You're supposed to reduce the bank angle before attempting to increase
pitch.Â* Pulling back in a spiral dive almost guarantees wing failure.

On 9/21/2019 2:43 PM, 2G wrote:
On Saturday, September 21, 2019 at 1:24:28 PM UTC-7, Richard DalCanto wrote:
On Saturday, September 21, 2019 at 12:32:23 PM UTC-6, 2G wrote:
On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 8:27:43 PM UTC-7, Andy Blackburn wrote:
Tom,

I think you misread my post. No one ever practices spins at pattern height and I'd never recommend it. My point was that practicing spins and spin entry and recovery at altitude might save your life should a moment of distraction in the pattern lead to a departure. Never practicing spins at all leads you to trying to figure everything out for the first time at low altitude should the worst happen. Early recognition is half the battle.

Andy

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 12:59:47 AM UTC-5, 2G wrote:
Andy,

When you are down low (in the pattern) practice COORDINATED flight - that is what will save your ass, not a low-altitude spin recovery. This is just plain, simple common sense. Pilots, lots of them, who don't do this are getting killed, this is fact. Can you produce a SINGLE pilot who has done such a low altitude save?

Tom
Andy,

I didn't misread your post, but I am certain you misread mine:

"We are all saying the same things, the ONLY difference is the emphasis on priorities. We all say that glider pilots should fly coordinated and be taught spin recognition and recovery. I am only pointing out that this isn't totally working because pilots are still killing themselves with low altitude stall-spins. Personally, this happened to a friend of mine, and I witnessed a second friend very nearly kill himself doing exactly this."

To repeat, spin recognition and recovery training should be taught (and practiced). But I think you would agree that it is far better not to enter the spin in the first place, especially at low altitude. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Here is an attempted spin recovery that didn't work:
https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/Re...Final&IType=LA

Tom
I agree that it is better to not spin in the first place. But I would not post that is a spin recovery that didn't work. Based on the report, it doesn't look like the pilot tried to recover correctly (or at all before turning into a spiral dive). I was amazed when I did spin training in Arizona how quickly a glider recovers as soon as you push the stick forward. This guy was flying in a competition with other gliders and had Marijuana, and Valium in his system. Luckily he didn't kill anybody else with his f*ing drug use. You don't want to know what I really think about dirt bags that fly or drive while impaired.
The NTSB stated that a blood sample was unavailable, so whether or not he was impaired could not be determined. If the NTSB couldn't determine that, I know you can't!

The spin recovery was attempted (this was witnessed), but was unsuccessful. High performance gliders build up speed very quickly - if you try to pull out of the dive too aggressively, which you are motivated to do avoid over-speeding the glider, you can overload the wings and rip them off. This is an inherent risk of practicing spin recoveries that hasn't been mentioned in this thread.

Tom

--
Dan, 5J