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Old 5th Jun 2007, 12:48
  #34 (permalink)  
wileydog3
 
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I remember vividly spins in the -37. My instructor, a great fellow later killed flying A-1s in Vietnam, was very calm as he walked us through the procedures. We cleared the area, climbed left, fed in right rudder and away we went. He went full aft on the stick and brought the throttles to idle all the while calmly talking. Once the spin had stabilized, we asked me to look at the turn and ball.. needle to the inside, ball to the outside. Meanwhile the brown Texas countryside was whirling around us with details becoming more and more clear. Airspeed.. very slow. VSI... a rapid descent. Ailerons neutral. Throttles idle. The earth is rushing up.. we are rushing down and this guy is talking as calmly as if he were buying veggies at the local grocery store. Bang! the stick goes forward and bounces back an inch or two. BAM! Opposite rudder and soon we are doing a high speed dive recovery. The guy was meticulous.
Later, on another sortie, we were preparing to do spins and found one fuel tank had collapsed and we were badly out limits. Had we spun, we probably would not have recovered. During my pre-solo with this fellow, we had 1 engine shutdown, 1 hyd failure (blow the gear down) and this tank collapse. Never once did he yell or get excited.
But besides the spin recovery, we were also taught a spin fly-out where we initiated the recovery before the spin stabilized. You could fairly easily bounce an instructor off the canopy during these.
The powerpoint you listed is an excellent presentation. Thanks.
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