Originally Posted by
The500man
You make it sound so difficult. If the average PPL can learn effects of controls in the upright sense, why should they not be able to do it in the inverted sense, or when in a spin? Surely having some understanding is better than having none at all.
A spin is an aerobatic manoever. I heartily endorse pilots getting training to improve their ability to control the aircraft no matter what its attitude or flight condition. But the place to do this is IMO an aerobatic course after the PPL not during the PPL training. In fact that is what I am doing right now with the last PPL I completed. During his PPL training the thrust of the training was stall and spin avoidance with the goal of building instinctive reactions to reduce AOA by pitching nose down and controlling yaw. Situations that would have inevitably led to a spin were recovered in one quarter to one third of a turn.
We are now at hour 5 of a 10 hour introductory course in aerobatics. The first 2 hours consisted of a good look at aircraft handling at high AOA, high pitch and bank angles, and the spin. The spin was first presented as a stand alone aerobatic manoever and then we looked at typical scenarios where the aircraft spins out of a botched manoever. My student is loving it and IMO this is the ideal progression for a PPL.
I firmly believe that instructors who are not competent aerobatic pilots should not be out spinning with students because they will not have a true understanding of spin dynamics, effective of controls in fully developed spins, and may not be able to recover if the aircraft does something dangerous.