Puchaz spin count 23 and counting

In article 4028832a$1@darkstar,
(Mark James Boyd) wrote:

Was the altitude the bailout or chute opening
altitude? Perhaps a better question is:

If I gave you a 2-22 and asked you to bail out solo,
how low would you do it?

Weeeell, after you gave me the $10k in cash I expect I'd get a tow to
5000 ft or more...

You make some good points.

And I note that although I spend quite a lot of time flying at more than
2000 feet above the airfield, I probably don't spend very much of it
more than 2000 ft above the *terrain*. Which is what counts for
parachute opening.

-- Bruce

On 9 Feb 2004 16:45:49 -0800, (Rich Stowell)
wrote:

Martin Gregorie wrote in message . ..


A question for the PPLs amongst us: just how high would you need to be
to start egress from a full 4-place GA plane for everybody to exit
with room for the chute to open?


Modern emergency parachutes are designed to be fast opening.

Yes, but that isn't what I was asking. Given that a 4-seat GA aircraft
has at most two doors, that the pilot leaves last and that normal
seating is installed:

- how long would it take three adults to leave by one door, followed
by the pilot out his side?

- how much height would be lost during that time? gliding? spinning?

- given typical GA cruising heights, which often seem to be around
3000 ft in the UK, how high would the plane be when the last occupant
left?

In other words, given typical operating conditions and loads for a
typical GA aircraft is there any point in all occupants wearing
chutes? That's even ignoring the volume and weight of the chutes.

Remember that this isn't either a blame or a GA-bashing exercise, but
merely an attempt to discover if a chute is more use to a glider pilot
than it is to the occupant of a typical GA aircraft. I suspect that
its more use to a glider pilot because of the egress problem and that
is why we use 'em and GA pilots don't but it would be nice to have
some factual confirmation or otherwise of this.

That issue aside, I did some research that wound up as an article in
Sport Aerobatics magazine awhile back on the subject of emergency bail
outs. In one case, one pilot successfully bailed out at about 300 feet
AGL. See http://www.richstowell.com/bailout.htm for the full article.

Good article. Thanks for the link.


--
martin@ : Martin Gregorie
gregorie : Harlow, UK
demon :
co : Zappa fan & glider pilot
uk :

On 9 Feb 2004 23:28:52 -0700, (Mark James Boyd)
wrote:

Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Sun, 08 Feb 2004 15:54:18 GMT, "Vaughn"
wrote:

From a UK
perspective that seems criminally negligent and we
accept the cost of running parachutes for all seats
in all club gliders as simply something it would be
inconceivable to do.. And yes, they have saved lives...

I don't disagree, like helmets on motorcycles, it is (or is not) part
of the local safety culture and the majority naturally conform. That said,
is chute use normal in all small UK aircraft, or is it just gliders? If
only gliders, why?

Helmets, like much safety equipment, can increase the chance
of an accident but usually reduce the injury when one happens.
Somewhere in there is a good balance...


AFAIK the UK practise of always wearing chutes in gliders dates from
the lightning strike on an ASK-21 about 8 years ago. Its occupants
were wearing chutes and both survived. They would not have done so
without them. Having said that, chute use is not entirely universal:
we never wear them in our T-21b, but that's the only exception I know.
I'm not clear on the reason for this.

Aha! Chute use is NOT mandatory for ALL UK glider operations!
Excellent! Very civilized. And I think a much better way
since at least to some extent now pilots need to ask
themselves "why should I wear a chute" which is MUCH more
important a mental exercise than the rote donning of the
silk...

I've never worn a chute in a light plane, and that includes SF-25s, or
even seen one in the cabin on the relatively few occasions I've flown
in GA aircraft in the UK. I'd always assumed that had a lot to do with
the relative difficulty of getting out of a GA plane in a hurry
compared with a glider. That has to make the chute much less useful.

A question for the PPLs amongst us: just how high would you need to be
to start egress from a full 4-place GA plane for everybody to exit
with room for the chute to open?

C'mon Martin, it's a glider newsgroup. How about, how high would
YOU voluntarily exit a glider with a chute.

For me, somewhere between 1500-2500 feet AGL sounds right.
Below that, I'd rather think I'd try to fly and perhaps
bugger it in...

That sounds about right for me too, provided the aircraft is still on
one piece and (potentially) flyable.

See my recent post earlier in the thread for a fuller explanation of
why I asked about the GA experience.

--
martin@ : Martin Gregorie
gregorie : Harlow, UK
demon :
co : Zappa fan & glider pilot
uk :

At 07:48 10 February 2004, Mark James Boyd wrote:
BAToulson wrote:

and then I'd show them the statistics for
lightning strikes and prove that wearing a chute increased
the
chance of being hit by lightening, and this was a much
greater risk than what we estimated was the risk of

being the first fatal accident in the 2-33 in over
30 years,
much less one that might require a chute...

A short while after the then CFI of the London Gliding
Club mandated all training flights will use chutes,
one of our K21's was hit by a lightning strike which
travelled horizontally some 3-4 miles. The glider was
totaly destroyed, with the tail only attached by it's
control cables. Both pilot and student bailed out and
landed safely (bar a few breaks). Had this been prior
to Jed's time as CFI, we would have had two more dead
pilots.

I think that was the first of a kind in the UK, certainly
the risk of being hit in a mid-air is much greater,
and we have those pretty much every season!

Just because statistics show that something is unlikely,
it does not mean that the next flight you make wont
be the next entry into those same statistics!

Your chute is your only chance.

Errr

Mike..in answer to your points...

I don't have much power experience, but people I have
flown with and coverted to gliders include an ETPS
graduate, a lightning pilot and ex RAF low level aerobatics
champion and a number of high hour ATPL's - and I've
listened intently to what they've said during the conversion
process..

Perhaps I should have excluded fighter and aerobatic
pilots specifically from my comments, but I did not
say spam can pilots never used the rudder nor that
they never fly at high AOA..

During my own power training in the UK (again post
learning to glide like you) I was not terribly impressed
with the forced landing training.

As has been said here before glider pilots spend most
of the time flying in the lower 40% of the speed range
of their airframe and power pilots (F4's, world record
attempts, test flying, excursions into outer space
and so on excluded) spend most of the time in the upper
40% of their speed range..

I normally respect your opinion on these sort of things,
but I do wish you would read what I wrote and not what
you thought I wrote..

Mark

At 21:36 09 February 2004, Mike Borgelt wrote:
On 9 Feb 2004 09:17:28 GMT, Mark Stevens
wrote:

In my opinion any comparison with the withdrawal of
spin training for US PPL's is invalid, power pilots
do not routinely fly at high angles of attack, and
tend not to use the rudder in most phases of flight.
They also tend not to make the number of outlandings
glider pilots do and tend not to have the same problems
to solve in the pattern..


Do you fly power?
I got my power licence after 27 years gliding.
Where do you get the idea that power pilots don't use
the rudder?
Rudder is used as required. In most power planes not
much rudder is
required because of the design of the ailerons and
the short wings but
it is still required if you want to keep the ball in
the middle. Put a
well trained power pilot in a glider and he might take
a couple of
minutes to figure it out but that is about all. He
probably will take
a little longer to do good coordinated continuous steep
turns but that
is only because glider pilots do many more than power
pilots do.
Hopefully power pilots don't do many outlandings but
I was impressed
by the amount of time spent during training on forced
landings and
then you have a far worse problem than in a glider.

JJ might fill you in on use of rudder at high AOA in
power planes like
the F4.

Mike Borgelt

15 (realy fifteen) rescue jumps from gliders were reported by the German BFU
(air accident investigation agency) in summer 2003 in Germany or out of
German registered gliders abroad. 14 succeeeded. Most jumps were caused
by mid air collisions, others by structural failures.
Double seaters as well as single seaters were involved.
One jump was directly out of a winch launch (ASK21, aileron not connected),
some others were also close to ground, including the fatal one.
Since there are only about 30,000 glider pilots here, roughly one of 2000
had to jump!
Those who want to board a glider without a parachute should keep this in
mind!
(In other years only about two or three rescue jumps were registerd.)
Happy flights
Walter

(Mark James Boyd) wrote in message news:40288f58$1@darkstar...
W.J. \(Bill\) Dean \(U.K.\). wrote:

"As this training progresses, it is necessary to introduce brief
spins where
the ground is noticeably close.

This reminds me of the old FAA requirement to practice twin engine-out
procedures (Vmc demonstration) at low altitudes during multiengine
training, the reasoning being the low performance of the existing
twin-engined trainers required a low altitude in order to have any
single-engine climb available to show. Apparently, this killed a LOT
of pilots due to stall spins at low altitude in light twins - not fun
with an engine caged! - until the FAA decided that the cure was a lot
worse than the disease.

Sure, with a really experienced instructor, and a really trusted
glider, a low altitude spin could be "safely" demonstrated. But I'm
not totally convinced that it is necessary for the lesson to sink in.
OTOH, in the context of spin training, it is absolutely vital to beat
into the students head the nasty impact (pun intended) of a surprise
low altitude departure.

You guys (the Brits) can possibly get away with it, due to much more
standardization (a good thing). I would hate to see it adopted in the
US, where standardization is a one of dem big woids we aint learnd in
skool.

How about our French, German, Dutch, etc. colleagues - How low do you
teach (or demonstrate; not necessarily the same thing) low altitude
spin entries?

BTW, don't forget 1812 (we still need to burn 10 Downling Street) and
Suez (Now there was a virtuous war!). Just joking, we love you man!

Kirk

Bill,

So if I may summarise briefly - of the five accidents
with Puch's where we're fairly certain of the causes
only one occurred during spin avoidance training..
If my memory is correct was that not the one with two
instructors on board?

Can you summarise or comment on any other two seater
accidents with serious injury or fatalities that were
spin related in any way in that time period? I'm stretching
to think of some..

Mark








At 23:48 09 February 2004, W.J. \bill\ Dean \u.K.\.
wrote:
JJ,

1./ 'The British are now investigating their 4th
Puch spin-in with
unspecified other types that have spun-in as a result
of spin-training.'

In fact, unfortunately, we British are now investigating
our sixth Puchacz
fatal accident. If, I repeat if, this last one turns
out to be a spin-in,
it will be the fifth.

The accident in 2003 (20/03) happened when the glider
was flown into the
winch-wire while another glider was being launched.
From my reading of the
accident report, there was no stall or spin, and the
type of glider made no
difference at all.

The accident in 1995 (82/95) was a spin entry when
the pilot in command lost
control while recovering from a launch failure at about
300 ft. The pupil
was not touching the controls at any point, the stall/spin
was not part of
training, nor was the launch failure itself. I am
afraid that there have
been a number of similar accidents to various different
types of glider.
The accident to the DG500 shown in the video on the
'Spin' thread seems to
have been similar, that pilot was lucky he was already
very low, it seems
clear to me that if he had been say 100ft higher when
the glider departed he
would have been much worse off.

The accidents in 1993 (132/93) and 1991 (111/91) were
due to failure to
recover from a spin entry at low level. It is likely
that the spin entries
were inadvertent, and the pilots in command tried to
recover immediately.
However, the pupils held the stick right back so the
gliders span into the
ground. Hence the advice now given for pupils to
be told to keep their
hands clear of the stick for first stall/spins, and
for these to be done at
altitude anyway.

The accident in 1990 (114/90) was a deliberate spin
for training purposes,
recovery was started too low. This is why the advice
quoted in my previous
posting today at 17.07 was given in the BGA Instructors'
Manual published in
1994.

2./ 'The British require 2-turn spins (full blown)
in both directions, on
initial check-out and annually thereafter.'

We do not require 2-turn spins annually. I don't
know what you mean by
initial check-out. I had annual check-outs at two
clubs last year, one in
a K21 and one in a K13. With the K21 we did no spins
at all (it won't at
my weight), with the K13 we did spin entries, but no
2-turn spins (again,
the K13 won't at my weight).

Individual clubs, or individual instructors may require
more stringent
testing, and it will vary with the assessment of the
pupil, but there is no
general requirement as far as I know for 2-turn spins
in both directions (if
there is, how did I escape?). Only clubs using the
Puchacz or some other
E. European gliders would be able to insist on everyone
doing a 2-turn spin;
given suitable conditions and enough height this sounds
quite a good idea
anyway.

I still don't know the difference between a full blown
2-turn spin, and any
other kind of 2-turn spin.

3./ 'Some practice spins are entered as low as pattern
altitude.'

I don't know what you mean by circuit pattern altitude.
This depends so
much on the nature of the site, and the conditions.
I have done a lot of
flights where the normal launch height was less than
800ft., not very
satisfactory but there it is. I have also flown in
conditions when it is
normal to be on finals at 1,000ft. or more.

The quotation I gave in my previous posting explains
why and in what
circumstances a spin entry might be called for at 800ft,
with of course an
immediate recovery. Although the manual does not
say so, this would
almost certainly be done in a K13. JJ, how much flying
have you done in a
K13? And I don't know how much difference it would
make, flying from
Minden at 4,718ft. a.s.l. (and hot) compared with the
Long Mynd at 1,411ft.
and a temperate climate.

I have not disregarded your posting because some may
actually take notice of
what you say.
You say 'I do believe that ANY accident resulting from
an intentional spin
entry is unacceptable'. What does this mean, that
you think an accident
from an inadvertent spin entry is acceptable? Certainly,
that could
explain why you seem to think that much of our spin
training is wrong and
unnecessary.

So far as we in the U.K. are concerned, we think that
any accident, from any
cause, and especially from spin entries whether deliberate
or inadvertent is
unacceptable. The coaching (training) of instructors,
and the training of
pupils has this aim, to prevent accidents during training,
and after
training.

We firmly believe that stall/spin training is essential,
and that this must
include experience of actual stalls, actual spin entries
and actual spins in
order to teach avoidance, recognition and recovery.
Failure to do this
during dual training will just result in a worse accident
record among
pilots who are supposedly trained. All this is clearly
explained in our
BGA Instructors' Manual, and much of it in the quotation
I gave in my
previous posting.

Regards - Bill.

W.J. (Bill) Dean (U.K.).
Remove 'ic' to reply.


'JJ Sinclair' wrote in message
...

Bill,

I have been responding to posts in this thread that
indicate:

1./ The British are now investigating their 4th
Puch spin-in with
unspecified other types that have spun-in as a result
of spin-training.

2./ The British require 2-turn spins (full blown)
in both directions, on
initial check-out and annually thereafter.

3./ Some practice spins are entered as low as pattern
altitude.

If the above is not true, please disregard my postings
on the subject. I
do believe that ANY accident resulting from an intentional
spin entry is
unacceptable and that spin training should emphasize
spin recognition and
spin avoidance with recovery within 1 turn.

I now leave the British glider training in the good
hands of the British
glider instructors and will post no more on this subject.

JJ Sinclair.

Kirk,

These are my experiences as a trainee...

When I learnt to glider, all my spin training was done
from straight from 2000' aerotows. My instructor pulled
the nose up booted the rudder in and over we went..
Over time he allowed me to do the same. My thoughts
at the time were that if for some reason I pulled the
nose up hard I would not boot the rudder in and wondered
why anyone would..

A few months later I had changed clubs and was flying
with an instructor who first demonstrated how nose
low spins could happen.. The first time we did this
at 1000' ft I had an almost irresitable urge as the
world went green/brown to pull back on the stick..
That was one of the most memorable moments of being
instructed..

Mark

At 14:18 10 February 2004, Kirk Stant wrote:
(Mark James Boyd) wrote in message
news:...
W.J. \(Bill\) Dean \(U.K.\). wrote:

'As this training progresses, it is necessary to introduce
brief
spins where
the ground is noticeably close.

This reminds me of the old FAA requirement to practice
twin engine-out
procedures (Vmc demonstration) at low altitudes during
multiengine
training, the reasoning being the low performance of
the existing
twin-engined trainers required a low altitude in order
to have any
single-engine climb available to show. Apparently,
this killed a LOT
of pilots due to stall spins at low altitude in light
twins - not fun
with an engine caged! - until the FAA decided that
the cure was a lot
worse than the disease.

Sure, with a really experienced instructor, and a really
trusted
glider, a low altitude spin could be 'safely' demonstrated.
But I'm
not totally convinced that it is necessary for the
lesson to sink in.
OTOH, in the context of spin training, it is absolutely
vital to beat
into the students head the nasty impact (pun intended)
of a surprise
low altitude departure.

You guys (the Brits) can possibly get away with it,
due to much more
standardization (a good thing). I would hate to see
it adopted in the
US, where standardization is a one of dem big woids
we aint learnd in
skool.

How about our French, German, Dutch, etc. colleagues
- How low do you
teach (or demonstrate; not necessarily the same thing)
low altitude
spin entries?

BTW, don't forget 1812 (we still need to burn 10 Downling
Street) and
Suez (Now there was a virtuous war!). Just joking,
we love you man!

Kirk

I liked Rod Machado's quote from Feb 2004 AOPA pilot:

"So the next time you hear the word always, only or never
used in an aviation sentence, think about asking the
question: So what?"

And the following month he said that landing anywhere in the first third
of the runway was just fine.

Tony V.