"Shawn Curry" wrote in message
link.net...
Tim Shea wrote:
I love to spin. It's exciting. I took aerobatic training with Wayne
Handley and was taught spin recoveries by him.

I have direct experience spinning the Puchacz at Minden. This is what
I remember from my experience. Your mileage may vary.
With friends (usually lighter than me) in the front, I spun it while
sitting in the back seat more than a dozen times. The CG was within
the published range and I didn't have any trouble with simple
recovery- stick centered and forward and rudder away from the
direction of rotation. Worked great.
I should mention that I used to be 50 lbs heavier than I am now, but
still in the published range for the plane.
During the training towards my instructors rating, I spun the Puch
twice with my instructor. The first 2 or so rotation spin I was able
to recover normally, no sweat. The second manuver was quite different.
I was asked to let the spin develop a little deeper for the second.
After 4 or so rotations, the nose seemed to float up and the rotation
*seemed* to slow considerably. I remember thinking that this is cool!
Kind of like floating. When it was time for the recovery I applied the
control inputs I'd been taught (as specified above) and much to my
surprise, nothing different happened.....for a long time. I estimate
that we completed another 5+ rotations nose high before it broke,
rolled over and recovered. I had the stick centered and against the
front stop with the rudder also pegged away from the rotation. We
recovered with several (4 or 5) thousand feet under us (we'd been
playing at cloudbase at about 15K).
Once on the ground, we discussed this incident in the grumpy bar for
at least an hour. I (and he) decided to never spin the Puch again. I
didn't. I doubt he did either.
I had heard of this happening before. I assumed that it was from
operation outside of the design envelope. Apparently I was wrong.
John Shelton probably said it best: "On my own as a test pilot, I will
certainly get killed". I felt like a dumb-ass for quite a while (more
than usual) after that.

Anyone else spin the Puch for more than three turns? What happened
(obviously you survived)? I've heard that some other aircraft also have
a flatter spin mode that after several turns that is hard to recover
from. Any knowledge of why this happens? (Now where's my copy of Stick
and Rudder?)

Shawn

OK, this is speculation.

Remember the old spin-the-hammer trick from freshman physics? It seems
solid objects don't like to spin around their long axis - they prefer to
spin about their shortest. Imagine a glider with the CG in the middle of
the allowed range but the mass distributed far away from the CG in heavy
wings and long fuselage with a heavy load in the cockpit balanced with a
weight in the tail. Might it tend to flatten and spin about the vertical
axis?

BTW, any time I feel a glider hesitate to recover from a spin, I'm going to
throw full aileron into the spin. (As per the POH of most Eastern European
gliders.)

Bill Daniels

Bill Daniels