A COUPLE of days ago I found a really great recipe in the Guardian Newspaper. It’s on this page, if you’re interested. I came across it from a page of recipes that are easy to make if you’re self-isolating at home (I’m not, yet) and the context for that is the COVID-19 virus that’s in the news, and in fact the only thing in the news, right now. (I wonder how all this is going to look in six months’ or a year’s time?)

Coincidentally a few days ago I was working on the exercise of slow flight with a couple of students. For anyone reading from outside the domain of Transport Canada and pilot flight tests, slow flight is the name for an exercise where the airplane is brought deliberately to an airspeed just above – and an angle of attack just below – that at which it stalls, and flown there for a few minutes, before recovering to a more normal cruising airspeed. The exercise has to be flown within carefully controlled altitude limits; typically the airplane has to stay within plus or minus 100 feet of a nominal, usually cardinal, figure.

The first student is one with whom I have been flying for a few hours. We’ve officially learned how to do slow flight, so it cropped up in our flight that day by way of review. Show me some slow flight, I said. And off we went – HASEL check, reduced power, aircraft slowing, re-trim, stall warning horn sounding … add a little power, right rudder, aircraft stable … stall warning horn sounding continuously. Unmistakeably in “slow flight”. As confirmed by the student himself. Except instead of maintaining altitude we were in a four hundred feet per minute descent. What was wrong? After slowing the airplane the student hadn’t added enough power to maintain level flight. Fairly minor problem – simply add some more power and the aircraft levelled out. It was however pretty clear that the student really did understand what slow flight is, and how to attain it. He made a minor mistake which once pointed out to him he was able to correct.

The second student was a new prospect. A few hours at another flight school – which for unrelated reasons hadn’t worked out for him, and we were now engaged in an introductory lesson. I was doing my best not to be scary and to put him at his ease. On the way back to the airport after a pleasant half hour in the air, I gave a demonstration of slow flight. It’s one of my favourite exercises. I admit to a nerdy thrill that it’s possible to get an airplane to fly at two totally different airspeeds at the same power setting. (If you understand how and why then you can pat yourself on the back. If you don’t, book a lesson with me.) Oh! – said the student – you don’t have flaps down. I thought you have to have flaps down to do slow flight.

This was really interesting. The other flight school had taught him always to use the aircraft flaps for slow flight. And it seemed he’d mistakenly come away with the impression that unless you used the flaps you weren’t in slow flight. Which really is to miss the point of the exercise.

And this got me thinking about how the teaching of this exercise, and many others, focuses on learning a recipe. Move lever A, then lever B, then lever A again. For example, a recipe for slow flight might look like this:

1. Complete appropriate safety checks
2. Reduce the throttle to idle
3. Raise the nose as the aircraft slows, using the trim to assist
4. When the trim gets to the most nose-up stop, put your hand on the throttle
5. Maintain altitude by continuing to pitch up
6. When the stall warning sounds open the throttle to 1800 rpm, and apply right rudder.

That’s my recipe. If you’re thinking you’d do something slightly different – that’s great, and thank you for playing the recipe game with me. (On the other hand if you’re thinking you’d do something wildly different you and I might just have very different ideas about what slow flight is.)

My first student had made a mistake in his execution of his recipe for slow flight – he hadn’t added enough power in step 6. Of course his recipe is actually my recipe – because it’s the one I’d taught him. But alongside the recipe he’d also gained from our lessons a good understanding of what slow flight actually is. He was very confident that he’d placed the aircraft in slow flight, and in fact he was right. He just didn’t recognize that the airplane was descending. Small problem, easy fix.

The second student didn’t recognize slow flight because my recipe didn’t match the recipe that he’d been taught. I didn’t – and don’t usually – use flaps. It seems to me that even if he’d executed his own recipe perfectly, what he’d learned wasn’t enough, because he didn’t seem to understand what slow flight actually is.

As a teacher of course I want my students to have go-to recipes for all of the manoeuvres they have to fly, both for flight testing, and simply to make flying easy. You really don’t want to have to re-invent the way to configure an airplane for landing on every flight you make. Just like if you’re baking a chocolate cake for guests you want confidence you’ll bake something yummy and not produce a soggy pancake or a burnt mess. But on the other hand, if you have only recipes that you learned, without any understanding, then you’re missing the fun of learning how an airplane really works. You’re also unable to adapt your recipes to new airplanes and to new situations which can in some circumstances put you in a lot of danger.

So how is this like making pizza? Well, actually I’m thrilled I have a recipe I like, for a dish I like. But in my mind that’s the start of it and not the end. The next steps are to experiment with the recipe: try some baking powder to see if the crust lightens. Use some milk alongside or instead of the Greek yoghurt. Bake at different temperatures. Or for different times. Perhaps the recipe as published gives the best outcome after all. Or maybe in my kitchen and with my oven a change in the recipe produces a pizza that I like even more. On the way I’ll get some understanding of what differences the different parts of the recipe make. Just like my student got a better understanding of why my recipe for slow flight has 1800rpm as a starting point for a power setting.

When you work on your flying manoeuvres I strongly recommend you experiment with the recipes you learned, to get a better understanding of what the different ingredients do. It can only make you a better pilot. And don’t forget to season to taste.