Loading ...When I learned, the training to recover from a stall/spin was not required anymore, due to the fact they lost too many pilots trying it. But my instructor insisted and took me way up to 10k ft and showed how you could get into a stall spin while crabbing a turn for a landing. When the inside wing ‘broke’ it nearly snapped my neck. When I pulled my head out of the back seat, all I saw was a tree turning in the windshield. I immediately applied the control inputs as my instructor told me what I already knew… “Now you’re in a spin”. I called out the inputs to him and asked… “How long does this take?” as we spiraled down. “Just hold the inputs!” he yelled. Three and a half turns later the rotaton stops and I started to pull back out of a straight dive. We lost over 900 feet before recovery. Instructor says: If you had done that 100 feet above ground on approach, you would wind up 800 feet underground!
But the BEST story comes from an old coworker from the 1930s on his dad’s farm. Dad bought a biplane, and insisted son Jay learn how to fly it also, which he did with father’s instruction. Dad was a stickler for safety, and wearing a parachute was mandatory. The old two-cockpit biplane control was a wooden stick fastened to a cast metal socket on the floor with cables attached. Dad made sure that there was a spare wooden ‘stick’ jammed into the frame, accessible to both cockpits. So one day a ‘barnstormer’ comes thru and Dad hires him for some professional flying lessons. Jay had heard this guy would teach you how to fly and when ready to ‘solo’ he would throw his front stick out of the plane and force the student in the rear cockpit to bring the plane in for a landing. Jay had a warped mind, and was ready for him. When the instructor was finally ready, he turned around to Jay, waved and pointed at Jay, and pulled the stick up out of the floor. As Jay watched, the instructor threw the stick overboard. Jay nodded affirmative and ‘thumbs up’ to the instructor, and while the instructor watched, Jay pulled the SPARE stick out of the fuselage, waved it above his head for the instructor to see, and TOSSED THE STICK OVERBOARD!! The instructor looked in shock, climbed out of the cockpit and bailed out on his parachute! Jay laughed his butt off, brought the plane around and landed OK back at the farm.
Instructor was pissed, and left shortly. Jay and Dad had a great laugh, and so did I fifty years later when he told that story.