Puchaz Spinning thread that might be of interest in light of the recent accident.

John Shelton wrote:
Gee. This looks like a nice place to misbehave:

So, while ignorance is bliss, training is the only way to improve ones
chances of completing a flight safely.

While insurance companies do not want helicopter trainees to practice full
autorotations, your only chance for walking without a cane is knowing how to
do one when you need to. So, the first time you do one is the first time you
need to. Not very smart.

If the training is killing people, then maybe the training procedures need
tweaking. But canceling training is a very bad idea. In the end, the Air

I guess my question is how many is enough? Teaching a spin and recovery
once? Teaching it 10 times? Teaching it 100 times?

Or is it sufficient to simply teach spin avoidance? What causes
a spin and how to not do it?

How much should we focus and teach spin avoidance vs. spin proficiency?

The same question comes up about instrument training. The IFR training
requires 3 hours of instruments for power PPL, but is silent about
the number of hours of training of how to avoid inadvertent IFR.
Some pilots are emboldened by their IFR and their spin training
and either enter these conditions on purpose, or become
bold because of their training.

I've had students do both: spins solo and intentional IFR without
a rating. Since then I have spent a LOT more time talking about the
hazards of these manuevers by low time pilots, both before and after
I give them this training. And I now spend a LOT more time teaching
about how these things develop and can be avoided, rather than teaching
the emergency procedure for recovery again and again and again.

I've done maybe a hundred spins in a dozen different aircraft,
but when I teach it to a new student, I always do it only
once (for PPL) and we spend a lot of time and take a lot of
precautions (remove all potentially flying projectiles,
wear parachutes, do an actual W&B not just paper, etc).
I don't do this for me (I know the W&B beforehand, I've
done the pre-flight myself already, I know if this
particular aircraft needs forward stick for recovery, etc).
Instead I want to show them by example that spins and instrument
flight are serious business, and that even the
professionals are extra thorough before these manuevers.

So I guess I'm saying doing these dramatic manuevers
repeatedly inadvertently may in some students convey
the wrong impression that such things are routine. They are not.

They are emergency procedures, and taught to convey
the full impact of such an emergency, to focus the student
on avoiding the emergency. As many accident reports show,
spin recovery procedures, in real life, rarely get
used when it really counts, because one is too low
(400 feet up base to final).
Spin recovery at 3000ft is just something we do after
the demonstration so we can fly some more that day.

Spin avoidance is the key, at least in my book.
Just like IFR avoidance for the power PPL.

If a pilot is looking for more, take an acro course or
get an instrument rating...or join the military :P

My two cents...

Another one which works well in the Puchacz is the thermalling turn with
just a little too much into turn rudder. Bleed the speed back to the stall
and it rolls smoothly into a spin, just like many single seaters. Now
translate that into scratching at 800 feet ...

My view (for my own flying) is that being trained in spin
recognition/avoidance would have been of little relevance. I've now had a
fair amount of experience of putting a glider into a spin in most of the
likely modes I'd encounter in a single seater (final turns, thermalling
turns, failed winch launches, high speed stall with yaw etc.), and think I'm
far better placed to avoid a spin in the first place because of this.

Given that a reasonable performance single seater is likely to spin far more
readily than a training glider, because that's the trade off to achieve the
extra performance, I'm never really confident flying one until I have spun
it and noted any subtleties in spin entry and recovery.

Are those of you who don't want to spin sure that you would recognise the
imminence of a spin in your single seater?

"SNOOP" wrote in message
om...
Folks would like to plod through life thinking that they will
recognize the good old nose up, stall, kick rudder, this must be the
entry to a spin, I can recover from this. Who wouldn't.

The one we like to pound into their memory is the nose level on the
horizon, cross control (over shooting the final)feed in top aileron,
and away you go into the nicest spin entry. Recognize it and recover.
We don't need to let it wind up either.

Again a good cirriculum lets you do this training with a high degree
of safety, if the instructor is properly trained.


Stewart Kissel wrote in
message ...
OK JJ, I'll bite (sorta)-

With spin entry training being done so often in benign-handling
ships, what in fact are we teaching/learning?

'Pull back, Pull back, okay kick in full rudder'-and
the thinking might go-'Gee, how does anyone get into
a spin, this is way to much work'

How does this apply the first time someone gets in
a ship that may fall off on its own?



At 18:24 23 January 2004, Mark James Boyd wrote:
In article ,
JJ Sinclair wrote:
It's winter, I'm bored and I haven't started any good
controversies (this year)
so here goes:

In the early 50's the USAF had a policy to give jump
training to all aircrew
personnel. They soon learned that they were getting
twice the injuries in
training that they were experiencing in real bail-outs.
They decided to stop
the actual jump training and just give PLF and kit
deployment, etc training.

So, JJ asks, In light of recent events that show its
been reining Puchaz's, Do
we really want to teach full blown spins? Isn't spin
entry and immediate
recovery, all we should be doing?

JJ Sinclair

With three times as many fatalities in training than
flying (helicopters),
one wonders the wisdom of practicing hundreds of autorotations
during
helicopter training as well.

I guess my question is how many is enough? Teaching a spin and recovery
once? Teaching it 10 times? Teaching it 100 times?

I don't know. How about until the student gets it right?

Or is it sufficient to simply teach spin avoidance? What causes
a spin and how to not do it?

No. What usually causes a spin is inattention. When a student is
concentrating on a maneuver in a canned situation, you cannot possibly
simulate the circumstances that will lead them to a spin entry, that moment
of confusion when nothing seems to be working right and then a calm
recovery. There are some counter-intuitive things that must go on and they
must be taught, not talked about.

How much should we focus and teach spin avoidance vs. spin proficiency?

Not spin proficiency. We are not aerobatic pilots. Spin recovery.

When I was getting my helicopter license, I told the instructor that if we
didn't do autorotations to the ground, I would go shopping for someone who
would. In that manner, I learned before I needed it the very critical timing
required to pull it off. If I had had to guess how to transition mentally
and manually from an auto to a hover to an auto to the ground and had to bet
my spine on it, I very likely would have lost the bet. I am a firm believer
in instruction to prepare the pilot for whatever he/she may face. If we face
spins, then train us how to get out of them.

I already know how. If nobody else wants to teach it or learn it, I
shouldn't care. So I won't.

"F1y1n" wrote in message
om...

I once asked an instructor to demonstrate a spin in a two-seat
aircraft I was transitioning into.

Did you have chutes? In the US, the only time you are allowed to spin
dual without chutes is when you are working on a rating that requires spin
training. If you were asking the CFI to spin without chutes (just a wild
guess), he was 100% correct to turn you down. I would too.

I would also refuse to spin a student in a glider that I had not
previously spun myself.

...In my opinion this guy should have been
stripped of his FAA ratings. Somebody who hasn't spun a glider and
recovered should not be allowed to carry passangers,

Like it or not; in the US, spin training is not required for the
commercial rating...

much less to instruct.

...but it is required for CFI. That does not make every CFI a
qualified acro jock.

A spin is a well-behaved, predictable flight regime...

Not necessarily true, not even true of all trainers. Some gliders
have, (or at least are reputed to have) multiple spin modes. Not all
aircraft have perfect rigging, and a certain percentage have accumulated
repairs and/or mods over years of operation that change the distribution of
mass about the various axis and have an unknown effect on spin behavior.

Just two weeks ago, I found myself practicing stalls in a 152 that I
wouldn't spin in a bet. It had a dent in the leading edge of one wing and
had a nasty wing drop at every stall, but otherwise performed well.

Vaughn



that is
documented in the aircraft manual (of most gliders). Somebody unable
or unwilling to enter this flight regime is incompetent and can not
call himself a pilot in my opinion.

If I took charge of a gliding club using Puchacz(s) for basic training, the
first thing I would do is pile them all in a heap in the corner of the field
and set fire to them.

This may come across as something of a controversial viewpoint. Let me explain.

As far as I know, we are now into double figures (in the UK alone) in terms of
fatalities when it comes to stall/spin accidents in the Puchacz. Compare this
to gliders like the twin Grob and K-21: there are far greater numbers of them
flying many times more hours with a much better record. Even older machines
such as the K-13 stand out well in comparison.

I really can't see the advantage of a training glider that spins so readily and
kills you if you get the recovery (slightly) wrong.

I think some of the instructing fraternity (in the UK) have become too focussed
on spinning as an 'exercise' and not something to be avoided. I believe that if
a significant group of pilots are having _inadvertent_ stall/spin
incidents/accidents when they are flying solo, then there is something very
very wrong with the most elementary training we are giving.

I read and hear much concerning technical details of spinning, i.e. what glider
X does after 5 turns with part aileron and that glider Y flicks when you yank
and stamp on the controls. All fairly irrelevant. If you get to the point of
having to do a full recovery one might question as to how you got there in the
first place. If you are low down (especially in machines like the Puchacz),
where most bad accidents occur, knowing how to recover from a spin is probably
not going to be of much use. Indeed, it may help to make the subsequent impact
unsurviveable.

What we seem to be failing to do is to instill a basic awareness of what the
glider is up to, and the _instinctive_ reactions required if the airframe stops
responding to your commands. Mike Cuming wrote a seminal article in S&G, some
years back, entiltled: "STOP PULLING THE STICK BACK!". This should be required
reading for all pre-solo students.

If you really want to show people full-blooded spins and recoveries, take them
up to a safe height in an aerobatic power aircraft, certified for those kind of
manoevres. You will be able to do much more for a lot less money.

Frankly, I see little point in making pilots deliberately demonstrate their
'expertise' in abusing a glider to the point it autorotates, then attempting to
do something about it. This is not the world aerobatic championships. I would
much rather see immediate instinctive corrections to any possible loss of
control.

To the experienced pilots/instructors reading this: when was the last time you
ended up (inadvertently) in a spin? Yes, you get wing drops in thermals etc.
but do you sit there, doing nothing, until the ground and sky start going round
very fast? No. I'm sure you don't, as you are alive to read this.

What drove me to stay up at night to write this post was a feeling of
anger/helplessness/sadness that yet more people have died in what I regard as a
pointless exercise. I knew the P1 in the double-fatal crash this week but not
his fifteen year old student.

Safe flying to all of you.

That full-blown glider pilots would question the need for spin training is
unbelievable.
But all the oppinions I read on this tread just shows how much ignorance
there is on the subject, it's really sad.

What nobody seems to realize is that the Puchacz is used more extensively in
these types of training than anything else.
Older gliders are simply not spun at the very low altitudes that they seem
to do it in the UK, which is why other models don't appear on any
statistics.

Spin training is an absolute MUST for any glider pilot. I've done it time
and again in Puchacz with many students, and none of my students share these
sad oppinions, none of them think of it as some obscure black magic,
life-threatening manouver.

But I've always done spin training at 3000ft, until the student realizes
what does it take to recover from the spin, and how the controls behave, and
therefore, how to realize you're about to spin in the low base-to-final.

Enough of this nonsense.


"Stewart Kissel" wrote in
message ...
OK JJ, I'll bite (sorta)-

With spin entry training being done so often in benign-handling
ships, what in fact are we teaching/learning?

'Pull back, Pull back, okay kick in full rudder'-and
the thinking might go-'Gee, how does anyone get into
a spin, this is way to much work'

How does this apply the first time someone gets in
a ship that may fall off on its own?



At 18:24 23 January 2004, Mark James Boyd wrote:
In article ,
JJ Sinclair wrote:
It's winter, I'm bored and I haven't started any good
controversies (this year)
so here goes:

In the early 50's the USAF had a policy to give jump
training to all aircrew
personnel. They soon learned that they were getting
twice the injuries in
training that they were experiencing in real bail-outs.
They decided to stop
the actual jump training and just give PLF and kit
deployment, etc training.

So, JJ asks, In light of recent events that show its
been reining Puchaz's, Do
we really want to teach full blown spins? Isn't spin
entry and immediate
recovery, all we should be doing?

JJ Sinclair

With three times as many fatalities in training than
flying (helicopters),
one wonders the wisdom of practicing hundreds of autorotations
during
helicopter training as well.

Why is it when there is a fatality we set off on a
chest beating exercise? The poor old Puchacz.

It is built to do a job, which it does excellently.
It can be used effectively to teach all aspects of
the glider pilots training syllabus without adding
weights, spin whiskers or other fancy gismos. It does
not have to be provoked into performing some of the
exercises, it does them as it should, correctly and
on command.

Yes it spins. It is designed to do that! OK it suffers
from some of its build quality.

It gives plenty of warning of the approaching stall,
it also gives plenty of warning that it is about to
spin. It can be flown very badly on or about the stall
and provided the pilot is aware of the circumstance
merely regaining flying speed generally solves the
problems.

Capable instructors can teach the whole range of stalling
and further stalling exercises. Unfortunately it allows
those not familiar with it into some dangerous areas

Like all gliders, instructors should be taught what
the glider is capable of, its qualities and how to
get the best out of the glider. I have been teaching
on Puchacz gliders for over 10 years and the more I
fly them the more I realise what a superb training
tool they are.

Other two seaters do some jobs better, but overall
the Puchacz is perhaps best all round training glider
in production today. It is a training tool and should
be used as such.

Having said that it is not a glider to get complacent
with. Like many gliders even those with alleged docile
characteristics if flown badly it will bite the unwary.


Dave

Some aircraft designs, given the wrong set of circumstances, can exhibit
unusual or divergent flight characteristics. They can enter a deep stall or
flat spin from which recovery is impossible or difficult. Not sure if the
Puchaz suffers from any of this, the accident numbers alone may make some
wonder. Being your basic coward, I wouldn't spin one without knowing for
sure what's going on . . . and I'll admit I don't.
--
bumper ZZ (reverse all after @)
"Dare to be different . . . circle in sink."


"Dave Martin" wrote in message
...
Why is it when there is a fatality we set off on a
chest beating exercise? The poor old Puchacz.

It is built to do a job, which it does excellently.
It can be used effectively to teach all aspects of
the glider pilots training syllabus without adding
weights, spin whiskers or other fancy gismos. It does
not have to be provoked into performing some of the
exercises, it does them as it should, correctly and
on command.

Yes it spins. It is designed to do that! OK it suffers
from some of its build quality.

It gives plenty of warning of the approaching stall,
it also gives plenty of warning that it is about to
spin. It can be flown very badly on or about the stall
and provided the pilot is aware of the circumstance
merely regaining flying speed generally solves the
problems.

Capable instructors can teach the whole range of stalling
and further stalling exercises. Unfortunately it allows
those not familiar with it into some dangerous areas

Like all gliders, instructors should be taught what
the glider is capable of, its qualities and how to
get the best out of the glider. I have been teaching
on Puchacz gliders for over 10 years and the more I
fly them the more I realise what a superb training
tool they are.

Other two seaters do some jobs better, but overall
the Puchacz is perhaps best all round training glider
in production today. It is a training tool and should
be used as such.

Having said that it is not a glider to get complacent
with. Like many gliders even those with alleged docile
characteristics if flown badly it will bite the unwary.


Dave

In article . net, John
Shelton writes
If the training is killing people, then maybe the training procedures need
tweaking. But canceling training is a very bad idea. In the end, the Air
Force spun a zillion of us out of the sky in T-37's with only a few deaths
along the way. We were required to speak and perform the T-37 spin recovery
procedures with a calm voice while the little ******* started wrapping up.
But to this day, I can recite the -37 spin recovery procedure in my sleep
and perform it without thinking twice.

A long time ago Ray Stafford Allen of the London GC invented something
he called The Clots Spin.

It simulated the thoughts of a recently soloed pilot doing an approach.

It went something like this;

I'm downwind now, I must turn about there to land THERE. Oh, I am a bit
too low. I'll hold the nose up. I'm still too low, I'd better not put
too much bank on. But I'm not turning quick enough, I'll rudder it
round......

We were required to recite before going solo.

Seems to me a very good idea, it gets it into your mind how to avoid the
problem.
--
Mike Lindsay

A year or two ago, there were people suggesting that low spins, say
below 1500 agl, were an important training exercise since they let the
student experience the shock of a canopy full of earth coming on
quickly. By having experienced this, the pilot would be able to react
more quickly to the accidental stall/spin in the pattern and thus
effect a faster, safer recovery.

Are you saying that you agree with this, that you practice it, and
that it has become common practice in the UK?

(You note that you start your training at 3000 agl, then imply that
once the student is acclimated, you bring the entry altitude down.)