I have done quite a few flights in the Puchacz. It is a perfectly nice
glider, albeit with a slightly greater tendency to spin than most West
European designs. Ditto the Junior. They will both recover using the
standard spin recovery, although you may have to get the stick well
forward and hold it there until the spin stops. I personally prefer
training gliders that spin properly and require a positive recovery. With
the K13 for example, you are never quite sure whether it will go into a
spin or a spiral dive, and it will usually recover from a spin as soon as
the stick is moved off the backstop. not very realistic!

Derek Copeland


At 23:30 04 July 2009, Don Johnstone wrote:
At 21:15 04 July 2009, bildan wrote: (snip)

The Puchacz is not a dangerous glider. There may be dangerous pilots
who fly them, however.

How would you describe a glider in which so many people have been killed
in spinning incidents? Unlucky? Challenging? or Misunderstood perhaps?

I fully accept the reports of the pilots who tested the glider and found
that it recovered, if it had not they would not have been able to report
that it didn't.

Of course no-one is going to design a glider that cannot recover from a
spin, and of course no-one is going to design an airliner where the
doors
fall off either, causing major structural failure. I do not think that
the
level of expertise found at McDonnell-Douglas exists in a glider design
facility. Design faults are found in aircraft after release to service
and
mostly something is done or at least restrictions are put in place to
counteract the fault, not so with the Puchacz.
The reason why no-one has reported that a Puchacz is impossible to
recover
is that if it has happened the pilots have not survived to do so. It is
easy to blame someone when they are not around to challenge that finding
and this is certainly what the Canadian report does.

Is the best explanation that anyone can come up with is that the glider
attracts more than it's fair share of dangerous pilots.

I have little doubt that the Putchacz will go on killing people while it
is permitted to continue to fly, it won't be me, I will never fly in
one
again.