No spin training in the US?

general to the group: in spin training, what seems to have been been
the most popular way to screw up? i understand the drill and i'm having
trouble picturing how to mess up that badly in the typical training
cessana starting at maybe 2500' agl.

As someone else mentioned, using aileron instead of rudder.

Admittedly, I almost did it on my first ever spin while
training....it's instinctive, and it's a *hard* habit to break,
especially when you are at such an unusual attitude after the wing
drops and the nose suddenly is pointed towards the ground. :-)

I caught myself in mid-movement of the yoke, and corrected ailerons
back to neutral for the rest of the recovery, but the instinct to
correct with aileron before the plane is actually flying again, and
not stalled, is overwhelming.

On the first one or two spins, there is definately an "oh crap" factor
that causes your hands to override what your head is telling you is
the "right thing" to do.

My instructor suggested that I "Wedge" my elbow somewhere on the door
to prevent me from physically using aileron untill I got past the
actual spin, and have recovered from it. That worked for me, although
after the 3rd spin (I think we did 5 or 6 in the lesson plan) I had it
pretty much down, and really didn't need to do that any longer.

As for 2500 AGL you quoted, that's wayyyyy low.. Our training area
is about 650' asl, and we were climbing through to 4500' before each
spin... It was a comfortable height, and even after recovery from 2
or 3 turns in the spin, I never felt uncomfortably low.

"Mark Morissette" wrote in message
...
As for 2500 AGL you quoted, that's wayyyyy low.. Our training area
is about 650' asl, and we were climbing through to 4500' before each
spin... It was a comfortable height, and even after recovery from 2
or 3 turns in the spin, I never felt uncomfortably low.

The only inadvertant spin that I ever encountered was in an S2B... We were
doing 90 degree bank 90 degree turns and I didn't have the ball centered and
ended up in an accelerated stall and then a roll through 270 degrees in the
opposite direction to the turn in what seemed like less than a second...
Next thing I knew, the nose was pointed towards the ground... I'm not sure
of our altitude since it's been a few years since it happened, but I
seriously doubt that it was more than 2000 ft MSL (which basically equals
AGL in Houston)... Coming out of it was no big deal in the S2B with plenty
of room to spare... The instructor even had time to ask me if I knew what I
had done and how I was going to recover from it...

On Sat, 02 Apr 2005 21:38:42 -0500, Mark Morissette
wrote:

As for 2500 AGL you quoted, that's wayyyyy low.. Our training area
is about 650' asl, and we were climbing through to 4500' before each
spin..

At Chandler AZ, they set the altimeter at field altitude, which was
the same altitude as the desert to the southeast where they did their
training. As I recall, we were always above 4,000 feet before starting
any maneuver.


-- all the best, Dan Ford

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houstondan wrote:
general to the group: in spin training, what seems to have been been
the most popular way to screw up?

The best way to make it terminal seems to be to get the loading wrong in such a
way that you can't recover from the spin. According to a fellow I spoke to at
the Maule factory, it is nearly impossible to recover in an MX-7 with the CG at
one extreme of the envelope (he did not remember which extreme but thought it
might be aft). Maule placards the aircraft "Intentional spins prohibited."
Between 5 and 10 years ago, two CFIs died in a PA-28 near Solberg when the spin
went flat. The last time this thread surfaced, several people said that loading
is also critical in some models of C-172.

George Patterson
Whosoever bloweth not his own horn, the same shall remain unblown.

George Patterson wrote:

houstondan wrote:

general to the group: in spin training, what seems to have been been
the most popular way to screw up?


The best way to make it terminal seems to be to get the loading wrong in
such a way that you can't recover from the spin. According to a fellow I
spoke to at the Maule factory, it is nearly impossible to recover in an
MX-7 with the CG at one extreme of the envelope (he did not remember
which extreme but thought it might be aft). Maule placards the aircraft
"Intentional spins prohibited." Between 5 and 10 years ago, two CFIs
died in a PA-28 near Solberg when the spin went flat. The last time this
thread surfaced, several people said that loading is also critical in
some models of C-172.

Loading is important is pretty much all airplanes. Having the CG too
far aft will tend to induce a flatter spin and give the rudder less
authority.

Matt

"houstondan" wrote in message
oups.com...
general to the group: in spin training, what seems to have been been
the most popular way to screw up?

Well, maybe not the most popular, but there are also odd things that can go
wrong:

A guy practicing spins in his Citabria down in Borrego Springs managed to
get a loose seatbelt in the empty seat wrapped around the control stick. He
chose to join the Caterpillar Club rather than ride his airplane down (wise
choice).

An instructor and his student in Canada managed to jam the rudder on a
Cessna 152 when a maintenance man made undocumented modifications to the
rudder. Attempts to un-jam it just made it worse. They landed in a lake.
They both survived the initial landing, but the instructor got tangled in
his seat belt and drowned.

One of our "anal" preflight checks on our 172 is to be SURE the
rudder squarely contacts the stops on the extreme of travel. Mis-
alignment of these stop screws on a Cessna caused a rudder to jam at
full deflection causing a fatal crash a few yrs ago...

Dave

On Sun, 3 Apr 2005 13:11:58 -0700, "C J Campbell"
wrote:


"houstondan" wrote in message
roups.com...
general to the group: in spin training, what seems to have been been
the most popular way to screw up?

Well, maybe not the most popular, but there are also odd things that can go
wrong:

A guy practicing spins in his Citabria down in Borrego Springs managed to
get a loose seatbelt in the empty seat wrapped around the control stick. He
chose to join the Caterpillar Club rather than ride his airplane down (wise
choice).

An instructor and his student in Canada managed to jam the rudder on a
Cessna 152 when a maintenance man made undocumented modifications to the
rudder. Attempts to un-jam it just made it worse. They landed in a lake.
They both survived the initial landing, but the instructor got tangled in
his seat belt and drowned.

Hmmm.
I've done lots of spin training - in Canada.
There are all kinds of stats, which can be made to say pretty much
anything that you want.

So is the teaching of spins dangerous?
It sure as hell is if you are with a brand new 300 hour CFI.

But would you take spin training with Dudley, or Gene, or Bob, or CJ?
I would. I took my spin training with a 3000 hr CFI. But I sure as hell
wouldn't do it with a newly minted CFI. And yes - I do accept that they
have to practice somewhere - but not on me and not on my dollar.

Oh - and if you happen to own a Cirrus - this discussion doesn't apply
to you - those guys managed to build the first aircraft since WW1 that
can't recover from a spin!

Flame away - it's true!

Tony

In article ,
Mark Morissette wrote:

What's eveyrones opinion regarding the lack of spin traning for
students in the US? I see that there was a thread about this from an
instructor viewpoint a while back, but not necessarilly from the
student viewpoint.

Personally, there was only two lessons that I didn't look forward to -
Spin training, and spiral dives.

Spiral dives turned out to be nothing at all.. 15 minutes, 4 or 5
spirals, quick and safe recoveries, and that was over. Nothing to it,
I was worried about something which amounted to easy training.

Spins however, as comfortable of a student as I am, got me a little
excited. However, we went out, did them, and that was it.

Looking back on things, I'm *very* glad that they are still part of
the curiculum here in Canada. It's easy to "read" about something
in the POH and try to cram all that into your cranium should the
situation ever occur, but...

Can anyone here honestly say that everything they've ever read, versus
practiced in the air, equals the same training-wise?

For example, if you never had spin training, and suddenly found
yourself in a spin, would you be confident that everything you "read"
about them will get you out of it? Yes, you can read what's
necessary, but can you automatically recall all of that in the air,
when your first inintentional "lesson" on spins could possibly be at
1000AGL in the circuilt?

I've consistently found that lessons practiced quickly become second
nature, whereas things I've read take much more time to fully grasp
untill it comes into real-life practice...and there is no substitution
for the real thing - anyone who has spent time flying MS Flight
Simulator before flying the real thing can certainly attest to this.

Yes, the spins were not fun.. I wasn't one of the students who were
so paranoid of them that I was cancelling flights to avoid the
inevitable, and then ended up in the fetal position on the floor of
the plane during them - I just wasn't "excited" about them like
everything else. grin

Yep, there was a whole lot more "Ground" in the windscreen all of a
sudden then I ever want to see again. But I'm glad I did it.

During the actual training, my proficiency with initiating, and (more
importantly) recovering from the spins gained rapidly. By the 4th or
5th spin, I was able to recover consistently and quickly, without much
"thinking" about what to do, and more "automatically" just doing it.

More importantly, I was in the 100's of feel of alt lost, instead of
the 1000's in the first spins. If an unintentional spin ever
happened in the circuit, I'm much more likely to be able to recover
before hitting terra-firma now, then I would have been initially.

I can't honestly say that if spin training was not part of the
curriculum here still, that I wouldn't ask for it regardless..fun or
otherwise.. But reading here in the newsgroups, it seems as if most
schools in the US no longer train them, even if they are still
technically allowed, but not required?

Opinions?

Mark Morissette
Courtice, Ontario, Canada (Flying out of CYOO)
http://oshawapilot.blogspot.com




--

Tony Roberts
PP-ASEL
VFR OTT
Night
Cessna 172H C-GICE

"tony roberts" wrote in message
news:nospam-FC7608.22253002042005@shawnews...
Oh - and if you happen to own a Cirrus - this discussion doesn't apply
to you - those guys managed to build the first aircraft since WW1 that
can't recover from a spin!

What about the AA1? NASA had to add a drogue chute to them for their spin
testing...

My instructor followed his own rules, and a spin demonstration was one
of them. That was in 1996.

The demonstration fascinated me enough that a couple years later I
went out to Chandler AZ for spin training and some minor aerobatics.

www.pipercubforum.com/chandler.htm


-- all the best, Dan Ford

email (put Cubdriver in subject line)

Warbird's Forum: www.warbirdforum.com
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the blog: www.danford.net