And by “spin”, I didn’t mean just fly around. I meant the type of spin where one wing stalls worse than the other and you spiral towards the Earth. In order for you to understand how I got to spin, you need a little background on my past two flights…
On Wednesday I was excited to fly my old trusty N754SP and get back into the Cessna 172S after spending time in other planes recently. I’m really excited and anxious to finish my training because I started it back in December of 2007! Everything leading up to the flight went as planned. I got my SFRA clearance from Potomac and we were on our way to Runway 30 to leave. I performed all of my checks and made my local radio call without a problem. We rolled down the runway and lifted off. This is where my problems began.
First, my indicated airspeed was about 60kts instead of the 65-67kts I use to climb at Vx, but my sight picture seemed way off. I wasn’t angled upwards as much as I felt I should have been. Then, I made my radio call to Potomac (after making my last one to KANP traffic) and messed up my well practiced responses. I sounded like a tongue tied teenage boy on his first date with a pretty girl. It was bad. This has not been a problem before. Then I got into the pattern at KFME just as two other crazy pilots got there. Now, I’m fully aware I am a student pilot and not as good of a pilot as many other people out there…. but these guys were crazy! One entered a pattern directly above us and was reporting he saw us, but was really seeing the Cessna in front of us. He also had a tail number that was only one number off of ours and it was very confusing. After we avoided problems with a 360 degree turn to reenter the pattern, the other pilots starting flying patterns that did not even resemble a rectangle. Now, my patterns usually resemble odd trapezoids. But my trapezoids looked like perfect traffic pattern attempts compared to what I was seeing outside my window. For example, one pattern the other pilot flew extended the downwind leg by 3 times the normal length and he was already really far to the left of us (for a right hand turn to runway 10). We had to pull the power to perform slow flight so he could turn base and final without him colliding into us! My CFI was visibly and verbally upset at the air shenanigans that was going on around us. I’ve never seen him that unhappy with other pilots. He kept telling me to fly the proper pattern that I was already in, and (most of) the problems weren’t coming from me.
On my landings I could not get the airspeed right, which meant I was either coming in too fast or on the wrong glide path. One landing had a bad round-out so I performed a go-around. Luckily I’m to the point where I just do it and my CFI doesn’t get involved at all. He said “Good” because I just performed it without him telling me to. However, I messed up retracting the flaps properly. It seemed like anything I did was wrong. I also noticed that I “baby” the controls because I don’t want to drop a wing and it’s really beginning to frustrate me (more on that below). We finally left the pattern and headed back to KANP. I messed up the call to Potomac again. At this point I think my CFI saw I about had it and he was encouraging me. I think he was sure to smooth over whatever I did wrong.
When we landed I addressed my soft touch on the controls with him. I told him I am really worried about putting the plane into an accidental spin when I’m in slow flight (or landing). He said, “Well, that’s an easy thing to fix. Come back to the airport 8AM tomorrow and we’ll take up the Cessna 152 for spin training. You don’t get motion sickness do you?” Luckily, I don’t. So after working through my post flight adrenaline and not trying to beat myself up too much about the bad flight, I took care of my paperwork and went home. I really felt like a failure after that flight, but I was at least alive. I still beat myself up about it.
The next morning I showed up for spin training. I have to be honest, I was a little scared. I have 110% trust in my CFI because his experience and skills are amazing in my opinion. I wasn’t afraid of getting into trouble, but I was nervous nonetheless. The 152 was definitely different than the 172. It’s more like climbing into a Pontiac Fiero than it is a mini van. You lay down more than the 172, in my opinion. It’s also a lot slower. A lot. We flew up to the wildlife refuge area to the Northeast of the Chesapeake Bay bridge and leveled at 4,000 ft. My CFI showed how the airplane behaved during slow flight and stalls. He then made me do it for myself. Then, he showed me an incipient spin but corrected before we got to the full spin stage. It wasn’t too bad! Not as violent as I expected. Then he did the same move but let the full spin develop. I was surprised that the rotations were so fast. The spinning didn’t bother me, but the sudden kick of the elevator and the recovery upward pitch made me go a little cross eyed the first couple of attempts. Now, it was my turn to do the same thing.
My first attempt at a spin really put me at ease about the whole deal. If you’re not familiar with how it works, you put your plane into a power on slow flight configuration by pitching upwards. As the airspeed bleeds off you give the yoke a little pull near the stall speed. At this point both wings begin to stall. As the wings begin to stall you stand on the rudder in the direction you want to spin (which is the opposite of what you are trained to do in this case). Spinning to the left is a little easier because the plane already wants to turn left due to the left turning tendencies produced by a propeller. Once your plane rolls into the incipient spin stage you keep the power in and stay on that rudder until the full spin develops. In my first attempt I prematurely let off the rudder as the incipient spin occurred and the plane corrected itself with little control from me like this video demonstrates:
(Note that none of these videos are actually of me, as my hands were full at the time. I found good examples on YouTube to get my point across.)
The result of my first spin attempt turned the plane about 180 degrees with very little altitude loss. I didn’t even have to climb for my second attempt, which resulted in a true full spin.
A true spin looks like this:
It looks like the plane is flying downward, but in reality the wings aren’t producing lift and you’re not really flying until you correct from the spin. From inside the cockpit, this is what you see. Notice how fast the rotations occur once everything falls into place. It was very exciting!
Correction from a spin is not as hard as you would think: 1) pull the power (and carb heat) 2) neutralize the ailerons 3) kick the rudder in the opposite direction of the spin 4) push the yoke forward to get a bite of the air 5) pull out of the dive without stalling the plane again. In reality I was surprised because the plane I was in (N46961) didn’t make me kick the rudder out much at all to correct the spin. It was more like having to relax the bad input to get the spin to correct. My CFI said I may have to correct more in other planes, but the process is still the same.
After about 10 spins, many of which I (purposefully) created and recovered from by myself, I was no longer as nervous about accidentally spinning the plane as I once was. I am actually interested in doing aerobatics now, which is odd for a guy that used to be scared to fly at all!
On Wednesday I logged 0.9 Hobbs hours with 8 take offs and landings. On Thursday I logged 1.1 Hobbs hours of spin training.
