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

Hi All
Hope I'm not covering old ground on this thread and
may I start by saying since we don't know the cause
of the recent Puchacz incident, this doesn't relate
to it, but the content of the thread. I knew John.
He smiled lots.

Much good advice within indeed. My first syndicate
was a Bocian and IS29D, both of which spun at will,
the IS29 without any pre-stall buffet. I once managed
to spin the IS29 at the top of a loop which was slightly
the wrong side of exciting...

It does seem inexplicable (try as we might) that competent
folks on well proven gliders get bitten. Sure spinning
is complex and instruction invariably tries to be simple
- 'if the nose drops, ease the stick forward' etc.
With brain overload easily induced in students, it
has to be simple. Perhaps the more complex subtleties
of spinning SHOULD be introduced later as 'Advanced
spin awareness'?

One other consideration you may wish to ponder is the
British weather, with possible icing and wet wings.
This easily produces an asymetric wing:
Imagine the instructional flight. All upper air work
done well, the air's smooth and we try that old chestnut
of the 'unexpected' deeper stall in the circuit - the
one where the nose is down, grounds coming up and we
just can't resist pulling before it's 'unstuck'. Demonstrated
to me. Instructed by me. But NEVER in a wet or icy
Puchacz, Bocian, IS29. Even a gentle simple, stall
could bite very differently with wet / icy wings and
turn a benign glider into something far more interesting.

Fly safe out there.
Pete Harvey


At 15:24 28 January 2004, Robert Ehrlich wrote:
Ian Johnston wrote:

On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 12:35:43 UTC,
(Chris
OCallaghan) wrote:

: the point of my link was to show that you will not
spin from
: coordinated flight.

Tight turn. Slow speed. String in the middle. Pull
up sharply as if
another glider has just cut into the thermal. Whoops.
Well, it works
in a Bocian, anyway.

Ian
--

Another way I experienced it during my 1st flight in
an ASH25 (with
an instructor in the back seat of course). Circling
in a thermal, with
just to much aft stick than approriate. Speed slowly
decayed (slowly
beacause the hight weight and inertia of the glider),
induced roll
and yaw slowly increased, needing more and more inside
rudder and
outside stick, up to the point where a incipent spin
started, immediateley
stopped by releasing back pressure and centralizing
ailerons and rudder.
At the time of departure, stick and rudder were strongly
crossed,
but the flight was coordinated and the yaw string in
the middle.