Coffin Corner, Deadmans Corner: The turn from base leg to final leg on a
landing approach. If the pilot has overflown the runway centerline and
attempts to roll back to the runway centerline adverse yaw will tend to
point the nose of the airplane in the opposite direction of the turn, a
natural reaction will be to use rudder to point the nose at the runway.
When this doesn't work the pilot may increase the bank in the same
direction. As the airspeed decays, the he incorrectly applies more rudder
in the direction of the turn creating a slow rolling uncoordinated skidding
turn close to the ground. Roll combined with Yaw in the direction of the
roll with airspeed dropping is a great recipe for a spin. The fact that
this situation is close to the ground makes the spin nearly unrecoverable.
Jim
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