Tom you just dont get it. NASA, and the military both learned DECADES ago that their pilots need to be exposed to as many and as real as can be safely created, the exact sensations of an event.

Why? To give the pilot the experience of that event. Why? To sensitise the pilot to what that event will be like, and to help create the proper response, and to get that proper response instantaneously.

Yes, a guy entering a spin at 100ft agl is in **** creek, but as Andy says, at 350ft, he has a chance of survival IF he instantaneously acts and acts correctly. Not to mention inadvertently entering a spin in a gaggle and endangering others.

Secondly, its the instantaneous RECOGNITION of whats happening and intantaneous preemptive corrective action that saves a guy, NOT the "suppossed" "coordinated flight". THAT IS THE DIRTY JOKE THATS BEEN KiLLING GUYS FOR YEARS ! How many guys over the years have flown COORDINATED right into a stall/spin? ! ! ! I dare say most guys entering a spin don't realise their entering one till its already way late. Their first response is not..."spin spin stick forward!". No, their first and wrong response is ...."oh **** ...whats that?....." One can also crab or slip all the way thru a pattern and NEVER be in any danger of a spin. Jeeesus 2G you ever heard of a slip dude? We teach this **** and many of us depend on it daily. Guys like you would call a slip an "uncoordinated" manouver, "ohh **** the yaw string is way over!!!" This is the crap that many times gets subconciously passed on to our students who don't delve into the intricacies like us who are flight fanatics do. They falsely concentrate in the string and not the energy. You just inadvertantly "instructed" your student into a fatality!

It's situational awareness of energy management and angle of attack that matters, not the continual bull**** of so called coordinated flight.

Should we teach and practice proper coordinated flight? Of course. But we need to go and practice way way beyond that mantra and safely expose ourselves and our students to situational awareness of whats going, how to intantly recognise it and not be afraid of what their bird is doing, and how it reacts.

Like Andy and others have stated, safe actual practice and simulation of each possible flight situation is what is needed. With the rash of fatal accidents this year I think this fact needs to be pressed hard. Guys get high performance birds and NEVER trully explore their idiocyncracies before venturing off, putting their trust in technology (L/D and engines) and forget the "pilotage" part. Its the pilotage that keeps us alive!