Ian


In one message you said:

"Juniors have a complicated spin mode which is generally three turns
nose down and recoverable, three flat and unrecoverable, rinse,
repeat. If you don't recover in the first three turns (Turn 1: ****,
better get the nose up. Turn 2: why didn't that work? Turn 3: What's
spin recovery again?) you just have to sweat it out for a few hundred
feet or your current altitude, whichever is less."

and elsewhere

"You are quite right - I should have said that the oscillation is at
lighter weights / after CoGs."

So a Junior behaves strangely with an aft CofG, and in your words is
unrecoverable.
My first point is the glider should not be flying and should certainly
never have been certified under JAR if that is true, unless of course the
CofG is aft of the permitted limit.

What is really interesting is what you say about the Puchaz, which comes
from the same design shop and that is:

"That is a correlation, not a causation. Most Puchacz spin accidents
occur with instructors on board: perhaps the problem lies with
instructor training?"

In fact I cannot recall an accident where a Puchacz has spun in solo. You
are absolutely correct then when you say the accidents only occur with an
instructor on board, or more correctly when the back seat is occupied. So
we have a different loading situation in a glider which comes from the
same design shop as another glider with known spin recovery problems if
the CofG is moved aft. So is there the same problem with the Puchacz as
with the Junior, and is that problem in fact worse to the extent that
there is no recovery? We cannot know for sure but there is evidence that
points that way.

Does this not raise any concerns? I know we cannot prove that the Puchacz
will not recover under certain loading conditions any more that we can
prove that the spin ins have been caused by pilot error. The truth is that
the Puchacz has been proved to be a glider that frequently kills people. I
experienced a spin recovery in a Puchacz that was prolonged to an extent
that I thought it was not going to recover. It did eventually. It is very
easy to blame the unknown on pilot error but I suggest that we should at
least consider the possibility that there is a major problem with the
Puchacz, one which should mean that it is not intentionally spun as an
absolute minimum. We are never going to have a pilot tell us "This glider
was impossible to get out of a spin", because if that is the case he is
dead and not saying much.

My personal view is that there is sufficient evidence to show that the
Puchacz is a dangerous glider, so dangerous in fact that it should never
be flown again.