VR Flight World

I think the first thing that comes to mind when people talk about stalling an airplane, is that the engine stops working, however this is the wrong kind of stalling.

Stalling an airplane is much different than stalling your car. Don’t get me wrong, technically you could stall the engine, however that is not where we are going with this post.

Before I get into the details, I wanted to say, that I am not a flight instructor, so this information is only for flight simulation. Yes, it is the same skill in a real plane, as in a simulator, however I am only teaching this for entertainment purposes only.  Please keep this in mind and consult a flight instructor if you need to practice this in real life. Saying that, I like to make my simulator flying as real as possible, so I will try to give you as much information as possible about how this works in a real plane, as well as in a flight simulator. I also do have some real world flying experience, so I will also be using some of this knowledge to give you a realistic flight simulation experience.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the basics of what a stall.

The Stall Basics

To know how to do a stall, it is nice to know what is happening with the plane. We already mentioned that stalling a plane is not about the engine. Stalling is all to do with the wings.

To stall a plane means that your plane is no longer creating enough lift to fly. You will not fall like a rock, however you will descend rapidly in a stall.

This topic can get fairly technical, so we will leave it here for now and continue on with what to do.

Why Should You Practice Stalls?

The reason you practice stalls, is to develop good reflexes and muscle memory for when you do an accidental stall.

Accidental stalls are very dangerous because accidental stalls are likely to occur when you are closest to the ground. Landing and Taking off are the two times where you are close to the ground and going slow. This means that you need lightning fast reactions, to prevent yourself from losing tons of altitude.

What Simulator Should I Use?

Well, from my experience, if you want to have a very real feeling of a stall, then X-Plane 11 is the place to go. I have done many stalls in X-Plane 11 and it feels like the real thing. Of course, I also use the Oculus Rift when flying, so that also helps. Flying in VR is a life changer. I have tried other flight simulators, and I found they did not want to stall like a real plane, or they were much to stable when stalled.

How To Start A Stall

The first thing you should be doing is getting to a safe height. In real life usually you will have to be 2000 ft above ground in order to complete a stall.

In a real plane, you would complete a safety check, such as HASEL. This is great to practice in your simulated plane as well. It really creates the realism, especially if you ever aspire to be a real world pilot.

• H – Height: Be a safe height above the ground. Usually above 2000 ft above ground)
• A – Area: you want to be in an unpopulated area, that would be safe to perform this. You would also be looking for somewhere to land in case of an emergency
• S – Security: Seat belts secure, doors secure and you are checking for loose items that could fly around the cockpit if you enter a spin.
• E – Engine: Check all the gauges and ensure they are green.
• L – Lookout: Do a complete check around the plane. Complete a 180 degree turn. Look up, down and all around.

Slow your plane down

Now comes the fun part. You are going to reduce your throttle smoothly, while pulling back on the yoke to maintain your altitude. If you have carb heat on the plane you are flying, you will want to add carb heat when you engine goes below it’s normal operating RPM. The more speed you lose, the more you will have to pull back on the yoke to maintain your height. Keep reducing your throttle until you are at idle.

You will hit a point, where you will have trouble maintaining your altitude. This is where you are approaching the stall. At this point you will start to hear the stall horn. The stall horn does not mean that you have stalled. It will happen right after that stall horn if you keep pulling up.

When you are pulling up, you will notice that your plane becomes less stable and will want to go to one side or another. This is natural in a stall. Your natural instinct will be to use your yoke and turn it like you are driving a car. This will not be very effective, and you will need to use your rudders to control the side to side motion instead. Now, I know that not everyone reading this will have the rudder pedals, so for the people without rudder pedals, use your joystick or yoke to control the side to side motion. X-Plane will automatically control the rudder pedals for you in this case.

Oh Oh… now what?!?

Congratulations, you entered the stall! The bad part of this… is if you don’t know how to recover, you will surely plummet to your death. Lucky for us, we are flying on a flight simulator.

The good part, is that I am going to show you how to recover.

Stall Recovery

After you enter the stall, you will notice that pulling up will do nothing for you, other than make the stall worse.

This is where you have to do the opposite to what your instincts would tell you. You need to push down on the yoke, forcing the nose of the plane to go down. You don’t want to go into a dive, you just want to gain some airspeed. At the same time as you push forward on the yoke you will want to add full power. As you add full power, the nose of the plane will want to naturally come up. Don’t let the nose come up until you have sufficient airspeed to enter a climb out. If you have carb heat on your plane, make sure that you take off the carb heat when you add full power (this will ensure that you get every last drop of power from your plane).

Power On Stall

I wanted to end this by going into a power on Stall. There are two stalls that you can practice. A power on and a power off. The power off stall is what I explained above. A power on stall is the exact same concept, however  instead of attempting to maintain your altitude, in this stall, you will be climbing.

Begin by entering a climb with full power. Once you start to gain altitude, slowly pull back on the yoke until you start to hear the stall horn. Again, keep going just a bit further and you will be in a stall.

Recovery from the Power On Stall

As you already have full power, your only option is to lower the nose of the plane. Push the yoke forward and allow the airspeed to increase. Once you gain enough airspeed, continue on with your climb.

Hope you enjoyed the post.

If your interested in using the
Oculus Rift , please check out my link. I want to be 100% transparent, and let you know that I do get an affiliate commission from the link. I plan to put out lots of great content in the future and would appreciate it a lot if you used my link.

Also, here is the Yoke and Rudder Pedals I use in case you were interested in that as well.