Puchaz Spinning thread that might be of interest in light of the recent accident.

[countertroll]

Ian,

the point of my link was to show that you will not spin from
coordinated flight. If you want to spin, at some point you'll need to
make a yaw movement, either with rudder or aileron, and for most
gliders, some of each. If the yaw string stays straight throughout the
stall break, there isn't enough yaw motion to achieve autorotation.

I suspect those who think they can enter a spin from balanced flight
have one of two things happening:

1. They are misusing the controls at the moment of the stall break,
creating yaw through aileron drag by instinctively trying to lift the
dropping wing, or by feeding in rudder. In either case, these are very
bad habits if done unconsciously.

2. They are entering spiral dives and misidentifying them as insipient
spins. Since the insipient phase looks much the same this isn't
surprising, and one can recover early in the spiral dive with the same
control inputs used for spin recovery; however, recognition and
appropriate response will save many feet of altitude loss.

This is worth thinking through. If a sailplane can spin from
coordinated flight, then at any given moment you are at risk of losing
500 to 1000 feet in a matter of seconds. This is based on the notion
that you have absolutely no control over the process save recognition
and recovery. But your use of the controls are of paramount importance
during an unexpected stall, the result of turbulence or distraction.
If your instinctive reaction is to nuetralize the controls, you've
removed the aggrevation that will take an aircraft past its "tipping"
point into autorotation. This is the classic compromise between
stability and controlability.

If we flew aircraft so unstable they could enter a spin without
control inputs, we'd all be hard pressed to justify the risks we would
face while flying.

"Ian Johnston" wrote in message news:cCUlhtvFIYkV-pn2-O04tsSrmcyTw@localhost...
On Mon, 26 Jan 2004 16:59:56 UTC, (Chris
OCallaghan) wrote:

: To review the importance of coordination in spin avoidance

Personally I rather like the spin entries from balanced flight. Very
thrilling.

Ian

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