It was June 23, 1956, my eighteenth birthday, and I had planned to celebrate by passing the checkride for my flight instructor certificate. This was when spins had to be demonstrated during the practical exam.
I was in the rear seat of the Aeronca Champion and had completed a two-turn spin by recovering within 10 degrees of the entry heading, a requirement in those days. During the agonizingly slow return to altitude, the inspector, L.N. Lightbody, turned in his seat and asked me to next demonstrate an over-the-top spin.
An over-the-top spin? I wracked my brain trying to figure out what he wanted me to do. Nor had I ever heard of the under-the-bottom spin that he also wanted to see.
I confessed that I had never heard of these maneuvers, and I wound up celebrating my birthday with failure. It was my first and last pink slip.
My instructor, Paul Bell, hadn't taught me these spin entries because it didn't occur to him that they would be required on my check flight. He subsequently gave me the necessary dual, and I returned to the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) a few days later and managed to exchange my pink slip for a white one.
An over-the-top spin, I learned, involves entering a stall during a full-power climbing turn and then applying full top rudder. The airplane rolls inverted opposite to the initial direction of turn and winds up in a conventional upright spin. It is actually a lot of fun, and I have been practicing them ever since.
The under-the-bottom spin results from entering a stall during a gliding turn and then adding full bottom rudder (and perhaps some opposite aileron). This entry is less dramatic. The nose drops and the airplane begins spinning with much less increase in bank angle. Compared to an over-the-top spin, it has a benign entry.
Lightbody explained that although the most commonly taught method of spin entry involves entering a power-off, wings-level stall and then applying full pro-spin rudder, "this is the least likely manner in which a pilot will enter an inadvertent spin. A spin most likely to result in an accident occurs following a departure stall [an over-the-top spin] or while cross-controlling during a turn from base leg to final approach [an under-the-bottom spin]."
Today, a CFI applicant is no longer asked to perform spins during a flight test. He is required only to obtain a logbook endorsement testifying that he has received spin instruction. Sadly, there is considerable anecdotal evidence to suggest that some—and perhaps many—instructors receive only minimal spin training or none at all, despite their logbook endorsements.
Spin training is not required for any other certificate, and this has been the subject of controversy ever since the CAA deleted the spin requirement from the private pilot curriculum in 1949. Because an airplane cannot spin unless first stalled, it was believed that the stall-spin accident rate could be reduced by shifting the training emphasis from actual spinning to the prevention of and recovery from power-on and power-off stalls.
This philosophical shift in training appears to have been beneficial. During the four years preceding the change, stall-spin accidents accounted for almost half of all fatal accidents. In recent years, they account for only a fourth.
Proponents of spin training argue, however, that there still are a significant number of spin accidents every year and that they have an 80-percent fatality rate, greater than that for midair collisions.
But knowing how to recover from spins would not necessarily prevent accidents. The vast majority of inadvertent spins begin at such low altitudes that there usually is not enough room to recover.
Pilots fortunate enough to survive a spin accident often do not even realize that their aircraft had begun to spin. They recall only a mushing yaw prior to impact. This is because they experienced only the entry or incipient phase of a spin, not the fully developed phase in which the airplane eventually accelerates to and stabilizes in a constant and usually rapid rate of rotation with the nose pitched steeply earthward.
My view is that pilots do not need to know how to enter and recover from fully developed spins, because such training would not provide assurance that they could recover from a spin that might occur in many modern singles. This is because airframe manufacturers are not required to flight test their aircraft beyond a one-turn spin. They are often clueless about aircraft behavior in that arena and have no idea how easy, difficult, or impossible it might be to recover from a spin beyond that first turn.
Furthermore, knowing how to enter and recover only from fully developed spins would not prevent many accidents. It is more important to understand the conditions that can lead to a spin and to recognize the beginning of an incipient spin. Pilots should develop the reaction and skill needed to aggressively arrest an uncommanded pro-spin yaw and recover almost as soon as it begins (and with a minimum loss of altitude). This is why I urge pilots to seek out a qualified CFI and learn how to enter and recover from incipient spins without the Earth-spinning trauma associated with conventional spin training. It builds confidence and provides a different spin on spins.
Visit the author's Web site ( www.barryschiff.com).
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