"Dave Katz" wrote in message
...
"Vaughn" writes:

Saying that the plane "will occasionally end up in an inadvertent
spin" is a lot like calling it a plane that "will occasionally end up
crumpled on the side of a mountain in clouds and freezing rain." You
have to be trying really hard to spin one; it's hard to pin that on the
plane.


Nicely put. Actually I think it must be pretty hard to spin just about
anything accidentally, but people do. The plane gives you a LOT of
warning before it stalls - any plane. For a start it slows down, which
is fairly noticeable. (I forget exactly what I was doing over the weekend,
but for whatever reason I ended up a few knots slow - nowhere near
stalling - and it immediately just felt wrong, before I even looked at
the airspeed and confirmed it). It has a high angle of attack. In many
planes (though not really the case in high-wing Cessnas) there is a buffet.
(There is in the Cirrus iirc). Then to spin a wing will start to drop, and
in the Cirrus you will still have some aileron control even if you do the
wrong thing and try to fix it with the stick. At this point in just about
any plane, Muller-Beggs will work fine (let go of everything and wait).

That said, it strikes me that everyone ought to do some spin training,
maybe after they've got a few more hours than during PPL training.
It's fun, it's interesting, and it could save your life.

Now if you want a plane that is a challenge to fly, I flew a Waco over
the weekend. Now THAT is different. Things like absolutely zero
forward visibility during taxi, take-off and landing - and precious
little even when you're flying. I'll admit that my first couple of take-offs
and landings were not that great (well, none of them were really
GREAT but they did get better). But boy, what a lot of fun.

John