Why Spin Training?

[Hedley]

A recent trend on spin recovery got me thinking: why are people spending time and effort on full spin training & recovery?

Thing is, you're going to stall/spin when you've got a high angle of attack on. You're not going to see a high AOA at cruise altitude unless you pull a boatload of G. Doesn't happen very often.

No, the only time you're going to see a high AOA is when you're slow, and that means when you're low - just before landing, or just after takeoff.

If you accidentally spin at or below 500 AGL, just before landing (eg infamous skidding turn onto final) or just after takeoff, by the time the aircraft winds up into a fully-developed spin, it's too late - there won't be enough altitude to recover.

Flight training these days, with the cost of fuel and insurance, is really really expensive, and I hate to see people waste their time. As far as safety goes, when you're low and slow, you want to learn:

1) theory behind a stall/spin
2) procedures I can use to avoid them
3) techniques for immediately "picking up a wing" and recovering from
an incipient spin and stall with minimum loss of altitude.

Don't get me wrong. I love spins. I did an inverted spin yesterday. But honestly, doing spins is probably as useful to most pilots as doing hammerheads.

You're far better off spending time doing slow flight. Learn to fly your aircraft accurately and confidently at slow speeds, and high AOA. Learn how to fly right through the stall, keeping the wings level with rudder.

Any *sshole can fly fast, and often does.

[D5GRVTY]

I've got another question from my flight training days, why do we teach recovery from unusual attitudes for private pilots.

So Joe get's his lic, rents an a/c makes some pretty horrible decisions and ends up in a cloud, flies even worse on inst to the point where he put's the a/c in an unusual attitude and all the sudden he becomes an amazing pilot and pulls of the perfect recovery. I don't think so.

[MRO]

I agree but I think the idea is the quality of scan you must have to preform the manouver. I think being able to do that improves your overall hood work even though it wouldnt work in a real life situation.

My beef has always been things like stall entry. How can you fail a person for not correctly entering a stall. That is the last thing you want to do as a pilot so why do we put so much emphasis on it. I can understand correct recovery, but stalling the plane is like throwing your car in reverse on a highway you just never want to do that, so how can you fail for not doing it "right".

[TorontoGuy]

Since I'm right at this point in my PPL training -- and especially since I'm not a fan of rollercoasters and am not looking forward to the spirals and spins -- I've been asking these questions of my instructor.

The answer I've been given (I am generalizing it a bit here for brevity) re stalls and spins is that, yes they would likely happen low and slow; no, you're not going to have a lot of room to plunge and recover in that case; the training is to teach you how to recognize the combination of events that lead up to a stall or spin, so that you can correct before they all kick in together, or even before they start.

Don't know about others, but my instructor is indeed constantly giving me examples of what might be happening: e.g. "OK, let's suppose you're on the base leg and getting ready to turn onto final but you think you're too low, so you start nosing up..." Or: "You're on base, you've started your turn onto final too late and you're going past the runway; you make a bad decisions and deepen the turn. Airspeed drops and..." And a few other scenaria.

(Sprials, of course, can occur at any altitude.)

Regardless, I'm not at all convinced of the need to teach me how to recover from a spin, unless, I suppose, there are some situations at altitude that could result in a spin -- through circumstances and pilot error -- for which the knowledge would be useful. Otherwise, show me what the pre-conditions are and what the result is; teach me how to prevent the onset, and let's move on.

For me, 'cause I know I'm going to need some time to deal with spirals and spins, it is indeed going to be expensive. Whatever, tho, it's not my choice, so gotta do it. (even tho the damn spins aren't even on the exam.)

PS: I was told in no uncertain terms last week that you can't solo unless you got the stall recovery right. The instructor also has to be satisfied that you can recover from the spins and spirals properly, too.

[JW]

This is what I think on spin training. First of all it is %100 necessary. Hedley your are totally right though:

Thing is, you're going to stall/spin when you've got a high angle of attack on. You're not going to see a high AOA at cruise altitude unless you pull a boatload of G. Doesn't happen very often.

This doesn't happen very often, unless you are a student pilot that is training to get his/her PPL and you are out in the practice area doing P-on stalls maybe?? I have seen a couple students put me into a wicked spin just by doing a crappy power on stall. Then of course they freak out because that was the last thing they were expecting to see.

Then there are students like TOguy,

likely happen low and slow; no, you're not going to have a lot of room to plunge and recover in that case; the training is to teach you how to recognize the combination of events that lead up to a stall or spin, so that you can correct before they all kick in together, or even before they start.

You are right, the training IS to teach you how to recognize the combination of events leading up to a spin, that’s the best way to prevent it, BUT I would sure like to see you recover from your first "accidental" spin, when the most you were expecting was a nose drop from the stall. It takes practice.

I had a licensed pilot put me into a spin during a check ride in a C-172 at about 2200 rpm and full opposite everything in the recovery attempt. What if this guy thought to him self that it would be a good idea to head out to the practice area the day before and practice stalls solo? he probably would have been a smoking hole in the ground. It is my opinion that spin training is absolutely necessary and should NEVER be over looked.

JW

[Hedley]

The problems is that spins are so damned complicated, and so type-specific.

There are upright spins.
There are inverted spins.
You can crossover from one to the other.
You can accelerate an upright or inverted spin.
You can flatten an upright or inverted spin.

You can do any of the above entirely by accident and not have a clue as to what's going on.

Frankly, spins are much more of an issue for the aerobatic crowd, because they're going to perform then at recoverable altitudes. The botched hammerhead is a classical inverted spin entry.

It gets worse. You can be the "ace of the base" at spinning your type of aircraft, then you get into another aircraft with different characteristics, and you're a fish out of water.

Over the years, various people (Gene Beggs, Eric Mueller, Kirshner) have tried to find the "holy grail" of spin recovery inputs, which would work for any spin in any aircraft, and inevitably there are always exceptions.

In particular, the use of forward stick for (upright) spin recovery is quite type-specific. Some (usually low-wing) types require aggressive forward stick for spin recovery. In other types, aggressive forward stick too soon can result in a wild ride. Click on:

http://www.beasafepilot.com/acc-spin.wmv

Bottom line: without type-specific spin training, you haven't a clue. Best to avoid them by learning how to avoid and recover from a wing-drop.

Remember that some types may be completely unrecoverable from a spin. I don't see anyone intentionally spinning multi-engine aircraft.

[scm]

I'd recommend flying taildraggers with small rudder - definitely will help you learn to stop a spin early, especially in stalls.

And skidding turns onto final - how are those done? Jamming too much rudder in the direction of turn?

As for spin training - maybe it's not required, but its good to know after 200 hrs of training one can recover appropriately without even thinking about the correct procedure. Probably more important to instructors teaching students.

[JW]

Hedley, again I agree with you on the spin training, that students should be taught to avoid them. However, student pilots are typically flying the same type of ac every day, right? So wouldn't you say that it is a good idea to teach them how to recover from a spin that they are most likely to encounter during their training?

Best to avoid them by learning how to avoid and recover from a wing-drop.

What happens when a student pilot screws this up? I'm sure it has happened in the past, a student pilot screws somthing up, and will continue to happen in the future, its apart of learning. I would feel a lot more comfortable as an instructor knowing that my student can recover from a spin, in the type of aircraft I'm sending them out in to do power on stalls or even just stalls in general. Rather than just training them on how to avoid them all together. Remember that students are very good at getting themselves into very unusual situations, that again is part of learning.

JW

[TorontoGuy]

JW,

Holy cats! Were you on the ground around Shelburne today watching my power on, flaps down stalls, or something?

I didn't get into a spin, but I sure messed them up. Repeatedly. Kept going into an aggravated stall. Left wing kept dipping on me. Once because I entered the stall incorrectly by pulling the column all the way back too fast (rather than slowly as required just to maintain lift), went nose-up way too high. Instructor told me afterwards that the plane would tend to keel over to one side because I did that. A couple of other times, I pulled back slowly enough, but it went nasty because I reverted to car driving and turned the ailerons rather than tromping on the rudder at stall. (30 years of car driving habits are more ingrained than 13 hours in the air!) At least we think that's why. In reality, all I know is the plane kept keeling over.

It ticked me off, because last Sunday I'd done very well with all the stalls (we had to finish them with power on-flaps down ones today because we lost flaps near the lesson's end, Sunday.)

The wing drop did freak me out because it was unexpected. Between the sudden wing drop and the resulting turn in direction, I felt like I'd lost control and immediately gave control to my instructor a couple of times: "OK, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm lost, you take control".

I'm cool with stalls when they go properly and I do know the proper recovery and can execute it. But this added workload surprised and overwhelmed me.

Got him to fly me around for 5 minutes or so, so that I could get un-flustered and collect my thoughts, regain focus. We still had 45 minutes, and I was determined to finish this blasted lesson by getting power-on stalls done properly.

Got it done. Also got an unwelcome surprise intro to aggravated stalls.

My instructor changes up the normal overall lesson sequence a bit. We're doing spirals next, rather than spins next. And in between the spirals and spins, we'll be doing a real (i.e. planned) lesson on aggravated stalls.

Oh, and one thing that didn't help me: haze that obscured the horizon (land and sky melded) and a few bumps and sideways-and-up-on-one-side-or-the-other nudges from the wind.

Up to about this point, everything's been mostly fun. This is WORK! But I know it's worthwhile, because if he hadn't been there beside me to take control, while I believe I'd have kept the plane flying, I think I'd have lost a lot of altitude, stressed the plane, and had second thoughts about this whole flying thing.

And of course they do expect you to practice stalls solo once you're allowed out of the circuit and to the practice area. Not to mention, God forbid, if I ever got distracted while flying after licensed, and did something stupid to put me into such situations. So I'd better learn now!

Whew!

(And to think, I took the afternoon off work to do this lesson, expecting severe clear, no wind, and an easy time of it.)

[Apache64_]

You can find, and many do...end up in stall spin scenarios in cruise. Most of them are at high density altitudes. Alot of them happen in the mountains. Taking your standard 4 cylinder aircraft into the mountians on a hot day can bring you into trouble. Happens this way. Flying along at a cruise altitude say 7500. You havent reset your altimeter or you have an altimeter error due to mountain winds, whatever. You fly up your canyon thinking you have enough altitude to clear the rocks. As you continue into the canyon it appears you may not have enough altitude and you sneak the nose up to get a little altitude. Unfortunately, you are cruising along at your service ceiling or close to it...so you continue to do this and eventually you hit the point where the aircraft no longer flies. It stalls, possibly spins and you need to know how to avoid it and if required recover. As well there are some that happened due to ice. Another cirrus hit the silk recently due to a spin the pilot did not recover from.

The old aircraft with poor handling characteristics is another good example.

It is possible to do a 3 turn spin and recover in 500', in todays trainers. But this is of course, an anticipated spin. The reason they teach the spin is not the spin itself but the incipient spin. which is why on the ppl it is not tested, but required to be recognized and recovered. The fully developed spin is not required. And there are alot of pilots out there who do not recognize the symptoms leading to the spin even after the ppl.

Spiral dives is another one that most people enter without even recognizing it. They are descending into an aerodrome and to lose altitude they push the nose down and pick up a/s, going to the top of the green. They turn to enter the circuit or whatever and look we now have a spiral dive. Alright as long as the air is smooth and abrupt control inputs arent used.

Unusual attitudes happen more than you think. I have even seen IFR pilots enter them. And you dont need to be in cloud. A good case of white out or black out can lead into it. Your out flying over the lake in winter and enter some mist or snow storm. You have lost your horizon, you turn to the shore where you have some discernable reference but let the nose down in the turn, with those nice vestibular illusions you dont recognize the nose down attitude but you recognize the increase in airflow noise. Check the airspeed and woa, its high, your turning, what do you do? Oh yeah, I know i seen this before in my training.

Some examiners will fail you for not entering a stall properly. Mostly because they may believe though that it was poor knowledge on recognizing the stall or approach to stall which would be a failure in my opinion because you did not meet the objective of the lesson. If you do not enter the stall, and make it known that there was no stall you may get a second chance.

Cheers

Apache

[Switchfoot]

Flight training these days, with the cost of fuel and insurance, is really really expensive, and I hate to see people waste their time. As far as safety goes, when you're low and slow, you want to learn:

1) theory behind a stall/spin
2) procedures I can use to avoid them
3) techniques for immediately "picking up a wing" and recovering from
an incipient spin and stall with minimum loss of altitude.

Don't get me wrong. I love spins. I did an inverted spin yesterday. But honestly, doing spins is probably as useful to most pilots as doing hammerheads.

You're far better off spending time doing slow flight. Learn to fly your aircraft accurately and confidently at slow speeds, and high AOA. Learn how to fly right through the stall, keeping the wings level with rudder.

I think you've answered your own question. The whole idea is that you learn to recoginze the symptoms of slow flight, stall, and factors leading up to the spin, and if you've allowed the situation to develop into a full spin, THEN how to recover.

I'd rather learn the 'before' part of those exercises rather than find myself partially inverted and twisting rapidly towards the earth without a clue of what to do next.

Spin training is very useful and a lot more fun than straight and level or circuits for both students and instructors. I'd know because I've been both!


Switchfoot.

[Apache64_]

Torontoguy,

If you are doing power on stalls, remember to make sure you are using the rudder. As you slow down and the nose comes up you will need more and more rudder as the aircraft slows down.. Remember asymmetric thrust is greater at slow airspeeds, so you need more rudder. As well with less airflow over the rudder you need to input more to maintain control. If the aircraft is yawing while you enter the stall you will get a wing drop as one wing now has a higher AOA than the other.


Cheers

Apache

[Lommer]

Great post apache.

P.S. Even if it did add a couple hours to my PPL, I wouldn't trade my spin training for anything. Why? Because it was bloody FUN.

[TorontoGuy]

Torontoguy,

If you are doing power on stalls, remember to make sure you are using the rudder. As you slow down and the nose comes up you will need more and more rudder as the aircraft slows down.. Remember asymmetric thrust is greater at slow airspeeds, so you need more rudder. As well with less airflow over the rudder you need to input more to maintain control. If the aircraft is yawing while you enter the stall you will get a wing drop as one wing now has a higher AOA than the other.


Cheers

Apache

Yup, that's what the instructor's taught me. Tromp on the right rudder as part of recovery. Don't turn the control column. Sunday I did that wonderfully. Today with the wing dip, 30 years of car training took over. A habit I have to leave on the ground. Like trying to "steer" with your hands on takeoff. LOL. (That one I've gotten down pat. My takeoffs are pretty darn good.)

[Cat Driver]

Toronto guy, I don't want to rain on your learning to fly parade but you are paying a lot of money to the school and your instructor to teach you how to fly don't you think it is risky getting so many ideas here from people who may be giving you conflicting advice?

In other words rather than asking unknown people here would it not be better to ask your instructor, I know I would be annoyed if a student of mine were getting taught on the internet by strangers.

[TorontoGuy]

Toronto guy, I don't want to rain on your learning to fly parade but you are paying a lot of money to the school and your instructor to teach you how to fly don't you think it is risky getting so many ideas here from people who may be giving you conflicting advice?

In other words rather than asking unknown people here would it not be better to ask your instructor, I know I would be annoyed if a student of mine were getting taught on the internet by strangers.

Cat, No worries. You're not raining on my parade at all. And I don't see myself as becoming internet-taught. I take this place simply as it is, I think: a forum for exchanges of ideas and experiences.

My FTU is the one I've personally chosen for a variety of reasons including its reputation and its professionalism as I see it. My instructor's the guy I'm sticking with because I like his style of teaching and I trust and respect him. I feel safe and secure in the air with him. Ditto with the equipment and ground training my FTU provides me.

Sharing my experiences here, tossing up questions and ideas here, gives me the opportunity to see what a variety of other people think. Sometimes I'll discard what I've read here. Other times, I'll go back to my instructor and say, "Hey, I read XXX. What do you think of that?"

Other times, here I'll just laugh. We all know you're a big...er, um, I mean, you've got a big d*ck. You didn't have to tell us you hung a concrete block off it to make it so.

What you question might be true for some...do you really want to absorb everything you read on an anonymous internet forum? My purely personal reply is that, over more than a decade of being a newspaperman, and a damn good one, I learned well how to sift information and how to prioritize it.

And in that vein, I do appreciate your question.

Cheers!

[Cat Driver]

No problem T.G..

..just wanted to make sure you could weed out the chaff from the wheat.

By the way my dick was not very big before I hung the concrete block on it...and it was't black then either...

[ski_bum]

Spin training is very important. I have seen this instructing a few times, even with CPL guys. I think it is quite common with Power On and Departure stalls, one wing drops rather aggressively, so the student hammers on the opposite rudder, not relaxing backpressure on the controls quick enough throwing them into a spin in the opposite direction. Even with students that have spin training, and are more than comfortable entering and recovering from spins, panic seems to take over for a few seconds, they freeze up and then realize what they did and recover properly. So if it happens with the instructor in the plane, how often does it happen when students are out solo? I can admit that it happened to me Pre-PPL doing power on stalls, one wing dropped aggressively so I used a lot of rudder to pick it up with out yet breaking the stall and away I went in the other direction but realized what was going on right away and recovered with out scaring my self to bad.

Learning to keep the ball centered all the way through a power on stall can save you from the wing drops, and save you grief. However, you need to know Spin recovery and be comfortable with it, there will be that one time where it will come in handy and get you out of a bind!

I believe in the US they don't partake in Spin training? Does any one know there reasoning?

[TorontoGuy]

I believe in the US they don't partake in Spin training? Does any one know there reasoning?

Not sure. An equally good question to ask is why, having learned spins in PPL training in Canada, it's not on the flight test.

[ski_bum]

Its on the CPL, and usually on the instructor ride.

[Apache64_]

It used to be on the PPL, but was removed. Cant remember the reasoning though. I had no problem with it.


cheers

Apache

[cyxe]

I believe in the US they don't partake in Spin training? Does any one know there reasoning?

Not sure. An equally good question to ask is why, having learned spins in PPL training in Canada, it's not on the flight test.

I think the main reason was they wanted to focus on spin (stall) avoidance (prevention is the cure, so to speak), since statistically most fatalities were occurring either:

1) during climbouts or approaches to airports, at altitudes where spin recovery is impossible, or

2) during spin training (!, yup, I'll try to find the source, going by pretty rusty memory here...somebody help me out)

[fromeasttowest]

2) during spin training (!, yup, I'll try to find the source, going by pretty rusty memory here...somebody help me out)

I believe I heard that as well, the real problem was people were doing spins in aircraft that were not rated for them, like the piper warrior.

[. ._]

I think fully developed spin training is a good confidence builder for the beginner who is going out to practice stalls solo.

If for some reason they go all cock-eyed, the student can safely recover. And if you're in a C172, it'll recover on its own, regardless of what you do anyways- no fun.

-istp

[2R]

Spining an airplane that is designed not to spin is stupid.That is why it is not done in the USA as most airplanes are built there and they know better.
Do not forget about forward spins Hedley or as you may call them snap rolls.
Lazy eights ,Chandelles,turns on a point ,pivotal altitude turns ,eights on ,eights around,s-turns ,spiral descents,steep turns at 55 degrees of bank would be far more productive exercise's for pilot training to increase pilot co-ordination and skills.