I have read about the dreaded base to final turn stall/spin repeatedly, and decided to try to do the stall portion on purpose to see how my 182E acted. I was hoping to learn this portion of the envelope well enough to recognize it in real life before it bit me. I took my 182E up to 4000 ft AGL and set up my standard descent, 500 ft per min and full flaps. Then I slowed it down to about 60 knots and turned left, banking 45 degrees, and kept the same back pressure. Result: no stall buffet, no warning horn, mild nose drop and speed increase, VSI showed 1000 down.

Second try, same setup, 50 kts, same turn, keep back pressure, essentially same result. Third attempt, 45 kts, 45 deg turn, try to keep the nose up, no buffet, no stall warning horn, but 1500 down on VSI.

I practice level slow flight, falling leaf, and trim (go around) stalls, and this felt nothing like those. My stall warning horn was working on several landings that day.

I was careful to stay coordinated and ready to drop the nose, not wanting to have to use spin recovery techniques, but I was surprised by the apparent mush instead of stall. Is the stall/spin scenario just much harder to get into than I thought, or is the mush with high descent rate what is getting called a stall/spin?

You kept the ball in the center, so the plane behaved.

An un-coordinated stall can cause a wing drop leading to a spin.

Yes, the classic base to final turn stall/spin/die incident typically starts with an overshoot of the final alignment. With the overshoot, the pilot increases bank, and at the same time tries to drag the nose around to the “proper” final picture. But, now, bank increases more, so Pilot puts in opposite aileron.

Now, you have a classic cross control setup. Push that very far, and over she goes.

The key that you’re missing is the setup, and the ensuing cross control inputs.

Get with a good instructor and give it a try. This can be a pretty dramatic maneuver, BTW.

MTV

^^x2.

In a glider but a great demo of how to do it, or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeI2LlEzOT4&t=4s

The E, F, and G models will be more difficult to make this happen at all with just a person or two up front. You will have to gorilla it around very deliberately (with gusto). Holding against a little nose down trim helps to get a better break, and so does an abrupt application of the aileron to the outside of the turn...the nose loves to drop a lot sooner to break out of the stall too soon before it becomes dramatic compared to other models. The E, F, and G models have a smaller horiz stab, and Cessna increased the span by ~10" in the H and later models. It makes a huge difference as I'm sure you've noticed on slow landings with neutral trim, and it is even close to pointless to demonstrate power off stalls in a biennial in these models unless there is a good set of tools tied down in the back.

Be prepared for the windshield to rapidly fill up with a view of the ground when it does break, and faster than you might expect it to compared to a 172 for some reason.

The 182 is not approved for spins because it doesn't do well at all towards the upper right of the envelope at all (high gross, aft cg). Brisk nose down elevator and neutral aileron and rudder after the reverse control break will limit the rollover and you'll be staring straight down.

As MTV pointed out you didn't set the practice stall up to have a dramatic stall/spin. By using the same back pressure on the yoke, you were almost doing the right thing to absolutely prevent the stall. That would be no back pressure at all. The airplane pitches down when slow or when in a bank to prevent stall.

GB's glider instructor did a very good job demonstrating the proper way to practice the stall, very slowly. If we have and use power we get a higher pitch attitude when it stalls at a slower speed than with less power. Regardless of power, the slower we pitch or bank to stall the more mush or sink we get prior to stall. That mush or sink would be very helpful to alert the pilot to let the airplane do what is knows to do for safety, but unfortunately some instructors and DPEs expect maintenance of altitude. Also some instructors and DPEs insist on downwind base to final if that is the way suggested in traffic even when there is no traffic. The downwind turn here is dangerous because it increases groundspeed and radius of turn.

If rather than emphasize stall recognition and stall recovery practice we would emphasize stall prevention by allowing the nose to go down as designed in the base to final turn, we wouldn't have the problem. It wasn't as much a problem when we used good wind management and the pattern was never more than a quarter mile from the field. We had to allow the nose to go down in order to get down to land.

You are already doing the near right thing, Starboard, if you are getting mush but not stall. Add some power to control sink rate and angle of descent to the numbers and what you are doing will work fine. Don't start deceleration from the stabilized approach until a quarter mile out. But at five miles out it is fine to allow the nose to go down in the turn and then add enough power to get back on glideslope.

Another advantage of allowing the nose to go down naturally in the turn is that we can turn at whatever bank is needed to align with the centerline extended. As with back an forth pattern in Ag work, we want to bank more than necessary at first so that we may decrease bank as we get nearer and lower to the target of the turn. Target, not heading. Heading is instrument orientation not contact orientation.

You kept it coordinated so not making the mistake of the “skidding” turn when overshooting base to final….

This video is great aerodynamic education that I forgot, or not taught properly, 37 years ago in ground school.

https://youtu.be/PMhoPJYCvXA

skyward II wrote:You kept it coordinated so not making the mistake of the “skidding” turn when overshooting base to final….

This video is great aerodynamic education that I forgot, or not taught properly, 37 years ago in ground school.

https://youtu.be/PMhoPJYCvXA

Very clear explanation

The explanation of what is happening in the skidding turn stall is very clear. Some of the expectations and limitations are confusing given the very safe dynamic neutral design feature of the tractor mounted engine airplane. Why are we expected to limit bank angle and why are we expected to pull back in the turn?

What is not given as an alternative prevention of the skidding turn stall is that if we do not pull gs in a turn of any bank, there is no stall. No stall, no skidding turn stall. I like and teach this no bank limit no pull prevention rather than the don't skid when you stall in the pattern prevention. Which would you rather do and teach?

mtv wrote:Yes, the classic base to final turn stall/spin/die incident typically starts with an overshoot of the final alignment. With the overshoot, the pilot increases bank, and at the same time tries to drag the nose around to the “proper” final picture. But, now, bank increases more, so Pilot puts in opposite aileron
MTV

This was very succinctly put, and the extended explanation in skyward II 's video https://youtu.be/PMhoPJYCvXA was thorough and helpful. The demo was also instructive

GB wrote:In a glider but a great demo of how to do it, or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeI2LlEzOT4&t=4s

I guess I was just amazed that I couldn't really stall it at all, staying fully coordinated. This clarified what is likely happening, as I was by myself with no weight in the back.

lesuther wrote:The E, F, and G models will be more difficult to make this happen at all with just a person or two up front. You will have to gorilla it around very deliberately (with gusto). Holding against a little nose down trim helps to get a better break, and so does an abrupt application of the aileron to the outside of the turn...the nose loves to drop a lot sooner to break out of the stall too soon before it becomes dramatic compared to other models. The E, F, and G models have a smaller horiz stab, and Cessna increased the span by ~10" in the H and later models. It makes a huge difference as I'm sure you've noticed on slow landings with neutral trim, and it is even close to pointless to demonstrate power off stalls in a biennial in these models unless there is a good set of tools tied down in the back.

The 182 is not approved for spins because it doesn't do well at all towards the upper right of the envelope at all (high gross, aft cg). Brisk nose down elevator and neutral aileron and rudder after the reverse control break will limit the rollover and you'll be staring straight down.

That last sentence is both illuminating and intriguing. I was aware of the lack of approval for spins, but not why exactly. At aft CG does it head into a flat spin, then? And why does such nose-heavy plane do this at aft CG and heavy while a similar airframe like the 172 does not?

Everyone's input is very welcome, thanks to all. I am going to continue letting the nose go down during turns as below.

contactflying wrote:
What is not given as an alternative prevention of the skidding turn stall is that if we do not pull gs in a turn of any bank, there is no stall. No stall, no skidding turn stall. I like and teach this no bank limit no pull prevention rather than the don't skid when you stall in the pattern prevention. Which would you rather do and teach?

Starrboard wrote:I have read about the dreaded base to final turn stall/spin repeatedly, and decided to try to do the stall portion on purpose to see how my 182E acted.

Good on you sir The rest of my ramblings are probably stuff YOU already know, but someone else reading this may not, and therefore decide that their airplane really is 'unstallable'.

Starrboard wrote:.... I slowed it down to about 60 knots and turned left, banking 45 degrees, and kept the same back pressure. Result: no stall buffet, no warning horn, mild nose drop

Read; STALLED.

Starrboard wrote: speed increase, VSI showed 1000 down.

Read; Airplane doing what it wants and trying to return to un-stalled flight.

At this intermission I'd like to recommend reading Woflgang's writings on the Mushing glide. And the writing directly after where you transition from a very inefficient glide to a stall.

Starrboard wrote: practice level slow flight, falling leaf, and trim (go around) stalls, and this felt nothing like those.

you were simply configured different, the airplane was trying to do the exact same thing.

Starrboard wrote: stall warning horn was working on several landings that day.

Your ears, eyes, nose and butt will all do better than those devices in VFR conditions if you just let them.

Your story reminds me of a famous black cub participating at one of the STOL comps in DENNY's neck of the woods. It was a slatted SQ, and I am certain that young man thought it was un-stallable as well. That day he didn't just stall, he spun it in, albeit at 20 +/- feet. It didn't go all that bad, all things considered, and it was a good time to learn from somebody else misfortune.

Your airplane can stall, it can do it turning base to final, and it doesn't matter what letter follows the Cessna 182, some will just take a little more persistence ....

Take care, Rob
Not an instructor

Rob's analysis of what happened when you practiced, Starrboard, at altitude is accurate. Don't do that in the pattern. We actually should understand stalls at altitude like MTV said. We also should allow the airplane to do it's dynamic neutral stability for safety thing in the pattern as you have decided. If you don't pull back on the stick in any turn of any bank, it will not stall coordinated nor will it stall uncoordinated. If you don't pull back on the stick in the turn of any bank, you also don't have to worry about skidding. Rob is a lot more organized at night, but in the daytime we both will push the nose around to where we want it with rudder only going between things going into the field. That is only with the nose well down.

Teaching CPL level pilots how to spray crops, it becomes very evident that few actually know how to turn at steep banks with enough rudder. Most non-Ag pilots slip around all steep turns or never have done them except on the commercial flight test. They are not using enough rudder in the direction of the turn. Think skidding because that is what they are thinking. They have been indoctrinated in the horror of the skidding stall on the base to final turn five miles out where they are also indoctrinated in the horror of giving up altitude. It is the horror of giving up altitude and thus the pull back in the turn and thus the stall that is the problem. We don't have to stall. We don't have to pull back to achieve the controlled wings level gliding gait that Wolfgang talks about. We can allow the nose to go down for the safety that was designed into the airplane and then recover, wings level, to the controlled gliding gait that Wolfgang talks about. We can pull back with the wings level safely after the descending turn. We can pull back with the wings level after the level turns allowing the nose to first go down. We can pull back with the wings level after the climbing turn allowing the nose to first go down.

The indoctrination to pull back in all turns is what is killing pilots in the pattern. The skidding stall base to final turn is just more dramatic and therefore gets the attention. We should indoctrinate pilots into allowing the airplane to do what it wants to do concerning airspeed. It wants to stay at that very comfortable flying airspeed. At a thousand feet up in the pattern, we have plenty of vertical space available to allow it to do just that. Wings level, we can go for the slower gait.