Originally Posted by JD-EE
Small planes don't stall that way, do they?
Sure, they can. with some (Cessna 150 for example), If you hold back elevator, with a bit of energy, it'll lift the nose to stall, drop the nose and repeat... On the other hand (or with another bird - 172 for eg.), if one gradually enters the stall and retains up elevator you can get the bird to mush all the way down without ever un-stalling the wings. ...The attitude during the "mush" will depend on the bird of course... The tricky bit is keeping the wings level to avoid a spin. ...and on the little birds, use of rudder is the only way to accomplish that. Any aileron input, once stalled, is more likely to induce a spin. (I've also played with that quite a bit with little RC airplanes - I have a little bi-plane that will quite happily adopt a 5-10 degree nose down, 60-70 degree FPA when held in the stall)
When I learned to fly, novice pilots were introduced to these variations of stall during initial training. I guess it might have taken quite a bit of training to get a professional pilot to unlearn stall characteristics, somehow.
