Mooney drops into my backyard

David Megginson wrote:

Have you had your own plane up since the accident? I know that it would
probably be hard for me to get back in the first time if I'd seen the
aftermath of something like that.

My plane is in the paint shop, should be out any day now, but I took the
opportunity to go get some training in another Mooney, and I found the images of
the crash colored that experience.

The instructor took me deep into a stall, something I've never tried in a
Mooney. Now in my Cherokee, I could hold the yoke full back in my lap for as
long as I wanted to (or until I hit the ground, I suppose) and keep the wings
level using rudder, descending at a pretty good clip, but completely under
control. Not so with the Mooney: the wing drop in the stall was too fast to
correct for with rudder and I found myself oscillating left-right in roll and
unable to synchronize the corrections with the diversions. If we had continued,
I'm sure we would have been on our backs in short order.

I couldn't help thinking about the folks that crashed, probably (IMO) after loss
of control of some kind.