J down in Oklahoma

[M016576]

I respectfully disagree. Not saying the PPL is adequate as is, there's room for imporvement no doubt. For one I'd include spin training again. But if you want to thin the herd and keep more people from from earning a pilot's license, requiring full-on instrument training as part of the PPL would certainly raise the price of admission.

I have an instrument training, though I'm not current. For me instrument was by far the most difficult rating to get, lots of study, work, and not all that intuitive (some of that may be a basic lack of apptitude for instrument flight on my part). Much more work than the PPL and glider rating both of which I really enjoyed, especially the glider rating.

I agree the instrument rating makes one a better pilot. Earning it, more than the other ratings, gave me a huge sense of accomplishment.

I read the report in your link. And through it I was a bit suspicious of the numbers . . . for one thing, there are more VFR pilots than IFR, so that should skew the numbers. Sure 'nuff, toward the end they account for that in the following paragraph . . . and guess what, the IFR pilots seem to have a slightly worse record in fatals per 100,000 hours than do VFR pilots in most areas *except* stall spin related accidents. Quote:

"In total (both VMC and IMC accidents), there were 67 and 58 fatal accidents involving VFR-rated and IFR-rated pilots respectively. However, in general aviation, VFR-rated pilots (258,749) outnumber their IFR-rated peers (171,309) (source: AOPA, www.aopa.org/whatsnew/stats/). Correcting for this increased presence of VFR-rated pilots, we calculated 26 fatal accidents per 100,000 VFR-rated and 34 fatal accidents per 100,000 IFR-rated pilots. The slightly higher rate for the IFR-trained pilots did not represent skewing of the data under the more strenuous demands of IMC, since a similar trend was evident under VMC conditions (16 and 21 fatal accidents per 100,000 VFR- and IFR-rated pilots respectively). Likewise, increased exposure of IFR-rated pilots, who generally have higher flight times than their VFR-rated counterparts, is unlikely to be the cause of the increased accident rate for the former group. Thus, for pilots with 200-1000 logged hours, the fatality rate was 9 VFR-rated pilots and 10 IFR-rated pilots per 100,000 pilots with the corresponding rating. Taken together, our findings, albeit with these aircraft, would suggest that while IFR-rated pilots do indeed have a greater control of the aircraft, this rating does not confer a lower fatal accident rate."

As an aside, I accidentally spun my Mooney during my PPL training. My instructor wanted to hear the stall warning horn on steady during MCA flight and asked for a 30 degree bank left turn (later I found the stall horn vane was misadjusted too close to stall). I was not coordinated and the ship went over the top, nose straight down at 3,000 feet over San Pablo bay (I swear a saw a death's head in the brown water below). I yelled, "Take the plane!", Pete did, and after about 3 turns we finally stopped rotating and gingerly pulled out of a very high speed dive. I'm guessing we lost the better part of 2000 feet.Scared the holy crap out of me. So scared I didn't want to fly my own plane, so asked for spin training right then. Rented a Cessna and sorted things out. There's a real good reason spins are prohibited in the Mooney. Lesson learned, it's most important to keep the ball centered approaching a Mooney stall. These 3 things together, low, slow, and uncoordinated will often be fatal.

.

2000' sounds about right to recover a mooney. I seem to recall 1000-2000' being the average to recover the T-34C from a spin (and that's basically an overpowered bonanza). After a while, the rudder triplet departures and falling leaf phases in that airplane got to be pretty fun!

The T-2C spins were never fun, though... That thing would lose 8-10,000' to recover, and the G-out forces were awful. I'll be happy if I never spin another jet again.

[aviatoreb]

2000' sounds about right to recover a mooney. I seem to recall 1000-2000' being the average to recover the T-34C from a spin (and that's basically an overpowered bonanza). After a while, the rudder triplet departures and falling leaf phases in that airplane got to be pretty fun!

The T-2C spins were never fun, though... That thing would lose 8-10,000' to recover, and the G-out forces were awful. I'll be happy if I never spin another jet again.

 

I would think you were spinning jets all day long in your day job as a airforce CFI.  :-O   No?

[aviatoreb]

FWIW, falling leaf (aka delayed recovery) stalls were a joy in my old Cherokee 180 and in the Great Lakes that I received my primary aerobatics instruction in. You could have literally steered both of those planes all the way to the ground doing a delicate rudder dance not unlike taxiing a light tail dragger on a gusty day. At least in my limited experience, the Mooney is an entirely different thing though. In that phase of flight the rudder is relatively slow to "grab" and when it does it tends to grab more than you want it to. A pilot induced oscillation, of sorts. After a couple of rather unsatisfying attempts it was obvious to me that I was playing with fire and that it was best to put the matches away. No more falling leaf stalls for me in the Mooney, thank you very much.

Jim

 

My old Diamond DA40 was really good at the falling leaf too.  In fact, the chatter on the Diamond forum was that descent rate in a full stall - stick all the way back and keep the ball centered which was very very easy in that plane - and it would descend slower than a Cirrus (arch enemy of the Diamond users group) slower than a Cirrus with chute deployed.

[bd32322]

FWIW, falling leaf (aka delayed recovery) stalls were a joy in my old Cherokee 180 and in the Great Lakes that I received my primary aerobatics instruction in. You could have literally steered both of those planes all the way to the ground doing a delicate rudder dance not unlike taxiing a light tail dragger on a gusty day. At least in my limited experience, the Mooney is an entirely different thing though. In that phase of flight the rudder is relatively slow to "grab" and when it does it tends to grab more than you want it to. A pilot induced oscillation, of sorts. After a couple of rather unsatisfying attempts it was obvious to me that I was playing with fire and that it was best to put the matches away. No more falling leaf stalls for me in the Mooney, thank you very much.

Jim

 

 

Maybe the Arrow is a close cousin of the cherokee 180 - but you could hold that one in a stall and have a huge sink rate all under nice control.

[M016576]

I would think you were spinning jets all day long in your day job as a airforce CFI. :-O No?

;-)

The bigger they are, the harder they fall... Holds very true when it comes to aircraft and spins!!!

I prefer controlled flight: easier to aim with the gun :-). Spinning a prop aircraft is fun- the big whirling fan in the front slows things down quite a bit... A jet doesn't get that luxury- decent rates get out of control and the G-out forces are brutal! And did I mention its harder to aim the gun?!

[fantom]

I would think you were spinning jets all day long in your day job as a airforce CFI.  :-O   No?

Not quite....

 

The spin procedure in the T-38 was: Grasp ejection seat handles and pull!

 

If you cross control an F-4, the aircraft will depart controlled flight quite rapidly, and at an angle of attack above 60 degrees you're in deep do-do.

 

Procedures for "Double Ugly", the F-4E Phantom, without leading edge slats:

 

Out of control:

 

Stick - full forward

Ailerons and rudder - neutral

If not recovered - Maintain full forward stick and deploy drag chute

Spin:

Stick - Maintain full forward

Ailerons - full with spin (turn needle)

Aircraft unloaded - ailerons neutral

 

The rudders are basically useless.

Given the gyrations of an F-4 when it departs controlled flight, you don't really know you're in a spin until things settle down. So you execute Out of Control procedures first, followed by Spin recovery procedures, if Out of Control doesn't work. Basically, the drag chute is deployed before you even start evaluating whether you're in a spin or not.

 

It takes 10-15,000 feet to recover if you're lucky, but if you don't have it under control by 10,000' AGL, eject, eject, eject!

[fantom]

Hey Jim....watch who you're calling old.

 

[fantom]

....FWIW, he says that the RF-4 was his dream assignment.

Dad has dreamed about a privately-owned T-37 my entire life, though.

Jim

 

There are some private T-37s out there just in case you win the Lotto. KC-135 assignment wasn't bad...we called it Delta prep.

 

Back in my day, they wanted you to have 1,000 F-4 hours before getting an RF-4. 'Alone, Unarmed and Unafraid.' Sure

 

Two out of three, at best.