BRADY LANE BETTER PILOT / AB INITIO

To Spin or Not to Spin When the Earth fills your windshield

TO SPIN OR NOT to spin. I spun.

It wasn’t required for my sport pilot certificate. In fact, it’s not even required for a private pilot certificate anymore. I read about spins, talked about them with my instructor, and was even asked about them during my checkride, but had never experienced one. The argument against spins is that if a pilot is taught spin awareness and avoidance, there is no need to actually teach spin recovery. And if the instructor isn’t proficient with spins, it could actually be dangerous. Despite the controversy, it was simple to me. Would spin training make me a better pilot? I thought so. It definitely wouldn’t make me worse. More importantly, would it be fun? You bet! I’m an experiential learner. I can read something all day and be able to correctly answer a slew of test questions thrown my direction, but deep within it’s just rote knowledge, or head knowledge, until it’s been field tested. When I was learning to land in a crosswind, book learning wasn’t enough. It took many flights before I was able to confidently land when gusts were blowing across the numbers.

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Would book knowledge be enough to recover from a spin by myself if I needed to? There was only one way to find out. And for my first spin, I much preferred having an experienced instructor in the right seat than being by myself or with a frightened passenger gripping my forearm. They also just sounded fun. The thought of spinning a plane through the sky from a safe altitude while learning a new skill seemed like a great way to spend an afternoon, emphasis on “from a safe altitude.” What’s fun at 5,000 feet above ground level would not be so at 1,000 feet. This was going to be a serious lesson, but a fun one for sure. The REMOS GX I normally fly has a placard prohibiting intentional spins, so my instructor, Jason, arranged for us to use a Cessna 172N. It’d been a while since we had flown together, so we were both looking forward to the flight. It also happened to be my

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first official lesson in something other than a light-sport aircraft. I expected it to be more complex and harder to fly, but instead found just the opposite. It was incredibly stable and much easier to hold steady and maneuver than the little planes in which I trained. After I familiarized myself with the plane, Jason took the controls to demonstrate our first spin. He pulled the power and pitched up. I tightened my seat belt. It felt odd not to recover when the plane started to stall. Instead, he kept the yoke back, causing the plane to stop flying completely. The horizon turned vertical, then disappeared as the Earth spun in front of us. He gently but quickly stopped the spin after a half-turn or so using opposite rudder. “That was awesome! Can I do—” I was thrust into my seat with a couple g’s before I could finish my sentence. I wasn’t expecting that. I thought the recovery was over. The world had stopped spinning in front of us and the horizon was becoming level again, but the recovery wasn’t over. The airspeed indicator was winding up and the altimeter wound in the opposite direction even faster. Jason maintained enough back-pressure to keep our speed from entering the yellow arc, then added power to hold our altitude. “Wow, that was fun, but I sure wasn’t expecting that last part,” I said. Jason smiled and began explaining what I was starting to figure out. After stopping the spin, you need to finish the recovery by firmly, but gently, bleeding off the speed before it has a chance to build. It sounds embarrassingly simple now, but the airspeed climbs incredibly quickly when the plane’s nose is pointed straight toward the earth. The stall, the spinning, the neutral ailerons, and opposite rudder to stop the spin were all expected—the books taught me that. The amount of back-pressure needed to bleed off the speed was a complete surprise. Left alone to book knowledge, I’m certain I wouldn’t have kept my airspeed in the green arc. Before experiencing this first spin, I had oversimplified spin recovery to being exactly the same as a stall recovery—neutral aileron, opposite rudder, nose down to pick up speed, and add power. The first part is true with spins, but not the latter. With spins, the problem wasn’t needing to increase speed at the end, but decreasing it. This surprised me and convinced me that

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BRADY LANE

WHAT TO DO

• Set up into the wind • Stall through the break without recovery • Enter a full cross-controlled condition (uncoordinated) to develop stall into spin

WHAT’S HAPPENING

• As the angle of attack increases, lift decreases, wing stalls • As stall continues, a wing drops and nose drops over • Rotation starts

• Rotation and airspeed reach maximum stall conditions

• Add rudder opposite the rotation to stop the spin • Rotation stops • Input neutral aileron

• Air flow is reestablished across the wings; stalling condition is remedied • Air speed begins to build

• Apply backpressure

• Re-introduce throttle

• Aircraft levels out before speed is allowed to develop (pilot may experience additional g’s) • Resume straight and level flight

NOTE: It’s important to work with an experienced instructor familiar with spins and the aircraft used for spin training to learn in a safe environment.

my previous knowledge about spins would not have been enough. Before this spin I had also been curious how long it took for a stall to turn into a spin. Does a spin occur immediately if a stall isn’t recovered? How long do you have to recover a stall before it starts spinning? I didn’t know because I had never let a stall continue. Experiencing just one spin answered this question in a way no textbook had. It was my turn next. Stalling, entering the spin, and stopping the spin were all easy. Pulling out of the dive to keep the airspeed in the green arc? That was a bit

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trickier. The first time I didn’t apply enough back-pressure early enough, and our airspeed quickly climbed. Anticipation was key because the airspeed can get too fast really quickly when recovering from a spin. After three or four more stalls and spins, I started to get the hang of it and was having an absolute blast. “How do we make it spin faster?” I asked. “And can we let it spin longer before recovering?” “Sure,” Jason said as he smiled and tightened his seat belt. The next time I kicked the rudder in just as it started to stall and let it spin two

ILLUSTRATION BY GARY COX

complete times before recovering. It really whipped around and was incredibly fun. It felt like we were flying aerobatics in this old Cessna 172. Technically, maybe we were. Jason wanted in on the excitement, so we started alternating turns. During one of my turns I probably started having too much fun. After stopping the spin I pitched back too much, started talking, and forgot to add power back in. Jason saw what was developing but waited to see if I would. A few seconds later I felt the controls get sloppy, so I immediately pitched forward and applied power to avoid a secondary stall. This was an eerie feeling, probably one of the most uncomfortable feelings I’ve ever had in a plane. Unlike all the other stalls I’ve ever practiced, this one wasn’t intentional. I learned several things in those few short seconds: 1) Accidentally stalling is a completely different feeling than stalling on purpose; 2) It’s easy to enter a secondary

stall after recovering from an initial stall; and 3) All my stall training up to this point served its purpose. I felt the stall approaching and immediately made the proper inputs to avoid stalling the plane. In the midst of all the fun, this was a sober reminder that I was practicing these spin recoveries in the event that I found myself in an unexpected spin. Not likely, but still good practice. This raised another question: How much altitude were we losing with each rotation? Is a spin in a traffic pattern recoverable at all? I watched the altimeter as Jason flew the next one and noted we were losing about 500 feet with each full rotation. This was much less than I expected, especially since I was certain a quarter turn was more than enough time to recover from a spin. Flying a full spin before recovering actually required patience. This was comforting and yet another reason not to freak out if the plane spins, but rather stay calm and recover just like I’ve practiced.

Altogether we did 10 spin recoveries that afternoon. It was definitely the most fun I’ve ever had in a plane with Jason. I flew back toward the airport and made my first landing in a yoke-controlled plane, which, by the way, wasn’t nearly as awkward as I thought it would be. Experience is a great teacher. It fills the gaps and gives confidence in a way no book can. There is no longer that sliver of doubt about whether or not I can recover from a spin. No amount of reading gave me that confidence. A 45-minute flight did. I highly encourage you to find an instructor who enjoys teaching spins and a plane that is approved for it and go take a 45-minute flight, if for no other reason than it is a great excuse to go do some really fun flying. The fact that you’ll also be a better pilot is just a bonus. P.S. Mom–if you read this, sorry I never told you about this lesson ahead of time.

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