Unintentional fully-developed spins...

Earlier, nafod40 wrote:

...So was the ASW-20 really in a
spin? Steady state?

I saw it go thundering down out of the thermal, a-whirling and
a-waggling. I don't think it ever arrived at a steady state, but I
wasn't in a situation that allowed much attention to it.

Bob K.

I have over 2000 hours in gliders including many types of glass. I also
have extensive experience in powered and glider aerobatics. Not long after
the purchase of my first fiberglass glider (Pegasus) I was thermaling around
400' over a mountain (US east coast variety) and attempted the hang glider
maneuver (which I had also been flying a lot of lately) of horsing the
aircraft into the center of a turbulent rotor type thermal. Retrospectively
the fact that it meant cross controlling while in a 60 degree bank made it a
no brainer re what resulted.....in a heartbeat I was looking at the mountain
through the top of the canopy. My first thought was "Hmmm....I've been here
before" and made immediate corrections with little more than a couple
hundred feet and an increased heart rate to show for it. Luckily the only
other pilots were above me. Take home message.....what they teach you re
spin entry is real and aerobatic training is a definite help if you get in
that situation, or at least spin training is.

As a sidebar to this discussion I noticed one person posted that he is
constantly on the edge of stalling his glider during thermaling. I would
argue that he is flying very inefficiently if that is in fact the case. To
convince yourself try thermaling (when alone) at the buffet speed vs adding
5-10 kts at differing angles of bank and focus on the VSI and see what the
results are. Look at any polar as well. Also if you try this out here in
the turbulent wild west let me know when you go flying 'cause I don't want
to be below you!

Casey Lenox
KC
Phoenix

(JJ Sinclair) wrote in message ...
SNIPPED A BIT

The brits, on the other hand, went out looking for a 2-seater that was easy to
spin and they found a GOOD one in the Puch. Mike believes that 15 have spun-
in, world wide and the Brits are investigating their 4th Puch-in.

Hate to tell you this boys and girls,
my list,
confirmed by direct contacts, of spinning Puch impacts is now up to
23 whacks worldwide.
And I am now chasing down a story about a 24th ... which is an 'old'
one, not the January English tragedy. The unveiling of #24 came about
through these threads....

On a production run of about 200 gliders, we only have a few more low
spinning fatalities to go, to remove the fleet from service.
Macabre enough yet?

Many of these wretched losses could have been avoided, had there been
a requirement for a hard deck for recovery that would allow egress and
use of parachutes. I know I won't get the Puchacz retired from
service, but possibly, maybe, by the grace of a higher power,

I might get people to STOP spin training in the Puchacz (at the least)
at low altitudes.

With a prayer,

Cindy B
Caracole Soaring

1/8 of the fleet has been destroyed by spinning crashes? Yikes!

My first glider ride was in a Puch that was subsequently destroyed in a
spinning wreck (two fatalities).


Caracole wrote:

(JJ Sinclair) wrote in message ...
SNIPPED A BIT

The brits, on the other hand, went out looking for a 2-seater that was easy to
spin and they found a GOOD one in the Puch. Mike believes that 15 have spun-
in, world wide and the Brits are investigating their 4th Puch-in.


Hate to tell you this boys and girls,
my list,
confirmed by direct contacts, of spinning Puch impacts is now up to
23 whacks worldwide.
And I am now chasing down a story about a 24th ... which is an 'old'
one, not the January English tragedy. The unveiling of #24 came about
through these threads....

On a production run of about 200 gliders, we only have a few more low
spinning fatalities to go, to remove the fleet from service.
Macabre enough yet?

Many of these wretched losses could have been avoided, had there been
a requirement for a hard deck for recovery that would allow egress and
use of parachutes. I know I won't get the Puchacz retired from
service, but possibly, maybe, by the grace of a higher power,

I might get people to STOP spin training in the Puchacz (at the least)
at low altitudes.

With a prayer,

Cindy B
Caracole Soaring

Richard Brisbourne wrote:

I still have on my shelf a copy of George Moffat's "Winning on the
Wind"
which includes his account of the 1970 Worlds at Marfa (which he won).
He mentions a hair-raising inadvertent spin in the (presumably
ballasted) Nimbus 1 in which he lost 1500 ft and recovered by "flexing
the floppy
wings by yanking on the stick". Don't try this at home.

I have twice spun a Nimbus II. Both occasions it was fully ballasted.
Both followed the same sequence of events.

A pull up from high cruise speed to enter a thermal - about 3 G's,
followed by lots of aleron and rudder to get the big wings into a turn
before flying out the other side of the thermal - simultaneously with a
push over at the top of the zoom climb. Got the nose below the horizon
with a little less airspeed on the clock than I would have liked but in
a turn and in the thermal. But both times I neglected to set the flaps
from full negative to full thermal ...

The glider dropped a wing and went straight into a spin. But it
recovered equally quickly with appropriate procedures. Nothing dramatic
like Moffat Nimbus I story.

With positive flaps, it would just mush, it never dropped a wing.

I would not recommend thermal entries like that from low altitude, or
with other gliders anywhere nearby, either below or above. I never
intentionally spun the Nimbus, either with or without ballast.

Ian

Ian Forbes wrote:
I have twice spun a Nimbus II. Both occasions it was fully ballasted.
Both followed the same sequence of events.

A pull up from high cruise speed to enter a thermal - about 3 G's,
followed by lots of aleron and rudder to get the big wings into a turn
before flying out the other side of the thermal - simultaneously with a
push over at the top of the zoom climb. Got the nose below the horizon
with a little less airspeed on the clock than I would have liked but in
a turn and in the thermal. But both times I neglected to set the flaps
from full negative to full thermal ...

The glider dropped a wing and went straight into a spin. But it
recovered equally quickly with appropriate procedures. Nothing dramatic
like Moffat Nimbus I story.

With positive flaps, it would just mush, it never dropped a wing.

Generally flapped gliders are much more reluctant to spin with negative
flaps, and for my ASW 20 and ASH 26, going to negative flap per the
manual quickens the recovery. Is this not true for the Nimbus II?

--
-----
change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

Raphael Warshaw wrote:

The Lark was, BTW, a rental ship and I don't remember any special
emphasis on its spin characteristics during my checkout.

Hmm, it's strange. This glider is "famous" for it's stall
characteristics. Lot of pilot died in small IS...

/Janos

Caracole wrote:

(JJ Sinclair) wrote in message
... SNIPPED A BIT

The brits, on the other hand, went out looking for a 2-seater that
was easy to spin and they found a GOOD one in the Puch. Mike believes
that 15 have spun-
in, world wide and the Brits are investigating their 4th Puch-in.

Hate to tell you this boys and girls,
my list,
confirmed by direct contacts, of spinning Puch impacts is now up to
23 whacks worldwide.
And I am now chasing down a story about a 24th ... which is an 'old'
one, not the January English tragedy. The unveiling of #24 came about
through these threads....

On a production run of about 200 gliders, we only have a few more low
spinning fatalities to go, to remove the fleet from service.
Macabre enough yet?

Many of these wretched losses could have been avoided, had there been
a requirement for a hard deck for recovery that would allow egress and
use of parachutes. I know I won't get the Puchacz retired from
service, but possibly, maybe, by the grace of a higher power,

I might get people to STOP spin training in the Puchacz (at the least)
at low altitudes.

With a prayer,

Cindy B
Caracole Soaring

I read this a couple of days ago and I have seen little follow-up. The
information is far more relevant to our sport than most of what is said
on RAS. It was under a thread "Unintentional fully-developed spins"
that has since died, I suspect many readers missed it. So have taken
the liberty of reserecting it under a new subject.

If it is true, it is pretty damming. It also shows that the Brits record
is not out of proportion with the world fleet - so this is not due to
anything specific in their training.

Ian

As a sidebar to this discussion I noticed one person posted that he is
constantly on the edge of stalling his glider during thermaling. I would
argue that he is flying very inefficiently if that is in fact the case. To
convince yourself try thermaling (when alone) at the buffet speed vs adding
5-10 kts at differing angles of bank and focus on the VSI and see what the
results are. Look at any polar as well.

Casey Lenox
KC
Phoenix

I haven't seen polars that take into effect bank angle, but
from doing the calculations of turn radius and angles of
bank, I'm convinced that in very long wing gliders at
high angles of bank and slow speeds (and ergo light weights too),
the inner wing is significantly slower than the
outer wing, and tacking on some knots is most
efficient (to keep the length of the inner wing nicely above stall)...

Mark Boyd

On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 18:28:59 GMT, 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 was going to say once but on thinking about it I doubt that it got
to even one turn.
Late 1968 on my first flight in a Schneider ES57 Kingfisher(look it up
in a Directory of World's Crummy Old Gliders) .
I was thermalling at 4000 feet and kept pulling in tighter and all of
a sudden it snapped in to a spin. I took full recovery action and it
recovered instantly. Did it twice more that flight while exploring the
boundary. I had about 50 hours at the time and only one spin training
session 18 months before.

The ES57 is a very small lightweight glider of about Grunau Baby
performance but without struts. Very low inertia about all axes hence
the quick entry once it let go and there weren't any great
oscillations on spin entry.

Since then the only times a glider has gone even a quarter turn on me
is during deliberate spinning.

I used to spin my Salto a bit at first(fairly exciting oscillating
entry), I spun my Mini Nimbus a couple of times at first to find out
what would happen(rolls upside down on entry), I never bothered to
spin my ASW20B and incipient spins is all I've done in the Ventus C.

I once had the Nimbus 3DM we owned roll wings level and pitch down
maybe 20 degrees in a turbulent narrow thermal at 5000 feet over
Kingaroy airfield. No problem to reduce AOA and continue in the
thermal.

I think it is fair to say that full spin recovery training is of
little to no use for the failed winch launch/base/final turn/low
thermalling cases. In all these cases departures from controlled
flight are to be avoided at all times. Likewise I would hope that
nobody ever gets into a full spin accidently while thermalling. There
may be gliders below you.

Maybe I'm a little hard on the Kingfisher. I did get my Silver C in
it.

Mike Borgelt