piper cherokee 140 or cessna which is more dangerous to spin?

[kloe]

I would like to know which one of the two being the cherokee 140 and the cessna 152/172 is more dangerous to spin and would like to hear stories of good flights gone bad doing the stall/spin training.

So, do I train the cherokee or cessna?

[JUST-local]

I think finding valid information on (facts and figure) which is more dangerous is impossible, who says its dangerous anyway, with proper entry and recovery a spin is a pleasant experience, it certainly was during my training and subsequent spinning sorties.
I have spun both the PA28-140 and C150 Aerobat, both seemed be reluctant to spin to need a fair bit of effort to get a nice spin and not a spiral dive!
Cessna or Piper? I would take a Piper any day, again just personal choice but they are stronger (if you did put one in!) the integral engine bearer nose leg is stronger but I suppose Cessna designed their riveted on nose leg to be the weak link, works well though.
The Piper is of stronger construction through ought, both aircraft do what they say on the tin!
JL..........

[matt_hooks]

As said above, both of the aircraft are inherently stable and really need some work to get them to spin.

I would suggest that the aircraft is not the dangerous part in the setup, but rather the pilot. If you are training with a good, experienced instructor then you should have absolutely no problems!

[kloe]

What if the instructor is a fairly new one?

[tescoapp]

I suspect your on the slippery slope of pooing yourself before you have even done one.

[Leezyjet]

My instuctor told me that with enough height, you could put the 152 in a spin, and just sit back and it would eventually sort itself out, don't know how true this is for other types.

Wouldn't like to try that myself though !!. :eek:

Girl I used to work with went to the US to do her PPL, and never finished it as just after one of her flights, she got out, the next stude got in and went off with the same instructor, never to return. They were spinning in a Tramahawk.
:(

[OPSH24]

In most modern training aircraft (particularly military types or similar), if certified for spins, the standard recovery consists of relieving any control pressure and the aircraft stops spinning.

I've spun C172 and used a more traditional recovery. Very difficult to get a high wing cessna to spin as opposed to spiral dive. If you go to the trouble of getting yourself into one, you should know how to recover as per the POH.

[Canada Goose]

I've spun C152 and C172 quite a bit, and with the correct entry inputs they spin a treat !! It was a requirement for both PPL and CPL in Canada, although by the time I took my PPL back in '99 they had actually dropped that as test item.

"In most modern training aircraft (particularly military types or similar), if certified for spins, the standard recovery consists of relieving any control pressure and the aircraft stops spinning."

I'm not sure if that is entirely correct. Relaxing the controls usually recovers the stall (and remember, no stall - no spin), but it usually requires opposite rudder input to stop the spin, particularly as it gains momentum and becomes well developed.

"Girl I used to work with went to the US to do her PPL, and never finished it as just after one of her flights, she got out, the next stude got in and went off with the same instructor, never to return. They were spinning in a Tramahawk."

I've heard of other instances of Tomahawks getting into dangerous spins. I'm sure I read about that on pprune years ago. Could have even have been www or scroggs providing the anecdotal evidence !

Anyway, in answer to the posters question, can't comment on the Piper, but the C152/72 is very benign and under the circumstances "safe to spin".

Happy spinning.
CG

[Groundloop]

Ah, the good old days when spinning was a compulsory part of a PPL!

I have spun 140's and 152's without any problems. Re the Tomahawk - after a number of accidents I seem to recall that intentional spinning was forbidden in them. Don't know if this still applies.

[foxmoth]

Neither of these types spin very well - this does not mean they are dangerous but they tend to come out too easily, I would recommend doing spinning in an aircraft that is better at doing a true spin - e.g. Bulldog,Chippie, dH82a. Anyone who has only span a Cessna or Pa28 might be surprised at the difference:ooh:

[tescoapp]

It is still legal to spin the P38.

In the UK you have to have a 4 point harness fitted and under half tank of fuel. And the mod done on the tail, which I would think they all had now. And you are not allowed to flick them in with a boot full of rudder.

Alot of instructors who were trained on cessna types have a bit of a shock the first time they spin one. They are used to a very sedate spin and having to keep a boot of rudder in just to keep the machine in.
Unfortunatly when they first do one in the PA38 they help it into a spin. Then discover what a fully developed spin looks like. Everything happens very quickly with lots of banging down the back. Loosing 2.5k ft and doing 5 turns in under 30 seconds is not unusual. Your only meant to do 3 turns max but unless you carry out the POH method within 1.5 turns with half tanks you in for 5. Also it has a tendency to speed up the spin rate before slowing down, which personally I think half the problems were people not sticking with the full oppersite rudder when it speeded up.

After the shock of the first one they tend to believe the rumours and then repeat the old terrorhawk stories thus continuing the legend that you will die if you spin one.

The PA38 is actually a very good learning platform and students tend not have any problems converting onto other types.

[greeners]

A handful of responses and already a sad amount of mis-, dis- and just plain wrong information.

Go to a school which has aircraft that are cleared for spinning, and make sure that you have an experienced instructor who has spent a lot of time exploring the various types of normal and aggravated spins. Get taught properly.

[EvilKitty]

A handful of responses and already a sad amount of mis-, dis- and just plain wrong information.

Go to a school which has aircraft that are cleared for spinning, and make sure that you have an experienced instructor who has spent a lot of time exploring the various types of normal and aggravated spins. Get taught properly.

Does anyone have any recommendations for good schools for spinning? And which schools do spin training on multiple types (to get a good range of experience)?

[S-Works]

Speak to our man Greeners! You won't get better than some advanced handling at Ultimate High.

[kloe]

Greeners, what if you get an instructor that does not have a great deal of spin experience and is fairly new? How is this instructor supposed to become an expert in spins if he is just starting out? Should he go to an aerobatic school to freshen up his skills?

thanks for all the comments and keep them coming.

[aluminium persuader]

I've just been spinning a T67M Firefly. I was very worried about getting airsick prior to the sorties but having tried it have discovered how much fun it is! Thoroughly enjoyed it, and what a shame the Americans have cut all theirs up.:{

ap:ok:

[greeners]

Kloe, its a good question, and one that applies to flying with new FIs in general. If given a choice, many people will choose an experienced FI over an inexperienced one - so how does the inexperienced chap start to get experienced? The bottom line is that most students starting PPL training see a qualified person who has been signed off to carry out flying training, and know no better.

Some FIs start with the bare minimum of time and qualifications, others aren't really interested in flight instruction and can bemarking time until they get an airline slot. Some 'career instructors' love teaching and would probably be the first choice of some students, but personality comes into it as well and you may just find that you get on better or can relate more easily with a younger FI, who may actually be more enthusiastic than a chap who has been doing it for ages. For each of these cases, there will be those who are better and those who are not.

I'm trying to give a balanced picture here, and should declare that I do instruct with Ultimate High; we're fortunate in only using experienced instructors but appreciate that everybody has to start somewhere. We don't really provide PPL training and for that we recommend people take trial lessons with a few local schools to see what suits them. For more specialised training - and, as has been pointed out in a variety of places official and unofficial, with the removal of spinning from the PPL syllabus, spinning IS specialised, and your new FI can get away with only having done two spins in his entire life to date - then IMHO you should go to people who spend a higher proportion of their time in the air not flying straight and level the right way up.

Good sources to find such places include http://www.baef.org.uk/current_perspectives.htm and of course the BAeA website.

Good for you on wanting to explore the edges of the flight envelope - it will improve you as a pilot.

[birdlady]

Kloe,

I understand from your posting that your a little bit nervous of spining? :confused: :confused: I can understand why as my first spining experience was not a pleasant one. :\ :\ Instructor put me in a full spin in a cherokee that wasnt certified for this excercise and lets just put it this way my pants were a little wet after the flight. :O :O I was always nervous thereafter until I got an instructor who let me do the spinning myself and the recovery (before it was always just recovery). Once I knew how to do it I loved it. Every chance I get over she goes. :ok: :ok:

[birdlady]

Ps Didnt see greeners post. :O :O Could not have said it better. :ok: :ok:

[tescoapp]

Kloe I notice your from canada and I don't know what the instructors course is like over there.

In the UK as part of the instructors course the Instructor instructor so to speak will brief and demo and make you perform spins. During the test it is manditory that you perform a spin for the test. You don't need to patter it (instructors speak for a talk through demo) but you do need to recover. Its not really taught as such so you can teach spins more that you can recover quickly if anything goes wrong. In my test the examiner stuck us in one while pretending to practise a stall. So it was a student frozen on the controls while stalling followed by a spin.

Going from what greeners says I might add that I have been in a mode of spin in a C152 that I had never seen or heard of before it happened. The FII was doing max rate turns and was trying to flick roll it into a spin by using max roll inputs. While doing it he said he had been trying to do it for years but the C152 wouldn't. Next thing we knew we had flicked over the top into a full developed flat spin which was on a par with PA38. It wouldn't recover using the POH method. And in the end the instructor put some power on and got it pointing at the ground with the rudder doing its job.

An areo's course after PPL would be my advice and don't go and try it for yourself.

[kloe]

birdlady and all the others ofcourse thank you the great info. I was also asking this question because I might be one of those new instructors as I am thinking of getting my instructor's rating and teach others to fly . birdlady did you do alot of spins in the cherokee 140 as I am trying to decide to go to a school that has cessnas in one and cherokee 140s in the other. I don't know which school to attend and take the instructor's course as both have offered my emplyment afterwards.

So, I would like to tell you about my first spin experience. My instructor took me up way back in 1981 when I first started to fly at the age of 15 and told me he will show me a stall. Well the stall ended up being a spin and down we went, scared the crap out of me and I wasn't feeling very well after that so I told him let's go back and we did. For a very long time after that flight I was very nervous of spins but eventually you have to bite the bullet and during my commercial flight test I had to and I did them very well actually and this was in a cherokee 140 as I did my commercial licence on this airplane as opposed that first stall spin in a cessna 150.

My thoughts and questions to you guys out there that know a little bit more than me, for me that has gotten much better in doing spins but is not an expert on which airplane should I attempt in getting the instructor rating which would help me learn more about spins and teaching this to my prospective future students?

I was thinking of taking an aerobatic course that teaches spin awareness in an aerobat 152 that would take me through 25 spins over a two day span down in California, I live in Canada.

Any ideas, suggestions, comments or things that you would different would be much appreciated as I am trying to make a decision.

thank you very much and looking forward to your expert comments.

kloe

[tescoapp]

Sounds like you have your head screwed on right.

The areo's course sounds fun. But personally I would go and do it on something more spirited than a piper or a cessna. Then when you go back to instructing in them everything will be slow time.

As for which type to do the instructors course in...... the cheapest ;)

[EchoMike]

Cessna 150/152/Aerobats spin very nicely, and it is a low-risk situation. The "King of Spins" is William Kirchner who now lives in Tennessee and has done several thousand (!) spins in 150s. He wrote the Aerobat manual for Cessna. If you learned to fly in the US, his name will be familiar to you.

The runner-up for this title is Rich Stowall in California, who teaches a course on unusual attitude recovery, and there is flight time involved, so it isn't just a lecture. Rich sometimes goes around to aviation events and offers his course there.

The 150/152/Aerobat spin recovery is very standard (stop rotation with rudder, yoke forward, throttle back), and the alternative is to let go of everything (as in "Oh Sh*T!") whereupon the airplane goes into a spiral.

172s are a bit different - they should NOT be spun with anything or anybody in the rear seats. The aft CG can make recovery difficult. Read the POH carefully before attempting this.

Tomahawks are a different situation. The airplane will spin, but a lot of people are nervous about Tomahawks. When Piper designed the airplane, it was to have been a modern trainer, and they talked to many flight instructors and asked them what they wanted in a trainer (what a novel idea!). One of the things they said was "we want it to do a proper stall."

Well, the original Tomahawk did proper stalls - and promptly scared the bejesus out of student pilots and instructors both, who were used to the almost non-event of Cessna or Cherokee stalls. Piper added stall strips to the wings to "tame" the airplane, and that helped. There were also a series of AD notes regarding the T-tail (and a bunch of other things as well) and a mandatory engine mount repair or replacement.

There are some flight schools which teach in Tomahawks, but when it is time to do stalls, they take out the Cessna for that. Tomahawks are starting to go away because there is an 11,000 hour life-rating on the main spar and the cost to comply is astronomical. 11,000 hours sounds like forever from now if the airplane is new, but 7,000 or 9,000 hours on trainers isn't unusual nowadays. Some Beechcraft also have this problem, and the weeping and wailing of the owners is awesome to behold.

I don't know about spins in Cherokees - anyone have experience here?

Best Regards,

Echo Mike

[Pilot DAR]

Hello Kloe, and others,

I suggest that you not worry too much about which type of aircraft you should choose for spin training, spin both types! Bear in mind that any aircraft type you are likely to find yourself training in, has shown, as a part of it's original design approval flying, the ability to enter and recover from a spin (refer to Canadian Standard AWM523.221, Spinning. It can be found on the Transport Canada website. It will probably be the same as the FAA standard).

To make the best use of your flight training dollar, I invite you to think of the instuctor not as much as a person who is going to "teach" you everything, but more as a person who will keep you safe while you learn for yourself, and offer helpful tips along the way. Yes, the instructor might demonstrate sometimes, but it is really up to you to embark on your flight prepared, and with an objective - perfecting spin recovery perhaps. (The foregoing does not apply to aerobatics - that does require qualified demonstration before attempting!) (and a 152 Aerbat is a good choice).

Before you fly, read, research ask questions of other pilots (which is why I'm responding to you). Understand what the manufacturer says about flying their aircraft. Then get in the aircraft with your instructor, and take them for a flight which is safe, and beneficial to you. They should not need to fly very much, if you were prepared when you got in.

There will be many things that you will encounter in the air, which will cause you to very rapidly have to call up an accurate recollection of what the aircraft manufacturer said to do ('cause there won't be time to look it the book then), and there will not be an instructor with you. Learn to fly - not any particular type, but as many as you can. Learn to feel what any type is telling you during each phase of flight, there's a lot more similarity there than you'd think - they are all certified to standards with very similar requirements. They don't get to pass unless they do what the test pilot is expecting them to do!

I regularly spin my Cessna 150 to keep myself fresh. I have spun many types, including Cherokees and Tomhawks, and recently, a float equipped Cessna 185 with a survey boom out the back, and a Lake Amphibian with a boom out 12' the front, and a Cessna 207 with wing pylons. These were test flights, and I was by myself. I had to learn fast! The 185 lost 1000' and went beyond straight down during the first recovery - due wholly to overly casual recovery technique on my part! The second, and subsequent spin recoveries were much better! The Lake spins beautifully, but requires a strong rudder foot to get a crisp recovery. The 207 is heavy but pleasent. I've even spun an Ercoupe, but it was really hard to get it into a spin with no rudder pedals, and of couse, I had no way of holding it in! It came out on its own, as advertised on the placard.

The 150/152/172 will find their own way out of a spin eventually, but it's a sloppy way to fly. Apply anything like what the book says to do to get out, and the recovery is quite presentable.

One comment about Cherokees, which would also apply to a Cessna 177, is that pitch control is via a stabilator, as opposed to stabilizer/elevator. At large control surface angles of attack, there is the possibility of stalling the whole flying surface. (Early C177's had an AD about this) The stabilizer/elevator combination seems more resistant to this, perhaps due to the effective increase in camber of the flying surface as a whole during high pitch angle flying. This effect is noticable during soft field takeoffs, where the stabilator seems to produce a whole lot of drag (defeating accelleration) and not the desired amount of lift (down) to keep the nose high. If you manage to get airborne this way, the lack of climb performance is alarming!

Novice vs experienced flying instructor? Fly with them both. The novice is fresh, and deserves the same chance to advance their career as you will want. And remember, they are there mostly to provide a safe environment within which you will learn for yourself. The oldtimer will be relaxed, and have lots of "been there, done that" good advice. And, they'll keep you safe too. If you don't feel safe, tell them so, and ask their opinion of your feeling. Then tell them that you are going to give yourself a bigger margin of safety and try again.

Good luck in finding the experience you are looking for. It's all out there somewhere, just find it safely!

Cheers, Pilot DAR