Spinning,
I learned to fly in 1981 at Bankstown (Aust). If memory serves this was about the time that full spins were going from mandatory to optional and only incipient spins were required.
Fortunately for me I was at a school where it was still considered a bloody good idea to go the whole hog and we had an excellent aerobatics instructor who would take you for that lesson.
On lesson No 3 I was shown full spins, completed several myself and also was shown loops, rolls and stall turns...also completing several of each myself.
Post first solo I would always make sure I was in a C152A and spend 1/2 the period doing whatever I was supposed to do and the rest doing spins,loops,rolls and stall turns...I became a spinning/aeros nut
As soon as I finished my RPPL I did a Tailwheel endorsement with the same instructor in a Super Decathlon (180HP/CSU) that was on line and blew thousands flying aeros/spins instead of doing Navexs toward the full PPL.
I used to love doing inverted spins, using power to flatten them out and speed them up...even a 'normal' inverted spin is orders of magnitude more violent/uncomfortable and dissorientating than a positive spin.
Not a cent of that money was wasted!
Later when I got my CPL/Instructors rating I also did a 'spin approval'.
During that training I spun Tomahawks and they have a fascinating spin...starts off 'normal'...flattens out about turn 3 or 4 and when you recover it spins steeply nose down and faster before recovering normally...loved it!
When I started instructing I encourage my students to learn proper spins and even taught them basic aeros if we had an aerobat handy and they were in to it.
One day one of my students, who I had taught spins to previously, asked if we could do a practice spin on the way home from a 'precautionary search and landing' lesson.
To cut a long story short we spun from 4000' agl to somewhere under 300'agl...he did nothing wrong but the aircraft(C150) wouldn't recover so I took over about 3500' agl.
It took every second of every spin I'd ever been in to get us out..I let go of everything and waited several turns...nothing...I tried rocking us out with power/elevator...nothing...power/in spin aileron and full down elevator...nothing...by now I'd lost count of the turns but having done 6 and 8 turn spins before I reckon we went close to 15 or 20 turns, but that's a guess.
Finally full power and slamming the control column full forward with the full opposite rudder that had been held on most of the way down put us through the verticle into a steepish inverted dive from which I rolled out and gently pulled back to a climb...I have no idea how high we were when we started climbing away but having trimmed into a climb, handed over to the stude and lit a smoke with shaking hands, he asked me what was up...I pointed to the altimeter and we were passing through about 900' over terrain that probably averaged 200'amsl.
The stude had been blissfully ignorant the whole way down
Many people with vast experience of spinning, one of whom did the spinning trials for Australian certification of C150s offered advice on what may have happened...ranging from a 'rogue' spin to C of G problems. The aircraft had been built up from two that had been damaged in a cyclone in Queensland so perhaps it wasn't 'true'...I never got a definative answer and I believe a page was inserted in the flight manual banning that aircraft from further spinning.
I kept spinning aircraft after that but never with the gay abandon that I had before.
I still believe spinning should be mandatory training for PPL.
I still believe aerobatics should be mandatory for any licence.
Some will point to this as reason not to conduct spin training...I prefer to think that my training and extensive spin practice saved our lives.
I know that all that spinning and aeros saved my life on at least one more occasion while bush flying in the PNG Highlands in a C185 a year later...but that's a completely seperate 'I learned about Flying from that' story.
As a 'funny' postscript my stude rang me a week or so later and thanked me for saving his life....I pointed out that I was too busy saving mine to care much about his...but it was my pleasure anyway
By all means go and spin to your hearts content...but the 'gay abandonish' tone I get from some of these posts reminds me of me about 16 years ago.
Chuck.