Originally Posted by
cessnapete
I spoke yesterday to a friend who witnessed of the final moments of the flight. ( Retired Pilot)
He said it appeared to be a vertical descent with no apparent rotation.
Sounds like it wasn't a spin then - a friend of mine owns and flies a Pitts and he says the recovery from a spin quite easily due to the size of the rudder - you just pull the power and take your feet off the rudder and hand off the stick.
The one place things get confusing is if the back seat pilot is looking over the top wing, the rotation appears to be the opposite, since the point of rotation of a fully developed spin is behind the wing to the back seater. So if they was looking in the wrong place, it would be easy to apply in-spin rudder, just making things worse. If you hold in-spin rudder, just relieving stick pressure will not stop the spin (Really big rudder), you have to push (or pull in an inverted spin) pretty hard