RE: Spinning on the PPL course

[VOD80]

I agree with ShyTorque

I tend to only “lurk” here because of the polarised viewpoints! But, I’m again tempted to poke my head above the parapet . I learned to fly on an Auster and did a lot of spinning. I feel that it was a good thing and certainly showed what would happen if I let it spin.

This awareness probably helped when I was told to go-around at Lasbordes (a little airport just to the east of Toulouse where I kept my plane at the time). I was offered a “short circuit” (the normal circuit is a cross-country flight at Lasbordes because of the noise sensitive neighbours) and told to turn right immediately. I was very low and must have, unconsciously done a skidding turn. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the needles of the turn and slip indicator pointing all over the place and just, as a reflex, stuffed the nose down.

I completed the rest of the circuit pretty low down!

So, perhaps there’s no “proof” in a formal sense that spin training needs to be reintroduced into the syllabus but there are suggestions that, despite “spin awareness training”, pilots still don’t understand the danger of lack of airspeed in turns.

This can be seen in the various EFATO turn-back crashes and others (this, as an example http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources/Bolkow%20207,%20D-ENWA%2006-08.pdf where the pilot seems to have not understood why the aircraft wasn’t climbing but still turned while at very low airspeed – leading to an unrecoverable spin)

It’s been alluded to in a couple of posts in this thread. There’s a general “dumbing down” of life these days and I see the same thing happening in aviation.

Perhaps we need to bring back the Flying Flea?