Originally Posted by PA39
our students were always trained for full spin recovery (not in the PPL syllabus) before being allowed solo for stall practise.....
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The old (UK CAA) syllabus that was current when I did my pre-solo training prescribed that a student must demonstrate the ability to recover from a spin in either direction. I see nothing wrong with teaching students what can happen at the slow flying end of the envelope and beyond, and what to do about it in case it does. But with the advent of the then-modern Pilot-Maker fleets it was decided such training is no longer necessary in the ordinary syllabus.
So now a lot of pilots fly happily without ever getting close to that particular edge. Even if the instructor theoretically knows the recovery procedure, it isn't the basic skill it should have been. Can a perfunctory exercise, performed to satisfy a minute part of an advanced syllabus, in circumstances well removed from the extreme conditions that are likely to confront a pilot with an unintentional spin, replace the learning value that its pre-solo placement in the original syllabus had, become as much an integral part of a pilot's basic skills? I'd say it cannot.
Is spin training irrelevant when you're only slowing down for a landing and you'll be too low to do anything about a spin? Wouldn't it be useful under any circumstance? Sooner or later you might find yourself suddenly confronted with nastiness that drives you beyond your nice-and-cozy normal envelope where the difference between a crash and a recovery may be your basic skills.
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