WOW.
Have belatedly come to this thread and - aside from some poster niggling which IMHO adds nothing to the debate - am surprised at quite a few of the views posted.
I don't claim to be an expert here and am very much open to learning. I have taught spin/upset recovery for ten years now and confess that I do have some strong views.
1. It is absolutely correct to state that many FIs - especially the last two generations, who have probably only experienced spinning for the first and only time on their FI course - are extremely uncomfortable with spinning. This makes them very poor instructors on the subject - I would say even from the perspective of teaching incipient spin recovery.
2. LOADS of blah on here about various 'facts'. It is obviously true that you cannot spin unless you have stall and yaw. What has not been developed properly as a theme is FEEL for what is happening with the aircraft. Yes I know that aerobatic and display pilots will develop this as a critical additional input, and the standard wisdom is that in the extremely limited amount of time that we have to teach students the entire PPL syllabus we cannot possibly get them to appreciate 'feel' as well - that time when the controls start going light and the aeroplane starts to burble, which should generate the immediate rudders neutral-stick forward-power on response? Sequence? Lots of contrasting theories - I'll let Ghengis debate the 'perfect' sequence - but the bottom line is that if you do all three close to the same time in a GA aeroplane you won't stall and you won't spin and you won't die. I strongly believe that we should be teaching this sense of 'feel' from the outset, and that it is in fact a critical part of flying and operating an aeroplane. Whilst primarily an aeros and upset recovery organisation, we teach this from the outset. And put out better pilots as a result.
3. Completely disagree that the average PPL should not be shown, and safely practice with a good FI, the edges of the flight envelope. The stude should ideally see them all - how are they rally going to recognise approaching the limits if they haven't ever been there?
4. So many stories are spouted about the spin accident stats, yet whenever I have pressed any claimants they have been unable to deliver facts. Spin taken off the PPL syllabus because more accidents in practice than through accidents? Show me the proof - nobody has to date. When I went through Valley there was a push to desist teaching PFLs on the Hawk - at the time, it could clearly be shown that far more accidents happened as a result of training incidents than people losing engines - the stats proved it. A conscious decision IN THE LIGHT OF THE FACTS was taken.
5. Notwithstanding the previous point, far too many aircraft have spun in whilst an FI has been demonstrating slow flight or spinning. I don't have the facts or stats so can't put forward a reasoned conclusion, safe for saying that you would really hope that the people demonstrating this stuff are actually pretty good at it. Do the FIs need to be more expert at this part of their skill set? If you can't demo a steep turn without varying more than +/- 20' from datum, the downside is - well - nothing much. If you cock up a stall or incipient spin demo, or your stude is dumb/unhelpful and insists on making dangerous control inputs then you can get put into all sorts of problems which you really do need to be polished and expert on in order to resolve safely.
6. Minor point - can people who know little or nothing about the PA38 or the T67 please STOP repeating garbage about their spin behaviours! The Tommy is actually a great non-aerobatic spin teaching platform and demonstrates really well the incipient and fully developed spin. Scare stories abound about 'how scary it is to look back and see the tail wobbling'. The fact is that is all works very well, and I used to love getting studes to do a steep turn to the left, squeeze back on the stick and some moments later find that they were in a spin to the RIGHT - that's correct, an academic spin exercise where the direction of turn is different to the direction of subsequent spin! Very valuable. And I had heard the scuttlebutt about the T67 as well before I researched an article for one of the GA mags - hadn't the US scrapped their entire fleet because they were SO dangerous? Well, the 3 US accidents - all of them the bigger variant, the 260 version (for those that claimed earlier it was only small engined variants) were caused by poor piloting. Only one of them was a spin accident - no parachutes I seem to recall - and there was strong evidence that it had been mishandled. The other two incidents had nothing to do with spinning; interestingly the T67s were operated out of two bases in the US, and the base that had formerFJ FIs had no problems at all. I have only spun the aeroplane on three trips so know very little (although it all seemed very calm and easy), but people on my team who instructed on them with JEFTS are unanimous in declaring them absolutely predictable spin platforms.
I absolutely accept that I have somewhat of a biased perspective, but it is my opinion that I would not let anybody I care about fly with a newly won PPL without them first getting spin/upset training from people who understand it in detail - and can teach it well.
Last edited by greeners; 22nd May 2012 at 03:15.