AOPA Stall/Spin Study -- Stowell's Review (8,000 words)

"Morgans" wrote in message ...
"Rich Stowell" wrote in message
om...
In the interest of fairness, following is the AOPA ASF response to my
review. All of this, including the link to the original study, is
posted on my web site as well at http://www.richstowell.com/aopa.htm:


Dead link


Try this:

http://www.richstowell.com/aopa.htm

(the colon I added at the end of the line was mistakenly treated as
part of the hyperlink...)

Recently, Rich Stowell posted:

While not exactly covering the breadth of the issue, this portion is dear
to my heart:

"Here, too, the AOPA study misleads readers regarding so-called
significant differences between Tomahawk and Cessna 150/152 spin
behavior."

We've been down this road before, and our conclusion that the Piper
Tomahawk is NOT a particularly dangerous airplane when properly flown
stands. It does have spin behavior that - while meeting FAA
certification standards - is not as docile as most, other training
aircraft, but that in itself doesn't make it dangerous. As with many
aviation safety issues, it's the pilot who makes the difference,
especially when dealing with matters of aircraft design.
Since our last go-around on this issue, we've been watching the
accident record for Piper Tomahawks very carefully to see if your
concerns about the design could be validated. So far, they can't: the
last stall/spin accident involving a Tomahawk was in 1999, near
Warrensburg, Illinois. The aircraft had been loaded nearly 100 pounds
over its maximum gross weight, which the NTSB cited as a contributing
factor.
(rest snipped for brevity)

Much of my early training was in a Tomahawk. My first attempt at a stall
resulted in a spin. It was... exhilirating... but no big deal to recover
from. Having been provided with many alarmist documents about the dangers
of spinning in a Tomahawk, I researched the matter thoroughly, both
theoretically and in practice. The conclusion that I reached is similar to
the above: to get into trouble, you have to load the Tomahawk pretty far
out of the w/b envelope, and that isn't easy to do.

My instructor and I, along with a full load of fuel, amounted to being in
the same 100 lbs over max gross weight as the above example, and that was
our typical configuration at take-off. However, while overweight, we were
*not* out of balance, and thus all manoeuvers were predictable and
controllable.

To get out of balance, you have to be a light-weight pilot and have some
serious weight (exceeding the posted max load) in the baggage area. Anyone
that could do such a thing is probably pretty dangerous in other regards,
as well, so it would be difficult to pin any consequent difficulties on
the design of the aircraft.

The worst thing that I can say about a Tomahawk in comparison to the
Cessnas is that you have to *fly* the plane at all times... it won't fly
itself for long. I think that makes for a great trainer.

Neil