VH-FTA spinning accident
manderson:
In my younger days I was an Instructor at the Royal Aeroclub of New South Wales at Bankstown.. I left the Club in mid 1961.
In those days we were allocated to a particular Chipmunk and mine was VH-FTA. I spent many hundreds of hours instructing in it. At the time there was a lot of talk in the industry, about the spinning characteristics of the Chipmunk. The CFI at the time spent many hours with some of the instructors testing in flight these characteristics.The spin recovery technique was not changed at that time.
In 1961,when I left the Aeroclub, my position and '"my' aircraft, VH-FTA was allocated to the (late) Arthur Kell when he joined the Club.
The accident was a sad loss of the crew and whether the 20P theory was the full answer or not, I do not know.. I was told that the covering around the bottom of the control column was dislodged or missing.
Tmb