birdog wrote:
As an 80 year old ex-pilot, I am astonished at all this talk about spins by
presumibly experienced pilots! When I went thru training a century ago, we
did spins before we soloed! Of course, virtually every aircraft in that day
was prone to inadvertant spins, whereas GA aircraft today are almost
incapable of spinning. In addition, we were recovering from unusual
attitudes under the hood (needle, ball and airspeed, no gyros) and
recovering from inverted with minimum loss of altitude (don't remember what
the minimum was at the time, but it wasn't much) before we were signed off
as competent of unconditional flight.

I really enjoy this NG, learning a lot about all the aids and equipment
available nowdays, and especially enjoy the discussions on airmanship.

They grounded my ass quite some time ago, but my heart is still in the air.


Your points are well taken, but in the interest of clarity, I wouldn't
make the comparison between the GA planes of yesterday and today going
quite so far as to say the GA planes today are "almost incapable of
spinning". This simply isn't true, and if the two aerodynamic factors
required for a spin to occur are present, (stall and yaw), the vast
majority of the current crop of the GA fleet will indeed spin.


--
Dudley Henriques