At 18:30 14 January 2005, Andreas Maurer wrote:
On 14 Jan 2005 16:13:14 GMT, Andrew Warbrick
wrote:

Have you ever spun one? I will repeat myself, it recovers
from most spins with most cockpit loads if you let
go the stick, so on the majority of occasions the instructor
has to be vigilant that the pupil applies the correct
recovery or an incorrect recovery technique will have
been learnt.

Until now I have not even seen a Puchacz in real life
- but the sheer
number of spin accidents with experienced pilots suggests
that
something is wrong, don't you agree?

I wonder about 'letting go the stick' and letting the
glider recover
itself - is this really being taught as a procedure?
We teach our
student pilots to center the stick, and apply opposite
rudder - in
that order. Letting go the stick is an unknown procedure
for me, I
have to admit.


You didn't read what I posted did you? I said the problem
with the Puchacz as a teaching tool is that it recovers
too easily even if the wrong (letting go of the stick)
technique is used and that as instructors we have to
be very careful that the pupil is not learning an incorrect
technique (which includes the non BGA/JAR22 technique
of moving the stick forward and then applying opposite
rudder. To quote from the DG500 trainer flight manual
'Apply full opposite rudder against direction of spin,
pause, then ease stick forwards until the rotation
ceases, centralise the controls and carefully pull
out of the dive. The ailerons should be kept neutral
during recovery.' If you are teaching anything else,
you are in test pilot territory).

It may be possible to recover
by applying the full opposite rudder after heaving
the stick forward but it will be a delayed recover
due to control surface masking.

Hmm... looks like the missing 80 cm of wingspan on
the 505 really seem
to make a difference here - our 505 recovers nicely
even at fully aft
CG positions.


I can't remember precisely which of the 5000 variants
of the DG500 it applied to, it was probably the unflapped,
short span, retractable wheel version (whatever version
the SGC operates).


A pilot who has acquired the impression from the Puch
that all is required is to let go or relax the back
pressure could be killed in this situation.

I don't think this is the problem. A typical Puchacz
spin accident has
the instructor onboard, and I'm pretty sure that most
of these
instructors knew about the correct spin recovery procedure.


I think you've got the wrong end of the stick, I was
commenting that it is a problem with the Puch as a
tool for teaching spin recovery, not that it was a
factor in any accidents.

Here in Germany we also had our share of Puchacz spin
accident. One
was a successful spin recovery that went into an opposite
spin - the
IP was not able to recover the second spin before impact.


Which empasises the need to teach correct recovery
techniqes which include removing the opposite rudder
before loading the wings up pulling out of the dive.



Bye
Andreas


Regards,

Andrew