During the Dutch Nationals quite a few years ago I was flying a Pik-20D. My
experience with this glider was that it was very reluctant to enter a spin.
My son flew an asw-20 borrowed from a friend at the same occasion. While
seriously banking at a turnpoint in order to take a photo the glider started
a steep turn. After about one full rotation my son managed to stop the spin,
but guess what the asw-20 dove straight away in rotation again but now in
the other direction. He recovered within one rotation again and came out
with the nose of the glider pointing vertically to the ground. Luckely high
enough to return to the normal flying mode. We decided that he would fly the
PIK-20D in following competitions.

Karel, NL
"Bob Kuykendall" schreef in bericht
...
Earlier, Marc Ramsey wrote:

OK, I'm curious. How many of you have
had to recover from a fully developed
(greater than one turn), unintentional
spin that occurred during normal non-
aerobatic flight?

I've watched an ASW-20, flown by a well-respected pilot,
flick into a spin while thermalling. Including the
recovery, it went about a turn and a half. The thing
that impressed me about it was the dynamic and asymmetric
flexing of the wings in the entry. I seem to recall
that it was an over-the-top entry, but I could be wrong
on that. I have no idea what precipitated the entry,
but I can say that it made more of an impression on
my opinion of the ship than on my opinion of the pilot.

I came away from that incident wondering to what degree
the limber structures of second-generation composite
wings might interact with hard-to-predict post-stall
aerodynamic behaviors to incite spin entries and perhaps
inhibit recovery.

Thanks, and best regards to all

Bob K.