Ah, one of my mastermind specialist subjects!
The stall occurs when one of two things happens - either flow separation on one or more of the wings, or the stick is fully back and the aeroplane held on the back of the drag curve. Either way, the aeroplane isn't fully controllable, and is losing a lot of height - neither of which are happy conditions.
One or more of the following may mark the stall:
- Wing rocking
- Wing drop
- Nose-down pitching motion
- Aeroplane held nose-up, usually with the yoke fully back.
- Very high rate of descent (this is pretty much universal)
In any aeroplane you are likely to ever get your hands on, the solution to all of these is absolutely the same.
(1) Move the stick forwards.
Don't do it sharply, don't go a long way, basically relax any back pressure, and bring the stick roughly to the middle.
That's it, the aeroplane is now flying again and under control. Technically, no other action is needed.
There is a second issue however, which is the loss of height, and if you manage to stall at low level, you particularly want to reduce that. Hence the second thing you ideally want to do
(2) Apply full throttle (and if you had it on, shove the carb heat knob back in).
Done reasonably promptly these will between them unstall the aeroplane, and minimise height loss. Then it's just a case of bringing the aeroplane back to a shallow climb, or level flight attitude (if in doubt, go for the climb) and once the aeroplane is level or climbing, bring power an pitch back to a normal flying condition.
There are four big things that you can do wrong.
(1) Not move the stick forward straight away
(2) Increase power before you move the stick forward, or fail to use full power.
(3) Try to pick up any wing drop BEFORE the wing is unstalled.
(4) Fail to keep the ball in the middle (do this with the rudder, and you don't actually need to look at the ball - you should be able to feel if it's out of balance by a sense of sideways movement).
That is basically it for ensuring your safety; after that, any other subtleties are subtleties about elegant flying and impressing instructors. But on those subtleties:-
- Don't push the stick forward to far or too fast, or you'll bunt and/or lose too much height still.
- Don't wait for recovery, do it as soon as you see or hear symptoms of the stall.
- Don't expect all aeroplanes,all the time, to pitch nose-down (especially at forwards CG conditions)
- If you had flaps on, raise them only in stages, at a good speed and safe height and whilst climbing.
- Remember that wing drop won't do you any harm, just take care not to try and raise the wing until the aeroplane is fully unstalled.
The stall is not dangerous, and the spin entirely avoidable. The ONLY thing likely to kill you is stalling very low (that is, below 500ft), and failing to take proper actions. In other words, it's only the height loss that is a problem.
I've spun C152 - and you have to try very hard to get one into it - I *suspect* that all you saw was a bit of wind drop, and perhaps what might have eventually become a spin if uncorrected (called the "incipient spin"). There are aeroplanes where this is something you need to be a little careful of, but not a C152.
G