I am not anti-spinning at all. I rather like spinning and the thrill it gives me. But as an Instructor I do not think it has a place in modern basic instruction.
Bose
This really worries me. A couple of points on comments you have made. Firstly fear is the biggest teacher you can ever have.You cannot cotton wool everyone in society from fear as that poorly equips them to deal with fear when they are faced with it. Pilots will no matter how much avoidance and cotton wooling you teach will without doubt at some time be faced with extreme fear.
Spinning is just one aspect of out of the box handling. A spiral dive is far more vicious and also has an element of risk. It is a manouvre which holds a high risk of breaking the aircraft.
How can a pilot who has never spun know if he is in a spiral dive or a spin? is there a danger that he may confuse the two? How can you half train a pilot ?You are not doing them a favour but putting them at risk.
As an ex racing driver from years past in formula ford, clubmans and formula 3.The techniques I learnt back then have saved me many times on the road.
A driver who is taught to drive is not taught to handle a car.
All is well until there is ice or someone else loosing control and they are then ill equipt to to deal with the situation and crash. As the many flowers on the roadsides show they end up dead.
This is not about spins but about all manner of unusual attitudes and equiping pilots to be able to have the best chance of getting out of a nasty situation.
Believe me at some time you WILL have a situation. Half training pilots or trying to avoid situations which hold fear is not doing them a favour.
I am very curious, please tell me how your spam can driver, flying along straight and level will suddenly depart from normal flight in to a death spin that if he had training he could have recovered from? The only other area that has a demonstrated history of accidental spins is the departure and turn to final neither of which I am sure that even the highest trained of sky gods is going to recover a bog standard spam can from.
Bose you posted this after I posted my reply to an earlier post of yours.
There are many ways a pilot can get into a spin other than turning finals.
But this is not the point.
Abandon stall recovery. abandon spiral dive recovery. Abandon steep turns (why should anyone steep turn teach them avoidance by confining to rate one only?) The arguemnt is the same.
Its all about being comfortable with your ability and what the aircraft can and will do and how to handle that. The only way to handle fear is to face it, be comfortable with it and then loose it.
You never cure fear by avoidance!
Pace