As a long time aerobatic pilot I find it disappointing that many posters here appear to think that a stall at low altitude inevitably leads to a spin and crash.
To my internal g meter the sensation of stalling is unmistakeable and that sensation comes a long time before autorotation develops. There is always plenty of time to reduce the angle of attack and get the wing flying again, even in planes that give no detectable warning of an impending stall. Since RVs tend to give some warning of impending stall there are no excuses other than inexperience and lack of focus on what is important for a stall to turn into a spin.
I developed my sense of the wing stalling flying airplanes that could just barely manage the required aerobatic sequences - a Decathlon in Intermediate and a Pitts S-1S in Unlimited. While leaning to fly figures starting with the least possible energy I've stalled unintentionally several hundred times in every possible attitude and never once did the stall turn into a spin. There's no reason why stall detection and mitigation can't be automatic even while concentrating on many other issues. All it takes is practice.
I concur with jonjay's suggestion that practicing stalls out of steep power off turns is probably the best way to get comfortable with doing the impossible turn. Once you are sure you can detect a stall and stop it without losing much altitude, you can move on to deciding how close to stalling you are willing to pull and then to optimizing speed and bank angle.
If you're not willing to do this sort of familiarization and practice, you might well be better off landing somewhere ahead of you after an engine fails on takeoff.
To my internal g meter the sensation of stalling is unmistakeable and that sensation comes a long time before autorotation develops. There is always plenty of time to reduce the angle of attack and get the wing flying again, even in planes that give no detectable warning of an impending stall. Since RVs tend to give some warning of impending stall there are no excuses other than inexperience and lack of focus on what is important for a stall to turn into a spin.
I developed my sense of the wing stalling flying airplanes that could just barely manage the required aerobatic sequences - a Decathlon in Intermediate and a Pitts S-1S in Unlimited. While leaning to fly figures starting with the least possible energy I've stalled unintentionally several hundred times in every possible attitude and never once did the stall turn into a spin. There's no reason why stall detection and mitigation can't be automatic even while concentrating on many other issues. All it takes is practice.
I concur with jonjay's suggestion that practicing stalls out of steep power off turns is probably the best way to get comfortable with doing the impossible turn. Once you are sure you can detect a stall and stop it without losing much altitude, you can move on to deciding how close to stalling you are willing to pull and then to optimizing speed and bank angle.
If you're not willing to do this sort of familiarization and practice, you might well be better off landing somewhere ahead of you after an engine fails on takeoff.
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