INSTRUCTORS AND SPINS

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beechy
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Post by beechy »

the top gun part was a joke.....

Just i have heard stories about people trying to bail from spinning gliders and not being able to get out.....

I suppose there are techniques.....

Thanks for the advice blue side down.....makes sense.....
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Hedley
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Post by Hedley »

the aircraft is properly maintained... you should be trusting it with your life
Is this a joke, too? Does no one practice forced approaches any more?

I find it bizarre to the point of frightening that the prevailing attitude here seems to be: "Nothing will ever go wrong, and if it does, there's nothing we can do about it anyways".

I think what you're trying to say is that if anything goes wrong, you're a passenger along for the ride to the crash, not a pilot.

I know guys who take safety very seriously. They wear helmets and flame-resistant clothing. 5-point double harnesses. Parachutes.

Then there are the donkeys on this website who remind me of animals crossing the 401 highway - roadkill, it's all a matter of precisely how and when they're going to get hit.
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Front.
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Post by Front. »

I agree with you hedly

I read in PDM and it says that"it can happen to you" so something can indeed go wrong.

I practice Precautionarys and Forced Approaches every 30 days... i hope that's good enough.
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mcrit
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Post by mcrit »

I practice Precautionarys and Forced Approaches every 30 days... i hope that's good enough.
Genuine kudos for that. Some people might argue that you need a parachute for that given that its just about as dangerous as a spin :lol:
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Front.
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Post by Front. »

no regardless of where my training is at, or if i am just enjoying the privledges, i practice those essential emergency procedures once a month. That way i feel more confident and know exactly what to do if the real case happens.

The way the weather is now, i think my last 2 flights will be 4 weeks apart making both of them forced lol.
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Hedley
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Post by Hedley »

Suggestion: a typical forced approach that I use on a checkout is to pull the throttle to idle abeam the threshold on downwind, and have the guy land out of it - traffic permitting, of course. This usually only works when you're #1. This is actually an item on the commercial flight test now, IIRC.

Here's another fun emergency procedure .... on downwind, when the guy is looking suspiciously at you and the throttle, and is all primed and ready for the above, is to tell him that the control column just failed - he is going to have to fly the approach and land without it, by using just the power, trim and rudders.

The idiots here will tell you that this training is not applicable to large aircraft, but Al Haynes might disagree, as would the crew of the DHL A300 that had it's flight controls shot out by a SAM over IRAQ.

And that is the point. Anybody can watch an aircraft fly itself. You earn your money as a pilot by doing the right thing, when stuff goes wrong.

Unrelated multiple emergencies are male bovine excrement, but when he gets the hang of the above, tell him that his rudders just failed - all he has is the power and the trim. Now, the donkeys here would tell you that it's time to scream like little girls over the radio that it's time to die, but actually you can yaw an aircraft (and thus roll it, using the dihedral required by certification, which of course allows you to control your heading) by opening the doors :wink:

I'm sure you'd really rather not hear about what I do for unusual attitude recoveries under the hood 8)
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Front.
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Post by Front. »

lol hedly, when you give responses, i read all of them. They're fulfilled with experience and knowledge.

I should try doing that one time, the CC failure.
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tractor747
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Re: INSTRUCTORS AND SPINS

Post by tractor747 »

I don't know if anyone has dealt with this issue but how do you go about providing spin training in the utility category when the flight instructor weighs like 235 pounds along with the student's weight where you can't do spins in the 152/172 without having like 5 gallons in the fuel tank!

When I was doing my instructor rating me and my class 1 instructor no matter what was never in the utility category.

Do you let your student fly with another "lighter" instructor and let them show and teach the spin? Any suggestions from the pro instructors out there?

thanks
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AirFrame
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Post by AirFrame »

Hedley wrote:Here's another fun emergency procedure .... on downwind, when the guy is looking suspiciously at you and the throttle, and is all primed and ready for the above, is to tell him that the control column just failed - he is going to have to fly the approach and land without it, by using just the power, trim and rudders.
When my instructor did that to me, I asked to confirm that my control column had failed. He said yes, so I said "sit back in your seat" and reached across and used his. It took some mental calibration to get my hand to do the right thing when holding the left side of his yoke, but I landed okay.

Then he made me go up and do it again without touching *either* yoke... :)
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Old Dog Flying
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Re: INSTRUCTORS AND SPINS

Post by Old Dog Flying »

Back in the stone age of tube and rag flying machines with little wheels on the back instead of training wheels under the nose, the spin was taught by every instructor and they were great exerises. And I taught full spins by easing into them gently so as to not scare the hell out of my students and the procedure worked well.

Then my dumb-assed brother-in-law showed me what happens in a Twin Comanche when you get below Vmc with bags of power on the right engine and zero thrust on the left. Instant insanity! An inverted spin from which we needed 8000 ft to recover. He learned another lesson from me when we landed.

The Grumman AA1x series were placarded against intentional spins because they would go into a flat spin due to the fact that the fuel was in the tubular spars and it all went to the tips in a spin causing an unrecoverable situation.

On the other hand, I've probably spun the Tomahawk more than anyone and it was not dangerous as some Cessna instructors would have had you believe. Just fly it right..like every other aircraft out there..read the POH!

Now of course the spin training is considered dangerous and not taught to PPL candidates..mainly because after a generation of poorly trained instructor teaching other poorly trained instructors, students no longer can tell the difference between a spin and a spiral.

Thankfully I no longer instruct in this wonderful world of "glass and plastic" aviation.
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Colonel Sanders
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Re: INSTRUCTORS AND SPINS

Post by Colonel Sanders »

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767
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Re:

Post by 767 »

beechy wrote:Any thoughts on how to present spins to a student who is really scared of them?
Have them do the entry on their own. If they are instructed to "just recover" once the instructor puts the aircraft in the spin, then they will probably always be afraid of spins, and in real life that would be disasterous.
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172pilot
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Re: INSTRUCTORS AND SPINS

Post by 172pilot »

Are full spins supposed to be a lesson for the CPL now that the flight exam only requires a 1/4 to 1/2 turn before recovery? Can someone comment on whether that is purely incipient or not?
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trey kule
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Re: INSTRUCTORS AND SPINS

Post by trey kule »

As I am not familiar with flight training standards in Canada anymore, I had to do a bit of research on TCs website.
If I read it correctly, it is not recovering from a spin, but from an incipient spin. (CPL..ex 13)

At 1/4 to 1/2 turn in most trainers this would be called an aggrevated stall or a stall with a wing drop...the word spin would not appear in it. The relative wind is not vertical at this point so the spin is not fully developed.

Perhaps review the flght test guides and you will see the word "incipient" there.

In a normal level flight entry with a 1 kt/sec deceletation, in the typical training aircraft, the relative wind may not become vertical until after several turns, so the spin would be in its incipient stage. Sorry about all the defining condtions but if I dont someone will come on here and point out the relative wind in a snap roll and then post a link to a promotional aerobatic video.

.
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tester
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Re: INSTRUCTORS AND SPINS

Post by tester »

Guys, I come to this thread late, for which I apologise, but I've been out of touch for a while.

I've done a lot of spinning - and I do mean a lot! As a working test pilot at the UK's Military Flight Test Centre for some 30 years, and flight instructor for even longer, and being involved in the test and evaluation of aircraft ranging from GA types, trainers, and combat aircraft, we did a lot of spin evaluations. I say all this not to claim bragging rights, but to establish that I have a wide range of experience of spinning, testing it and teaching it.

So what's my point? Simply this: just because spinning a 172 during PPL/CPL training is "no big deal", as I think one contributor said, spinning a different type, particularly one that does not have a formal clearance to spin, could be the biggest deal you ever have!

The whole point of the spin test programs I was involved with was to provide advice to aircraft operators about how to avoid spins before they happened and not just how to recover from them. Yes, in a trainer you would also want to spin intentionally and recover, so we would also provide advice on that aspect, but for a combat aircraft or any non-trainer type, you just don't want to enter a spin, because, if you do, you may not be able to recover. In the test program we would have telemetry and a full back-up crew on the ground to help the test pilot and there were times that I really needed the real-time advice they provided, because the test aircraft was not responding to the predicted recovery controls. Fortunately, in my case, the aircraft always eventually did recover and I never had to use the aircraft escape options, but the point is that I had those options if I had needed them. Would you?

For any instructor to go putting an aircraft that is not cleared for spinning into a spin just to impress a student is just plain stupid. Using the classic recovery techniques for the 172 will not necessarily work on other more complex types. Some aircraft are very "spin resistant" and respond readily to the recovery techniques taught during PPL/CPL training, but others may enter a type of spin that would not respond as well, so beware!

So should all professional pilots do advanced spin training in aerobatic aircraft? No! I don't believe that should be mandatory. I think it would be interesting for pilots to experience it, but probably more from the point of view of "upset training" rather than just spinning. What the true professional pilot should do is avoid getting into situations where a spin in likely in the first place! End of rant!
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172pilot
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Re: INSTRUCTORS AND SPINS

Post by 172pilot »

trey kule wrote:As I am not familiar with flight training standards in Canada anymore, I had to do a bit of research on TCs website.
If I read it correctly, it is not recovering from a spin, but from an incipient spin. (CPL..ex 13)

At 1/4 to 1/2 turn in most trainers this would be called an aggrevated stall or a stall with a wing drop...the word spin would not appear in it. The relative wind is not vertical at this point so the spin is not fully developed.

Perhaps review the flght test guides and you will see the word "incipient" there.

In a normal level flight entry with a 1 kt/sec deceletation, in the typical training aircraft, the relative wind may not become vertical until after several turns, so the spin would be in its incipient stage. Sorry about all the defining condtions but if I dont someone will come on here and point out the relative wind in a snap roll and then post a link to a promotional aerobatic video.

.

Correct, TC states it as:
The spin manoeuvre may be requested from various flight conditions. The command to recover can be expected during the incipient stage and after approximately one quarter (1/4) turn of spin rotation.

So my question is, is that not the wing drop and subsequent turn? I was the taught the incipient is the very intial stage of spin entry.
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trampbike
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Re: INSTRUCTORS AND SPINS

Post by trampbike »

Old Dog Flying wrote: The Grumman AA1x series were placarded against intentional spins because they would go into a flat spin due to the fact that the fuel was in the tubular spars and it all went to the tips in a spin causing an unrecoverable situation.
Probably fun with a spin chute thought...http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 8nE#t=158s
The rate of yawing is impressive.
Edit: Looks like the engine is stopping too. Lack or fuel (all in the wing tips) or airflow?
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Colonel Sanders
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Re: INSTRUCTORS AND SPINS

Post by Colonel Sanders »

the incipient is the very intial stage of spin entry
In my opinion, a full one-turn spin is still incipient, because it
hasn't settled down to auto-rotation yet. Generally around 1.5
turns it will be fully developed, with all of it's wonderful oscillations
and gyrations.

I love spins. I love upright spins. I love inverted spins. I love
flat spins. I love accelerated spins. My personal favorite is the
inverted flat spin, which is an absolute hoot and a complete
pussycat.

I know you guys think I'm really weird, but I'm not the only
one. This is my buddy Spencer. Note the altimeter:



I know some people hate spins, but I guess some people hate
screwing, too. I love screwing, btw.
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Genetk44
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Re: INSTRUCTORS AND SPINS

Post by Genetk44 »

WOW!!!! :shock: :lol: :lol:
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Old Dog Flying
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Re: INSTRUCTORS AND SPINS

Post by Old Dog Flying »

Trampbike: Fuel starvation caused by fuel forced out to the wing tips uncovering the fuel pickup tubes. A friend survived the flat spin in an AA1x type near Calgary when the schools CFI insisted that any instructor working for him had to spin the aircraft..even though the wee beast had a big placard on the panel ``Ìntentional Spins Prohibited...

The airflow in the flat spin mode is perpendicular to the bottom of the horizontal tail blanking off the rudder which of course makes stopping the autorotation impossible.

Barney
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