On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:38:05 -0800 (PST), wrote:

This spin entry was different. *There I was, about a seventy-degree left bank,
pulling hard on the stick to impress my buddy in the back seat, and WHAM. *Ol'
N1660G snapped to the right, went inverted, and tucked into a whirling dervish
of an upright spin. *

Yikes.

Okay. Do you think you'd have saved your skins if you had not taken it
upon yourself to get the extra spin training? What if you'd never
recovered from a spin before?

Being a real aviation hound from a tender age, I think I would have figured out
what was going on and remembered the recovery process. And I think good 'ol
Sixty Golf, being a benevolent early-model Citabria, would have probably dished
out and recovered on its own, eventually. Remember, 7ECAs were produced under
the old Aeronca Champ type certificate, from the days when a plane WAS expected
to recover on its own.

But, even with the training, I think if it *had* happened in the pattern, I
would have had a very narrow chance of recovering in time. Unlike all my
practice, it was THAT violent.

As I've aged, taking BFRs has become interesting. The CFIs get younger and
younger, and some of them, well...they don't seem to understand the stuff
they're supposed to be teaching.

About ten years ago, I was taking a BFR and was asked to do a power-off stall.
I did it the way I was trained to...power off, then hold the nose pretty much
level as the plane decelerates.

Didn't wash with the instructor, though: "Come on, pull the nose up! It'll
never stall if you don't get the nose up high!"

Sheesh.

I read a great article in Flying magazine a while back, where the writer
described the process for setting oneself up for a spin entry like mine. IIRC,
it was just basically level flight at low power, in a turn with about a
half-ball skid. Takes a while, but he describes an explosive break like I
experienced.

Ron Wanttaja