CFI’s and Spins

Ryanb said:
Isn’t it funny when someone disagrees or fails to have the experience to back up their statements how they start throwing around adjectives about you?
Click to expand...

I don't have the experience to back up my statement of, "I've known some instructors with high spin skill who have had to recover an incipient spin condition in the pattern due to supremely clumsy inputs from their student."???? HUH?? Might want to actually read the thread. I'd also wager I've done way more spins than both you guys put together....while we're back on this "measuring" thing that Doc restarted LOL
 
RoscoeT said:
Since you're itching to regurgitate your resume, it's up to you whether you want to enthrall us LOL
Click to expand...

Don’t have too. I’m just pointing out, once more, what a poser you’ve become on this forum with your constant chest thumping when these conversations pop up.

You’re a legend in your own mind.

That’s all.
 
Doc Holliday said:
Don’t have too. I’m just pointing out, once more, what a poser you’ve become on this forum with your constant chest thumping when these conversations pop up.

You’re a legend in your own mind.

That’s all.
Click to expand...

I have enough experience to see both sides of the stall avoidance vs. spin training debate. The posers are the ones who only have experience with the avoidance side yet feel righteous in their steadfast opinion of the entire matter. I don't talk about things with which I lack sufficient experience to have a decent perspective. If I call out those who clearly don't, you can call this chest thumping all you want, it matters not to me.
 
RoscoeT said:
I have enough experience to see both sides of the stall avoidance vs. spin training debate. The posers are the ones who only have experience with the avoidance side yet feel righteous in their steadfast opinion of the entire matter. I don't talk about things with which I lack sufficient experience to have a decent perspective. If I call out those who clearly don't, you can call this chest thumping all you want, it matters not to me.
Click to expand...

You make some ridiculous claims, such as the one I called you out on. Then you get all defensive and start the chest thumping and making accusations on items you have zero knowledge on.
 
My instructor in 1992 would not sign you off for the checkride without first doing spins. We went up in his Aeronca Champ and he told me what to do and told me to come out of the spin headed toward the airport. I executed and recovered from the spin twice, but neither time did I come out of it headed toward the airport. I didn’t care which direction I came out, I just wanted to come out. Since I failed come out headed toward the airport he did not give me a spin endorsement. He logged it as introduction to spins.
 
Doc Holliday said:
You make some ridiculous claims, such as the one I called you out on. Then you get all defensive and start the chest thumping and making accusations on items you have zero knowledge on.
Click to expand...

You're right - I don't actually know how many spins you've done. Glad we settled that ridiculous claim I made on this important topic LOL. Now we can get back to discussing actual matters of aviation. Feel free to list further ridiculous claims on the subject of flying that I continue to make. :rolleyes:
 
MauleSkinner said:
How close do you follow the controls with a rated pilot in VMC?
Click to expand...

My technique is to appear not to be following. But I maintain SA at all times.

I have considerable time teaching in helicopters. A helicopter 3 feet off the ground with a new student is right up there with being on the edge of something that could go very wrong, very fast. One has to develop a SA and a technique of being rapidly prepared to take over while not appearing to be riding the controls.

This translates to fixed wing as well. I’m not up on and riding the controls, but I’m keeping an SA and ready to intervene quickly if I have to. Of course, it also depends on the regime of flight at the time.

In my time instructing (fixed and rotor) I’ve been more surprised by rated pilots than by students. Again, experience teaches.
 
Doc Holliday said:
My technique is to appear not to be following. But I maintain SA at all times.

I have considerable time teaching in helicopters. A helicopter 3 feet off the ground with a new student is right up there with being on the edge of something that could go very wrong, very fast. One has to develop a SA and a technique of being rapidly prepared to take over while not appearing to be riding the controls.

This translates to fixed wing as well. I’m not up on and riding the controls, but I’m keeping an SA and ready to intervene quickly if I have to. Of course, it also depends on the regime of flight at the time.

In my time instructing (fixed and rotor) I’ve been more surprised by rated pilots than by students. Again, experience teaches.
Click to expand...
So on the controls in less than a second without any attempt to let the student correct when you’re 400 feet up?
 
flyingron said:
I had a rather bizarre primary instructor and we did spins on the second lesson in the 152. The 172 on the other hand is really hard to spin. It devolves into a steep spiral even if you do get it to start.
Click to expand...

Even with a 150/152 it seems to depend on what mood it's in whether it will spin well or not. Certainly better than a 172 but the Citabria/Decathlon beat both in spinnyness by a good margin.
 
MauleSkinner said:
So on the controls in less than a second without any attempt to let the student correct when you’re 400 feet up?
Click to expand...

Nice twist, but I didn’t say that.

Part of instructing is knowing how far to let the student go without getting into a dangerous situation.
 
RoscoeT said:
Nope but I could fly with you and show you how it could happen to clearly even a hero CFI such as yourself LOL
Click to expand...

Where's the 'DisLike' button? Any instructor, or competent pilot who's paying the least bit of attention, will recognize a bad attitude long before you enter spin territory.
 
RoscoeT said:
If you don't think it can happen to a competent CFI, you're short on experience.
Click to expand...

That's rich considering you don't have any.

I've watched many students make all the "classic" mistakes that would lead to a stall/spin accident, yet I've never let it happen (except on purpose to teach them a lesson).
 
SkyChaser said:
Oh, I know the wing dropping wasn't a spin, or even super close to it. It was the fact that he made me recover it, and I didn't respond that fast. LOL It obviously wasn't as close as it felt, or he would have recovered it, but as a student with maybe 3 hours, it felt close!
Click to expand...

If they don't accidentally get into one themselves, every student of mine gets a demo of a stall/spin-entry. I perform a power-on stall with my feet on the floor, and recover with opposite rudder before the rotation starts. I have them keep their fingers/toes on the control so they can feel the control inputs.
 
MauleSkinner said:
So on the controls in less than a second without any attempt to let the student correct when you’re 400 feet up?
Click to expand...

Man I gotta say, if I'm at 400' and I see a bad attitude, I'm gonna be on the controls in less than a second. Wouldn't you? The place to see if a student is going to attempt to make corrections is at 1500' or higher.

And like Doc mentioned above, I too disapprove of instructors who hover over, or maintain holds on controls. I've literally instructed first time student's to take off without me even touching anything through out the take off, and most of the flight. Landings, well that's a different thing.
 
Last edited:
Sorry guys, I don’t care about anyone’s opinion, no matter how hard they beat their chest. I care about data. The relevant data has already been cited in this thread. Anyone who ignores that and FAA recommendations because they just know better is arrogant in the book of Steingar. Hate slinging mud and don’t mean to, but that’s how I see it.

Someone seeks spin training and you do it, good on you. But to force students to do it for the PPL despite the fact that the FAA doesn’t require it because it’s too dangerous smacks to me as one of the dangerous pilot attitudes. Again, I am genuinely sorry to put it this way. Most of the stuff that comes from the FAA is written in blood.
 
Daleandee said:
Here you go:

The look on his face tells it all ...
Click to expand...

Back elevator and right aileron to counter a left wing drop = incorrect control inputs. Maybe the student didn't see it coming, but the instructor surely did (if he was competent...)
 
steingar said:
Sorry guys, I don’t care about anyone’s opinion, no matter how hard they beat their chest. I care about data. The relevant data has already been cited in this thread. Anyone who ignores that and FAA recommendations because they just know better is arrogant in the book of Steingar. Hate slinging mud and don’t mean to, but that’s how I see it.

Someone seeks spin training and you do it, good on you. But to force students to do it for the PPL despite the fact that the FAA doesn’t require it because it’s too dangerous smacks to me as one of the dangerous pilot attitudes. Again, I am genuinely sorry to put it this way. Most of the stuff that comes from the FAA is written in blood.
Click to expand...
Do you have a link to the FAA recommendations to which you refer?
 
steingar said:
Sorry guys, I don’t care about anyone’s opinion, no matter how hard they beat their chest. I care about data. The relevant data has already been cited in this thread. Anyone who ignores that and FAA recommendations because they just know better is arrogant in the book of Steingar. Hate slinging mud and don’t mean to, but that’s how I see it.

Someone seeks spin training and you do it, good on you. But to force students to do it for the PPL despite the fact that the FAA doesn’t require it because it’s too dangerous smacks to me as one of the dangerous pilot attitudes. Again, I am genuinely sorry to put it this way. Most of the stuff that comes from the FAA is written in blood.
Click to expand...

Problem is, “too dangerous” actually means “too dangerous for the FAA PR staff *this* decade”... with an ever-higher emphasis on incredibly marginal improvements in “safety” versus an ever higher risk-averse populace.

That’s not so much a condemnation of FAA as the whiny populace.

Looking back over most of those spin accidents and the actual reports, a fairly significant number of the participants were unsatisfactory in aircraft control prior to their instruction accident.

Forcing THAT instructor to do soin training, was the problem. Not the training itself.

Even seeing it in the reports says something. It takes quite a bit of that sort of bad aircraft control to get people to say negative things of the dead.

It’s not all of them of course, but a good number hinting at the real hidden problem back then.

It’s still hidden today. Comes up more often in the subtle and sometimes not so subtle wording in autopilot malfunctions now.

The guys and gals who squeaked by in the Sim multiple times and crunched the airplane when the automation failed.
 
steingar said:
Anyone who ignores that and FAA recommendations because they just know better is arrogant in the book of Steingar. Hate slinging mud and don’t mean to, but that’s how I see it.

Someone seeks spin training and you do it, good on you. But to force students to do it for the PPL despite the fact that the FAA doesn’t require it because it’s too dangerous smacks to me as one of the dangerous pilot attitudes. Again, I am genuinely sorry to put it this way. Most of the stuff that comes from the FAA is written in blood.
Click to expand...

So is the entire country of Canada arrogant and exhibiting a dangerous attitude?
 
Out of curiosity, why couldn't spins be part of PPL training, but only done above like 3000', 4000' or 5000' AGL? If a plane is rated for spins, that should be plenty of altitude to recover. That way, if a spin happens lower, as in the traffic pattern, the pilot would have some muscle memory to help speed up the recovery. I don't understand why not practicing recovery for something a plane has been known to do is safer. (I do get that a properly-flown plane won't spin. But obviously, there are enough improperly-flown planes, because we have spin-related crashes.) Minimum altitudes are published for other maneuvers, so why not spins? I would think it would be hard for a CFI to let a plane spin long enough from 5000' to become unrecoverable, and experiencing a spin with a CFI has got to be safer than without one.
 
Salty said:
Hopefully for your passengers that’s spin avoidance not recovery.
Click to expand...

Never did one with a passenger. Only some with an instructor, and lots of them solo.

I learned to fly in 1974 in a Cessna 150. Fun airplane to spin. I did many dozens of them in that airplane after I soloed. It was a bit of a game to count the number of turns before I chickened out and recovered. Ah, the immortality of youth. :)

Also have quite a number in Piper Tomahawks when I was renting them about a decade later. And a few in a Beech T34 as part of an unusual attitudes course weekend at David Wayne Hooks north of Houston about 20 years back.

Don't actually understand why there's such a fear of that maneuver, including expressed by a few folks on this thread. :confused: The plane is stalled. It's not as though it's going to come from together during a spin.
 
GRG55 said:
Don't actually understand why there's such a fear of that maneuver, including expressed by a few folks on this thread. :confused: The plane is stalled. It's not as though it's going to come from together during a spin.
Click to expand...

Love spins but 2 of 3 of the POHs for the airplanes in which I train prohibit spins. :(
 
dmspilot said:
Back elevator and right aileron to counter a left wing drop = incorrect control inputs. Maybe the student didn't see it coming, but the instructor surely did (if he was competent...)
Click to expand...

That's exactly how I got to experience my first spin. On the $20 fam flight in a 150. Instructor took the airplane up to altitude and showed me a power off stall and recovery. Asked me if I wanted to try it. I was having a blast; first time in a small airplane, thought it was the coolest thing ever.

I didn't know diddly about rudders, so when the left wing dropped I instinctively went full right aileron. Next thing you know we're all going to die, LOL. Did two more right after that as I wanted to understand what had happened, and how to recover from it. I was hooked.
 
GRG55 said:
Don't actually understand why there's such a fear of that maneuver, including expressed by a few folks on this thread. :confused: The plane is stalled. It's not as though it's going to come from together during a spin.
Click to expand...

Opinion:

Tool much emphasis since the 90s on flying airplanes like they’re not true 3-dimensional machines.

Oh sure, go up and down and left and right... but never beyond specific bank angles and always the “stabilized approach” and whatnot.

Those things DO promote “safety” but do a large disservice to understanding that airplanes don’t really care what attitude or reference to the horizon they’re in, nor gets a true understanding of how one will behave in maneuvers that are frankly, fully expected to happen in certain conditions to any airplane.

Clearly this isn’t a cry to force spin training by me, but there’s a part of me that’s really nervous flying with someone who has truly never seen an “unusual attitude” or more accurately, truly thinks it’s “unusual”.

Airplanes do stuff in three dimensions well past the stuff in the ACS. One should at least have seen all that stuff once. Even if you don’t like it. Don’t have to like it to learn how to recover from it a few times and call it good. Damn thunderstorm over 25 miles away has rocked my world with a dry microburst, and it’s better knowing the worst case scenario and recovery technique than not on those “nature played gotcha” days.

Just my humble opinion. That and knowing the silliness of the death toll is mostly political and wasn’t anywhere near a majority of instructors and students back then. Mine had thousands and thousands of spins when the change occurred. Nowadays? Yeah. Big shortage of instructors who have. Forcing today’s instructor pool to do it would cause a temporary spike in accidents.

Which makes it water under the bridge by a couple of decades. Can’t really safely reverse it and I never argue for that.

I DO argue to individuals to go get unusual attitude and upset training if they ever possibly can. It’s going to happen to you eventually. Wake turbulence, momma nature, whatever. Especially folks headed for flying jobs where you can’t always force being a fair weather flyer.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top