spinning around
5 September 2006
After a slow start, I’ve finally gotten some flying under my belt for the semester (as a side note, my official plastic Commercial rating showed up last week!). I went up yesterday in the aerobatic Super Decathlon for my first-time-ever spin training and had an absolute blast. We did probably close to a dozen spins: incipient, fully developed, and a couple varieties of crossed-control situations.
The abruptness of the spin entry wasn’t something I’d anticipated – it borders on violent, and you suddenly feel inverted, pointing what looks like straight down, spinning rapidly. Recovery was just like training described; opposite rudder, neutral controls, throttle idle, all in one smooth series. Pulling out of the dive – and it’s a dive, none of this steep descent stuff – is upwards of three Gs.
Following the spins, my instructor took the Decathlon through some aerobatics that were one of the greatest experiences I’ve had in an airplane. I was floating out of my seat or hanging in the harness half the time, and we went up with parachutes, but I wasn’t particularly nervous and I didn’t get ill (unusual, apparently, for this particular pilot’s aerobatics).
My right-seat experiences today were substantially more benign than the spin flight. Still, my first time landing in the right seat was stressful, although the landings went just about like any other from the left seat. Toughest thing was handling the throttle with my left hand and the yoke with my right – old habits die hard.
For some cool footage of spins for the beginning or non-pilot, check out (my former multi instructor) Anthony Bottini’s UND aerocast episode on spin awareness.
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wow that’s awesome! your plastic license… can’t wait till i get to that stage haha! that decathalon looks funnnn… wish we had one here.. do you normally get sick when you go up? i can imagine how disorienting that plane must make people feel… i’d probably freak out haha!
No, I’ve got something of an iron stomach. In probably 15 or so years of flying, with my dad and on my own, the only time I’ve gotten sick was when I was 12 and had the stomach flu.
Spins are definitely a bit disorienting, though.
That sounds like you had a veritable blast of a time! I kinda whish i were in your shoes doing something as obviously thrilling as this, but I react very badly to negative G’s, so I’d likely have thrown up all over the place :D
How did you get all the way to a commercial multi-engine rating without having done spin training?!
That’s a pretty good question, actually – we of course were trained about spins, but none of the programs I took (a Cessna part 61 school and now UND’s part 141 courses) incorporated actual spin flights. They’re not required by the regs, although the old 152s I got my private rating in could have handled it.
Again, I’m really not sure. I’d clocked nearly 300 hours before spinning for the first time – and while I’d never needed the actual experience, it wouldn’t have hurt either.