I once heard a neat story about stall spin characteristics.

It seems that a light airplane manufacturer wanted a piece of the two seat
training market that Cessna dominated with the C150/152. They designed and
built a nifty little low wing prototype that flew real nice with much better
performance than the 150/152 with the same power. Then they invited a bunch
of CFI's to fly it and asked, "How'd you like it?" "It doesn't spin - we
want to teach spins", they said.

The manufacturer hired some engineering consultants and said, "Make it
spin". The consultants added stall strips on the outboard wing to make the
wing tips stall first - and boy, did it spin. The manufacturer brought the
CFI's back and let them fly it again. The CFI's said, "Boy, does it spin".
"We like it", they said.

So, the manufacturer built some little airplanes and the CFI's and their
students started making smoking holes in the ground as they spun in.

"Wow", said the manufacturer, "we got to fix this". So, they hired another
bunch of aeronautical consultants who looked up "how to fix bad stall/spin
characteristics" in their "how to design little airplanes" book. The book
said, "add stall strips to the inboard wing", so that's what they did. Now
the little airplane would still spin, but not as enthusiastically as before.
With FOUR stall strips on the wing, it didn't perform worth a damn either.

Still, the manufacturer built a bunch of them before exiting the market.

Makes you wonder.

Bill Daniels