PA39
sometimes it is beter to "bend" the rules and to stay alive than to stick to the rules and become a statistic
Sure... if you are flying for real and you get caught out... no argument. Of course if you had actually stuck to the rules, you probably wouldn't be in that situation to start with, but still, no argument.
But when TRAINING it is completely unnecessary, in fact it is counter-productive for the reasons stated.
Sorry mate but in 35 yrs and 14k+ hrs and a lot of that as CFI I can tell you students do get themselves into spins. The stall spin situation is very real and it usually occurs at low level.....overshoot turn onto final.
If they do, and certainly over here in Godzone I can't remember the last time there was a stall/spin accident that killed someone, most modern aircraft are generally docile enough that just relaxing your grip is enough to get you out of trouble. But in any case, I'm not against spin training, I did it and so did all my students. It certainly didn't do us any harm, even if it was the other instruction I gave them (ie how to avoid ever getting into that situation) that did them the most good.
our students were always trained for full spin recovery (not in the PPL syllabus) before being allowed solo for stall practise.....some people, read "schools" prohibit solo stall practise....Jesus forbid!!
Yes I'm completely with you on that one! The PPL syllabus should only ever be used as a minimum possible standard. Good instructors will always train way beyond that.
Also agree that a stall/incipient spin on the base turn should be recoverable relatively easily, although you will probably be pretty low by the time you get it climbing again... fully developed spin? Maybe... maybe not.
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.
A good example of which would be an inadvertent icing encounter and the effect it has on stall speed... not to mention an accelerated stall, which some panic'ed PPLs have encountered.
Paradoxically, I found my stall awareness became more finely tuned when flying jets (coffin corner and all that).
I also had the distinct pleasure of learning how to fly in gliders. We used to sit in the wave off Kapiti, up around 10,000 feet, for hours at a time, and only came down when it started getting dark. Just for fun, we used to spin down from 10K to circuit height... fun times. Spinning became second nature... a worthwhile experience.