change.
5. Teach the power loss response, and intervene if it is not applied.
6. Take the airplane at the threshold, out loud, three-way.
7. Critique, self-critique, then listen.

1. You deliver the preflight ground lesson on slow flight and the flight characteristics demonstration, covering all seven items of the brief, and explain why slow flight is taught in terms of what the Student gains rather than what the ACS requires.
2. You establish and maneuver in slow flight to the tolerances the current AI.X.A task specifies, from the right seat, while narrating continuously, including turns, climbs, descents, and at least one configuration change.
3. You conduct the flight characteristics demonstration, naming what changes with configuration and airspeed as it changes, rather than describing it afterward.
4. You distinguish the stall warning from the stall in the taught content and in flight, and do not allow the demonstration to reach a stall.
5. You talk the Simulated Student through slow flight using single-idea corrections, and do not deliver a correction longer than two sentences while the Student is at high workload.
6. You teach the response to a power loss from slow flight before it happens, and direct the nose down within two seconds when it does.
7. You take the flight controls using the three-way exchange, out loud, in both directions, including at least once when the airplane was not offered.
8. You deliver a critique naming the error, its probable cause, and the correction for at least two of the errors flown.
9. You deliver a self-critique before hearing the instructor's.

Falling short does not block lesson 31. No proficiency gate. It triggers the visibility rule in policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md.

• Teaching slow flight as an item to be completed.
• Correcting six small things at once. Everything is slightly wrong in slow flight. Pick the one that caused the others.
• Long explanations while your Student is fighting the airplane.
• Letting it reach a stall.
• Chasing airspeed with the throttle, and teaching that habit forward.
• Uncorrected yaw at high power, or correcting it by staring at the ball. The ball is the instrument. The power and the airspeed are the cause.
• Ballooning on flap extension. Trim.
• Talking well while the altitude wanders. Lesson 26 again.
• Not noticing a Student who has gone rigid and is no longer taking anything in.
• Holding altitude with elevator after the power loss.
• Quoting stall speeds from another airplane.
• Teaching the published stall speed as though it held everywhere. It holds at one weight, unaccelerated and coordinated. Slow flight is where that stops being an abstraction.

• The stall warning is continuous for more than three seconds without correction applied.
• Airspeed decays below the slow flight target and keeps decreasing for two seconds.
• Bank exceeds 30 degrees at any point during slow flight.
• Yaw is uncorrected at high power and low airspeed for more than three seconds.
• Altitude passes 1,500 ft AGL descending.
• The nose is not lowered within two seconds of the simulated power loss.
• Either of us is unclear about who is flying the airplane.

Hard floor: all air work is terminated by 1,500 ft AGL. North Aero policy, not regulation.

The bank limit is tighter today than anywhere else in the phase, at 30 degrees. Bank raises the stall speed, and at the slow end there is no margin to give away.

Positive exchange of controls, both directions, every time.

Three slots, all currently empty: VS-30-1 Exemplar on AI.X.A, VS-30-2 Error on AI.X.A, VS-30-3 Error on AI.X.B.

This lesson is complete and deliverable whether or not its Video Slots are filled.