In the UK over the last 50 years there have been something approaching 100
fatal spinning accidents in gliders.

One was definitely deliberate (they were running an audio casstte recorder
so we know all that was said) and the handling pilot (an instructor being
trained for up-grade) did not initiate the recovery action until the glider
was abour 250 ft agl. As he was about to initiate the recovery, the Chief
Instructor in the front seat exclaimed "Jesus Christ", two and a half
seconds later the tape cut off (the conclusion we reached was that the
handling instructor was so wrapped up in what he was saying and doing he
didn't register how close the ground was getting and the senior instructor
in the front seat was looking at the rudder pedals to ensure that full
opposite rudder was used, the exclaimation came when he looked up and saw
the ground 300 feet away.

Another came in a spin down from about 5000 feet at the end of a soaring
flight. The, very experienced, pilot was known to deliberately spin off
height at the end of soaring flights, the failure to recover was probably
due to the fact that he was 20 lbs below minimum cockpit load (and knew it)
and behind the aft C of G limit.

One other was a Puchacz on a pre-solo training flight, it spun in some
distance from the field, no witnesses and no evidence as to whether the
spin was deliberate or accidental.

All of the other spin-ins were in circumstances that left no doubt that the
spin was accidental.

Accidental spin-ins occurr when the pilot is distracted from speed
monitoring by some outside circumstance and, when the glider stalls and
starts to spin, fails to recognise the spin departure and take immediate
recovery action (I once arrived at the site of a spin-in only a minute or
so after it hit the ground. The relatively unhurt pilot said, "I can't
understand what happened, there must have been something wrong with the
elevator, I kept pulling back on the stck but the nose wouldn't come up. A
few minutes later he realised he had spun. He had been trained in a regime
that taught spinning but had probably not practiced any in the 400 hours
and 8 years since he finished training). The vast majority of spin-ins
occur from less than 500 feet agl.

The majority of composite single-seat gliders have spinning charactoristics
as bad as, or worse than, the Puchacz.

At 10:26 17 July 2014, Don Johnstone wrote:
At 08:11 17 July 2014, Chris Rollings wrote:
At 20:10 16 July 2014, Kevin Christner wrote:
On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 3:42:12 PM UTC-4, Chris Nicholas wrote:
Sorry, you haven't.



Chris N

Some reasonable questions:

Are there over 25 known accidents (likely more than 50 fatalities) from
stall / spin accidents in the Puchacz?

Have very experienced advocates of safety (Tom Knuaff, Cindy Brickner)
opined that they have serious concerns about the P. and do not feel i
is
safe to spin?

Is there any other glider type that has lost ~10% of its production i
spin
/ stall accidents?

If the answer to these questions is yes, it is very irrational t
continue
putting people at the risk of death. Sorry but think that is arguable.


I think you'll find that the Schweizer 2-32 has lost considerably mor
tha
10% of the fleet inn spinning accidents.

It is not the number of gliders lost that concerns me, it is the numbe
lost following deliberate spins.
In the absence of any other finding of technical defect there are only tw
possible causes:
1. The pilot(s) mishandled the glider and failed to apply the correc
action to recover from the spin
2. Under certain, maybe very specific loading conditions it is impossibl
to recover from a spin in that particular glider.

Given that the only people who could tell you for certain are dead th
assumption has always been made that the pilots screwed up. The othe
possible cause has always been vehemently denied. That is extremely poo
investigative practice, not to mention wooly thinking.
I concede that the 2nd possibility is extremely unlikely but there agai
the airline safety people thought that a double engine failure on a twi
engine airliner was extremely unlikely. It took a pilot with the skill o
Sully Sullenberger to recover from that "impossibility"