Any Advances in Teaching Students not to kill themselves?

[RansS9]

Immediate apologises for sensationalist title.

Reading the Special Appendix of "Stick and Rudder" (Langewiesche 1972 edition) entitled "The dangers of the air" by Leighton Collins; I just wondered if anything had changed in the last 36yrs?

For those without a copy, he eloquently both; outlines his view on the real killer (spins out of tight turns ); and describes the how and why of the event in chillingly clear detail.

I went to an excellent Flight School full of knowlegdeable enthusiatic instructors...and was never taught about this let alone shown it or practised it.

Do you specifically teach about this particular danger? How do you teach it theoretically? How do you teach it practically? Can you teach it practically without access to an aerobatic aeroplane?

Just interested TIM.

(Who the hell am I?...Not an instructor but a lowly lowish hours PPL. But I am involved indirectly in teaching and this looks like a crucial but difficult subject to teach a low hours student.)

[TurboJ]

I try and teach the PPL student from day one the importance of airspeed; in particular its relevance to the manoeuvre being flown;

It was interesting doing a check ride with a guy who pulled a 45deg+ bank climbing turn on the crosswind leg in a PA28 and was surprised to see in the PoH how close his airspeed was to the stall speed;

When you don't have access to aerobatic aircraft to demonstrate the implications of reckless manoeuvres you can only use shock tactics from the book when on the ground !!

[Romeo India Xray]

Reminds me of the time I met someone coming the wrong way down downwind, in order to land downwind on the reciprocal runway in order to save himself taxi time. The manoeuver I performed was a pretty steep bank angle (by necessity), and while I was eyes out waiting for the crunch, let the airspeed decay to stupidly low levels (less than 1.3 Vs). Glanced down and had to sacrifice height ASAP but as this was a 600' Cct airfield I was now down to 350-400' and now needed to make a downwind to base turn in order to fall in behind this prat on base, and no option of going around due other traffic taking off the right way.

I would recommend getting them to do this on a BITD or MS flight sim if you have something suitable at your school, and are able to suitbly distract them. It will be an eye opener for them for sure! It was an eye opener for me and I had nearly 1000 hours as an instructor when this happened.

Sidenote - about 6 months later the airfield in question was closed due to its crass safety record and the inevitable accident that would be cause by certain idiots using it.

RIX

[foxmoth]

Rans,
Modern aircraft are not generally as prone to this as in Langewiesches day, however I would be very surprised if you did not cover this - slow flight and incipient spin recovery are still very much part of the UK PPL syllabus, I would however recommend anyone interested to do a proper spining and upset course subsequent to their PPL if they have not done this in their PPL as is still actually possible. I know of one school that does an excellent course if anyone needs a recomendation:}.

[what next]

Hello!

In my eyes (biassed/focussed towards JAR regulations) the "advance" lies in the fact that we do not instruct stall/spin recovery techniques any more, but stall/spin awareness and avoidance.

Over 90 percent of the students that I instruct train towards a commercial license. And after they are through with the school aircraft (C152, Pa28 and Pa44), for the rest of their career they are going to fly aircraft that will not recover from stalls or spins anyway. So we teach them not to stall and everything works out nicely.

Greetings, Max

[foxmoth]

for the rest of their career they are going to fly aircraft that will not recover from stalls or spins anyway.

Sorry but that is rubbish, the T tail jets had this problem, most modern jets will have a lot of stall protection, but many can actually stall, and the aircraft that many commercial pilots start on (medium turbojets) will definitely stall and recover with proper stall recovery action. There have been a few examples where pilots of big jets have used some sort of UP recovery learnt in light aircraft to get out of a very unusual sticky situation and learning these techniques cannot do any harm, plus of course, many people on this forum will be PPL only.

[Romeo India Xray]

Over 90 percent of the students that I instruct train towards a commercial license.

Which is just fine for those students.

What about the great many of us who instruct people who only wish to fly a PA-28 for the rest of their days. An old friend of mine killed himslef after an inadvertant spinning accident, he was a 3000 hour PPL.

The day that spinning was removed from the syllabus was the worst days work ever done by the powers that be. I still encourage students to take an hour of spin training. It is too late to learn what a spin is, when you are going round and round like the proverbial spin drier, and your brain is somewhere out by the left wingtip.

RIX

[DB6]

The fact of the matter is that stall/spin awareness/avoidance is more effective than teaching spin recovery, so there is one answer, Rans. It's not as much fun, but if you teach people to recognise when they are getting into potentially dangerous situations and how to recover at that stage it is much more effective than teaching them how to recover from deep ****. It also prevents fatalities while spin training - and there have been a few of those. I believe however that one of the current areas of concern is stalling in the climbout (i.e high power, low speed) rather than the final turn, so there may be some more developments in that area. 'Stick and rudder' is all very well but it is an old book written about old aircraft so in some areas is not that relevant these days. And elevators aren't flippers, whichever way you look at it :bored:.

[Romeo India Xray]

I managed to take it to the edge while flying a bog standard downwind leg. I agree that avoidance is the primary weapon against spinning in, but all students should be able to identify a fully developed spin and recover. It only takes an unusual event and you could find yourself beyond incipient.

In my example, had it gone full then I may have just had sufficient height to get out of it, had I not had full spin training drilled into me from the outset it is unlikely I would have been able to recover, or even comprehend what was going on.

RIX

[RansS9]

It seems on the surface to be a rehash of the "should spinning be taught" debate but I think it's more than that.

Yes the end result is a spin but it's how you got into it that's crucial. As a student having an instructor show, and then replicate, a spin from straight and level followed by recovery might just leave the student thinking;..mmmmhhhh so if I bring the aeroplane upto a ridiculous nose high atitude and then kick in a boot full of rudder the world spins around..fine I'll not do that again ..ever!

BUT if a student is shown a miss handled tight turn, nose abit high correction with rudder (now skidding) induced increase roll into the turn, elevator to correct...BANG...SPIN. This is a manoeuvre he/she has done (tight turns); this is how it can go wrong; this is how seemingly sensible instinctive reactions are ABSOLUTELY WRONG; this is how much height is lost; this is how easy it is to die; and this is how you prevent it!!

That's show the student not just theorise (still very important) actually show, feel, sense in a controlled enviroment. To that extent how many instructors have access to an aeroplane certificated to do such manoeuvres; and how many instructors are competent ..truly competent to teach this part of a syllabus.

Is this really an area of flying that we want left to the voluntary actions of recently certificated to seek out "upset training"?

Tim

PS--an alternative view re Stick and Rudder..Langewiesche

--has the design of " light aircraft " significantly altered since it's writing?
--flippers what a great name!--elevators what a really bad name! Word association being what it is. If you have a student descending to the ground in level flight, wing close to the stall, what don't you want them to pull on initially?

[greeners]

"The fact of the matter is that stall/spin awareness/avoidance is more effective than teaching spin recovery"

Interesting statement. Is there actually any hard evidence, anywhere in the world, that proves this?

And that's ignoring the fact that any professionally taught teaching of spin recovery will include a large amount of stall/spin/awareness/avoidance in the first place...

[greeners]

"BUT if a student is shown a miss handled tight turn, nose abit high correction with rudder (now skidding) induced increase roll into the turn, elevator to correct...BANG...SPIN. This is a manoeuvre he/she has done (tight turns); this is how it can go wrong; this is how seemingly sensible instinctive reactions are ABSOLUTELY WRONG; this is how much height is lost; this is how easy it is to die; and this is how you prevent it!!

That's show the student not just theorise (still very important) actually show, feel, sense in a controlled enviroment. To that extent how many instructors have access to an aeroplane certificated to do such manoeuvres; and how many instructors are competent ..truly competent to teach this part of a syllabus.

Is this really an area of flying that we want left to the voluntary actions of recently certificated to seek out "upset training"?"

Tim, well said. The fact that a reasonable number of people (extrapolating from what we see at UH, I would guess 300-500 each year in the UK) seek 'spin/upset' upset training not because it is mandated by CAA/EASA, but because they recognise an area of their (safety) skill set that needs improving, when they have so many other competing needs for their airborne dollar, speaks volumes of the perceived value of such training but only by a minority. I understand that the FAA encourages Upset recurrency training every two years without making it mandatory.

I have attended safety meetings at Gatwick where the value of this training is recognised as being desireable by the regulators, but they are loathe to mandate an additional expense on a group that is perceived as a whole to be struggling financially.

[I Follow Roads]

When Leighton Collins wrote his addition to Stick & Rudder, not only were aircraft designs much the same as today, a large number of our training fleet were airborne at the time!! PA28s and C150s are as old as the hills so the 'Stick & Rudder is an old book about old aeroplanes' line is cobblers........

Besides which, I regularly train in a Grob 115, modern, composite, light and not cleared for spinning, probably due to the fact that it spins like b*&$£ery with relatively little persuasion! A lot of modern slick laminar flow wing designs, owing to their lack of vortex inducing rivets, fuel caps etc, have the endearing feature that when they go, BAM! they go......... Hell of a lot easier than trying to spin a lardy arsed cherokee!

This said, shouldn't we be teaching our students who may go out and buy a light, slick, modern, fuel efficient new style machine, what to do if it does go tits up, for whatever reason? After all, we teach them stalling, engine failures, fires, inadvertant flight into IMC, steep gliding turns, unusual attitude recovery, yet the single biggest problem of all gets bypassed with a poor excuse.

[Fitter2]

Sooner or later some pilots will enter a spin, often at low altitudes.

The instinctive reaction (bank increasing, outspin aileron, nose dropping, pull stick back) will kill them.

Full spin training (preferably regularly refreshed) may save their life.

(A point of view from a pilot who has seen 1 fatal and 2 serious injury spin accidents, at least two of which looked recoverable).

[fly inverted]

first of all, don't try this at home! =P i'm not to be held liable for anything you feel like going out and doing after reading this and/or any trouble you get yourself into. this is purely for your information, not a guideline to go out and get yourself in trouble. i whole heartedly recommend that you find yourself a qualified instructor or friend that can teach you emergency maneuver and/or spin training.
(wrote this after writing this whole spiel, so here it is)
-----------

oooooh yeeeeeeahhhhh.... we teach TONS about this stuff, but we're rudder whores =P the examiner we send our students to remarked that he can "tell the difference between our students and students from another school" because of the confidence seen in our PPL students during stalls and steep turns.
i tend to run my students through falling leaf stalls/deep stalls/rudder stalls/whatever you want to call them, so by the time they get to their test they can recover like pro's! and the steep turns... well, we teach bank and yank turns, hehe =P the examiner remarked that when he asks them to do a steep turn, they just plow right through it with a big grin on their face... boom,boom,boom =P

but, yeah... low+slow... overshoot a center line... low approach on final... uncoordinated turn... improper slip recovery... it can get you in trouble, certainly. whatever you do, keep in mind that crashing in your landing attitude is more survivable than nosing it in or what have you. with that in mind, it all comes down to... rudder! if you can work those rudders like a mad man and keep that yaw under control, you can do pretty much whatever you'd like =P

it's been forever and a year since i've read that book, but i'm sure he says something along the lines of if roll and yaw in the same direction can lead to a spin. so if you can manage to neutralize your yaw, you can keep your plane from entering a spin.

if you have one, grab a model and play with it a bit. look at pitch, roll and yaw and think three dimensionally. pitch, as you'll notice, is a head to foot movement (nodding "yes" with your head). roll is head to hip. yaw is ear to ear (like your shaking your head "no"). these are always true. so! if you roll the plane to a 90 degree bank, what control input is now up? down? left and right? kinda changes a bit!
in your normal, level flight attitude, you pull back and the nose goes to the sky. in a 90 degree bank, it's now dragging the nose around the horizon. if you want the nose to go up, push that topside rudder! now keep in mind, it doesn't even need to be a knife edge bank like that, it can be very small amounts of bank, just won't have quite as immediately noticeable results.

getting to the rudder... next time you go up and fly, play with the rudders! practice pushing 50/50 (left/right). more or less running on the rudders, really. your goal is to be kicking those rudders constantly. you push so much on the left, you'll have to push that same amount (more or less) on the right to neutralize yaw. with this is mind, you can pretty much control an airplane whatever you're doing.

so, if a wing drops, what can you do? well you've already read not to use that aileron, so what does that leave you? well... yaw! i'm tired as all hell right now, so i can't think of what words to use, buuuut.... yaw can mean speed. when you yaw the plane, both wingtips have to move, but one will have to travel a much greater distance than the other in the exact same amount of time, which meeeans.... yup! one will have to move FASTER than the other! so! if that left wing drops, what can we do? generate more lift by increasing airspeed! that means if that left wing drops on you, work that right rudder to bring it back up! but, of course, remember that roll and yaw in the same direction can lead to a spin, so we don't want excessive yaw in one direction, which is where that 50/50 mindset comes in. now working yaw neutral will just keep that wing where it is, so you'll have to do something more like 40/60, working that right rudder slightly more than the left, but still neutralizing the right rudder input with that left rudder! (right, neutral, right, neutral, right, neutral....) avoid stomping on that right rudder. that'll just change things from left to right and ultimately won't do you much good (unless you're trying to spin right =P ).

so... in general, when you stall that left wing will drop down. now for most pilots that are taught in two dimensional means, their first reaction is to use that right aileron. remember what that does to the control surfaces. left goes down, right goes up. left aileron down means increased angle of attack which just puts that wing deeper into the stall (stall is exceeding critical angle of attack), which will just cause that wing to drop further. so, again, rudder! just work those rudders to keep the airplane under control, or level the wings. just be careful!
so for your stall recovery, lower that angle of attack! bring that nose to the ground, which will also increase airspeed, which will increase control effectiveness, which will make the overall recovery and keeping the wings level/arresting descent easier. so that whole, push+power recovery works so nicely for us =P mind you, some may argue that adding the power with the nose down will just bring your to the ground faster, but that might vary plane to plane (i would think). play with it one day. stall and recover with the power off. how much altitude did you lose? get your altitude back and stall and recover with power as you push. how much did you lose? keep in mind that you don't need push so hard that you get light in your seat. some say for spin recovery in certain planes it's necessary, but... eh... also remember that if you stall at 50kias, you just have to get back above 50kias to recover, so you don't need to keep that nose down there forever before pulling it back to level.

skidding turns, slip recovery.... stuff like that is easy. just yaw control again. the turns you can see/feel. check your slip ball. keep the lil bugger centered. as for feeling... there's the good ol' fly by the seat of your pants sort of thing. i go by butt cheeks, others go by leaning =P do you feel more weight on your left/right cheek? well, push more rudder that way till you feel yourself center in your seat. leaning left/right? again, more rudder that way!
as for the slip recovery... slips are inherently spin resistant, being as roll and yaw are in opposite directions, but uncoordinated recovery can result in having roll and yaw in the same direction. generally it's improper use of rudder, not aileron (well, can be aileron, but usually people tend to kick a rudder more than roll past neutral). so when recovering from a slip, level the wings and work those rudders to neutralize the yaw! simple as that =P

also remember that with greater weight comes a higher stall speed. just throwing numbers out there, but if a 1000lb plane stalls at 50, a 1500lb plane may stall at 60, 2000lb 70 and so on... now think g-loading... if you increase the g-load on a plane to 2, it's now technically twice as heavy. so by pulling 2G's you've quickly gone to 2000lb plane and 70kias stall speed! so, again, don't yank on those controls.
so when someone goes sliding past centerline on that base to final turn, really they should maintain their bank and CALM DOWN! nobody ever said you MUST land on the first try. failed engine? well... go for your landing configuration, like i mentioned earlier, and suck it up! fly past the damn runway if you need to, just be safe! but, yeah! so generally the tendency when one overshoots the centerline is to increase bank, in order to "turn faster" or something of the likes. but, if you recall your turn characteristics (shallow bank tends to roll wings level. medium bank tends to stay in the turn. steep bank tends to roll towards the down wing, but because we don't have the power to remain level with that decreased vertical lift, we also descend!) the nose of the plane will tend to drop towards that down wing. again, 2 dimensional thinking, people see the nose going to the ground so they "pull up." of course, this just tightens the turn and, somewhat, pulls them more to the ground. they see the ground coming up faster and faster, so they pull harder and harder, increasing the g-load on the plane. increasing the stall speed... yup! eventually they stall, with roll and yaw in the same direction, and they spin 500' over the ground.
so, again... calm down! hold your bank, keep it coordinated, and just WAIT! establish a crab towards the centerline. wait for it to come back. roll back to the centerline. don't rush things by yanking back on that yolk! it can help, sure, but it can also put you in danger if you're not aware of what you're doing!


oh, and most of my private students are taught in a C150M with a tailwheel conversion (texas taildragger, it's called). sure, they normally can spin, but this thing has had so friggin many addons/modifications and what have you, it's not really safe to anymore.

[drivez]

Wasn't stick and rudder written in the 1930's. C-150's were in production from 1957 to 1959. It is a great book and certainly underlined for me don't let you Angle of attack go above the critical angle.

[Nearly There]

Interesting video of how things can go wrong, quickly!

YouTube - 26 Turn Flat Spin in a Tipsy Nipper (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bvbS-oHi9ro&feature=related)

From the Pilot:
The spin was supposed to be a normal erect spin to the right, but for various unintentional reasons the spin went flat, up until that point I had never flat spun an aircraft. I eventualy mananged to get the aircraft into a normal erect spin from which I was able to recover. This aircraft is not fitted with an electric starter motor, so I was unable to restart the engine. During the "flare" to land the main undercarriage caught the top wires of a barbed wire fence that was invisible to me. After coming to rest inverted I waited 20mins for the rescue services to come and right the aircraft so I was able to exit via the outward opening canopy. The aircraft rotated 26 times total, I was extremely dissorientated after the recovery to straight and level flight, and was unable to read the instruments. From the video I estimate I recovered at about 700ft from an entry altitude of 3500ft. If you listen carefully you will hear me say:"I think this is it". At that stage I did not think I would be able to recover. However I continued to try various control inputs based on the aircraft attitude and rotational rate, which eventually effected a recovery.
My thanks go to the emergency services that found me and allowed my escape.

[I Follow Roads]

Stick & Rudder was written in 1946 but the appendix by Leighton Collins concerning spinning was added in the 1972 edition, by which time alot of our training fleet was airborne!

[Big Pistons Forever]

I think it is unfortunate that the teaching spins versus teaching stall avoidance has become an either or argument. personnally I think both need to be tought , but as a continuum. That is there should be a clear progresion from learning to recognize when the aircraft is in the slow flight regime, to when it is close to stalling , to the stall , the incipient spin and finally the spin recovery. I think the current emphasis on recognizing and avoiding the stall and spin entry is correct, but I still think recovery from an actual spin should be tought so if a pilot does get into deep doo doo he/she will have one final chance to save themselves. I think the key to effectiveness is to make the exercises relavent. For instance I always demonstrate the botched turned to final stall/spin scenario by flying a circuit at altitude and talking the student through the all the standard errors culminating in a stall and spin entry on the base to final turn. This works quite well in the C 150 although it is harder to demonstate it the C172. I also like to demonstrate a take off engine fail stall scenario. I you establish a full power climb at Vx and then smoothly but quickly close the throttle the airplane will stall unless the nose is rapidly lowered.

Going back to the original thread title, PPL's don't generally kill them selves by spinning into the ground they kill themselves by getting caught in bad weather and then getting disorientated , loosing control of the aircraft or hitting an obstacle after beeing forced close to the ground. Pretty much all PPL sylabus's do not in my opinion do a very good job of teaching practical weather smarts to new pilots.

[FlyingOfficerKite]

The spin or not to spin argument is all very interesting - particularly in light of the recent Staffordshire accident in which it MAY have been a contributory factor?!

Personally I have always spun every type I've flown that was certified for spinning - just to gain confidence on the type and be aware of its handling characteristics.

Whether to teach a PPL student is a vexed question. Some love it and some are frightened by it. Unfortunately it is an important lesson and I can't help but think that stall/spin awareness is the easy way out of a valid learning exercise. It is possible to get away with the very minimum of training and the student will not appreciate the full effect, and sensation, of a developed spin. I have trained students who, with their previous experience have done little, if any, real stall/spin awareness training yet it's signed off in their logbook.

Just as it's hard to replicate the true effect of a situation requiring an 'emergency stop' when learning to drive a car, unless you experience a spin for real, it's hard to imagine the true effect both physically and from the perspective of aircraft performance.

Those who experience a spin, even if only the entry, will remember and avoid with far more determination than those who only imagine the effect.

The trouble isn't helped by the fact that a good number of flying instructors avoid the issue and/or have little experience and confidence in the exercise.

With some it's a macho thing, with others something best avoided. The truth is it's a safety thing and should be treated with the respect it deserves.

Out of interest watch the video on YouTube concerning the Tiger Moth Crash in Australia with the wing-walker. All very sad, but the pilot cannot have been aware of the spin characteristics of the Tiger Moth. Engine failure after take-off, failed to lower the nose (especially with the extra drag of the lady wing-walker), seems to attempt to turn back to the field and spins in. The controls (if you freeze-frame) show into-spin ailerons and rudder!!! Most strange?

It's that type of scenario that spin training should help to avoid but, as with field landing practice sometimes only lip-service is paid to these vitally important lessons.

For what it's worth.

KR

FOK :)