Taking Mooney for a Spin (poll)

[M20F]

25 minutes ago, cliffy said:

Wrong   Every airplane will (by regulation) recover from a stall.  From 747s down to J3 Cubs. 

 

Typo on my part spin not stall.  

[Pete M]

1 hour ago, Shadrach said:

Likely true. Don Kaye said the K model they spun began porpoising in the spin. Two complete turns and 1000 feet lost before recovery. 

I do falling leaf stalls with my students to teach rudder control when stalled or near stall. Everything i've done that in porpoises to some degree. 

I also do the "hover down the rwy" thing with students someone mentioned doing in a 727. Now that would be a hoot:) Teaches good cross wind control:)

[carusoam]

When given the opportunity…

Sit in with Bob Kromer discussing Mooney flying…

Unfortunately, it is a bit too late to sit with Bill Wheat.

 

Bob also gave a great discussion of departure techniques… Vx, Vy, Vinfinity and beyond…. At Mooney Summit   back a ways…

 

PP thoughts only…

Best regards,

-a-

[Pinecone]

On 10/9/2022 at 3:55 PM, jetdriven said:

I wholeheartedly endorse  stalling them during training…but inadvertent stalls  at low altitude  never end up well.  Hence the normal operation part, just don’t allow that to be something that develops. 

AGREED.

And not stalling them in training leads to not knowing they are stalled in real life, hence AF447

[Pinecone]

21 hours ago, M20F said:

This is the correct answer.  A spin is an aerobatic maneuver during which the airspeed floats around stall spreed.  A spiral is continual increasing airspeed and they are what kill you. 
 
Pilots spend an inordinate amount of time talking about spins when they really mean spirals.  

BOTH of them can kill you.

The difference is, with a spin you hit the ground with the airplane intact.  In a spiral, normally the wings and fuselage part company before you hit the ground.

[Pinecone]

5 hours ago, rbp said:

I'll see your tail dragger experience and raise you  glider experience

Both are EXCELLENT for making you a better pilot.

[Shadrach]

46 minutes ago, Pete M said:

I do falling leaf stalls with my students to teach rudder control when stalled or near stall. Everything i've done that in porpoises to some degree. 

I also do the "hover down the rwy" thing with students someone mentioned doing in a 727. Now that would be a hoot:) Teaches good cross wind control:)

I’ve done falling leafs in my Mooney at altitude. It worked out fine but I wouldn’t recommend it. It could’ve been me, but I didn’t feel like I could hold it upright indefinitely. I lowered the nose after two yaw corrections because I felt like it was going to roll off to one side.

[GeeBee]

16 minutes ago, Pinecone said:

AGREED.

And not stalling them in training leads to not knowing they are stalled in real life, hence AF447

Have you ever flown an Airbus?

 

[Pinecone]

No, but the AF447 showed them in a classic swept wing stall.  Nose near the horizon, not accelerating with climb thrust, and massive vertical speed down, with the stick held full aft (and the airplane had reverted to the where the controls directly controlled the surfaces, like in non-FBW aircraft).

[GeeBee]

2 minutes ago, Pinecone said:

No, but the AF447 showed them in a classic swept wing stall.  Nose near the horizon, not accelerating with climb thrust, and massive vertical speed down, with the stick held full aft (and the airplane had reverted to the where the controls directly controlled the surfaces, like in non-FBW aircraft).

No, that is incorrect.  It went into alternate law, but the computers were still operating the controls just some envelope protections were removed. I could write about three pages here on what really happened, but the real failure was failure to hand fly the airplane by attitude and power (aka attitude instrument flying). By the time the airplane was stalled, it was unrecoverable because the stab trim was full aft and it overpowered the elevator even if the stick was full forward to the stop. How did stab trim get there? The Airbus auto trims and if the pilots had kept the nose at 2.5 degrees rather than apply back pressure to the stick the stab would not have over trimmed. This true when stalling Boeings, you have to be careful not to over trim the stab although the pilot is more engaged in the stab trim position on a Boeing, until the MAX came out.

May I suggest you read "Understanding AF 447" by my friend Bill Palmer. You are making several mistakes in understanding Airbus, fed by unknowledgeable sources. I hear them often.

[M20F]

1 hour ago, Pinecone said:

BOTH of them can kill you..

I have yet to find a plane that will hold a spin without continuous input.  Relax the controls it just goes into a spiral, it doesn’t maintain a spin.  A spin is a maneuver not an incident. 

[Pinecone]

So if you hold the input and spin into the ground you don't die?????

The T-37 will continue to spin without positive recovery controls.  And there are a number of aircraft that will not recover from a spin after a few turns, even with full anti spin control input.  That is why they do the testing with a spin chute installed.

Most light aircraft only need opposite rudder, at most, to recover.  The Briggs/Mueller (I first read about it in Mueller's book Flight Unlimited) is Throttle Idle, Stick/Yoke Release, Rudder Full Opposite spin direction.

I agree that many aircraft will recover will just hands off, but not all.

[GeeBee]

I can verify that the AA-1 Yankee will not recover easily, in fact it takes several aggressive attempts. Ask me how I know.

 

[steingar]

If your Mooney goes into a spin after a just off the stall break it needs to be rerigged.  Properly rigged Mooneys don't spin quite that easy, they couldn't be certificated if they did.  And yes, I've done power on and power off stalls to the break every year in my Mooney at BFR time, and I'm probably the worst pilot on this site.  When my instructor asked me if I wanted to do a cross controlled stall I said no frickin' way.

[A64Pilot]

Find that NASA guy who had to jump out of the Bo because it was unrecoverable that all aircraft will recover

Apparently that video is no longer allowed to be viewed, but it was interesting, he fought it for a long time before he jumped.

‘All it took was aileron at the onset to get into a fully developed spin almost immediately, what’s important about that is the average pilot in an inadvertent stall will by instinct try to raise the dropped wing with aileron and not rudder, where rudder should be used of course. 

https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/unhappy-end-to-a-nasa-spin-test-bonanza.60391/

[Fly Boomer]

18 hours ago, M20F said:

I have yet to find a plane that will hold a spin without continuous input.  Relax the controls it just goes into a spiral, it doesn’t maintain a spin.  A spin is a maneuver not an incident. 

The spin guy (Rich Stowell) has something like 30,000 spins in 170 airplanes, so I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that he has more experience than anyone reading this.  Rich has been branded a boring alarmist by at least one person on this forum but, if you want to know what he said about Mooney in particular, I present about one page from a nearly 500-page book:

Naval test pilot school was one of those rare and wonderful happenings in life that you wouldn’t trade for anything but wouldn’t immediately jump to do again.

After test pilot school it was back to certifying new and modified aircraft as an FAA flight test pilot.  I encountered my first flat, unrecoverable spin in 1960.  In testing the new, metal-wing Mooney M20B, I intentionally exceeded the one-turn Normal Category spin test requirement because something peculiar was happening.  The spin, which happened to be to the right in this case, was unusually oscillatory in pitch.  And the oscillations were increasing, alternatively burying the nose and pitching up about a half a turn later.  So the boy test pilot pressed on.

At the three-turn point, which was to be my last look, the spin suddenly went flat as the nose pitched up.  Very flat!  And slow.  I'd heard old CAA test pilots talk about flat spins that happened back in the 1930s, and I knew right away that’s where I was.  The controls flopped uselessly; there were no control pressures or airplane responses, and the engine stopped.  There was side force from a left skid, as if pushing right Rutter in normal flight.  It seemed that the spin axis was out in front of the airplane. Obviously I was just along for the ride, which at least was smooth.  And strangely quiet.  Handles for the spin chute deployment and jettison cables were mounted on the side of the cabin slightly behind the pilot seat.  It was an awkward placement and difficult to reach.  After some fumbling around, I got the chute deployed.  This pitched the airplane into a dive.  Then after some rather desperate pulling and tugging, I finally jerked the jettison handle hard enough to make it work, followed by a relieved pullout and return to base.

I am a fairly normal human specimen, and that flat spin encounter was a big surprise.  The adrenaline certainly flowed freely, but at least I didn’t have to deal with making a lot of choices.  "Just get the damn chute out, and then get rid of it," I thought.  Burned into memory--and still clear in my mind today--was the view through the windshield after the spin chute opened:  looking vertically down at the unique terrain of Texas hill country with the limestone strata making contour lines around the hills.

It was surprising that this unrecoverable spin occurred at maximum forward CG and maximum gross weight, normally a benign loading for spins.  Not surprising, though, was that my extracurricular activities were ruled excessive by FAA management.  The airplane was certified after subsequent tests by me showed that it met the letter of the one-turn spin requirement at both forward and aft CG loadings.  But during FAA flight tests the following year, the next Mooney model to be manufactured went flat at the one-turn point at aft CG.  The FAA test pilot, Ramon Gibson, had to bail out after the spin chute failed to deploy.  And a few months later, a new Mooney was lost to a flat spin during a sales demonstration flight.  Amazingly, the sales demo pilot and three passengers survived with injuries--a testament to the fact that flat spins have much slower descent rates than steeper spins.  That and the fact that the airplane luckily skinnied down the trunk of a pine tree, knocking off branches and lessening the force of ground impact.  (The harrowing story of this demonstration flight later appeared in the March 1981 issue of popular mechanics.)  My spin test results in 1960 had shown that the airplane was close to the ragged edge of bad spins, but the manufacture was not required to investigate further.

[M20F]

1 hour ago, Fly Boomer said:

Rich has been branded a boring alarmist by at least one person on this forum

 

On that I can agree, fly safe. 

[A64Pilot]

So six pages later we are back to don’t spin the thing, but what I don’t understand is why would anyone want to?

I was at KACJ one day, Americus Ga at one of our dealers when this old guy flew in in a Tiger Moth, I had never seen one and it’s certainly a classic so a few of us went over to talk to the guy, we had all heard the thing had evil stall manners so one asked him how did it stall.

The old guy looked at him like he had a horn growing out of his head and said, why in the world would I want to do that?

He had a point, it’s well known the thing is evil in a stall, so don’t stall.

But seriously, spins can be fun, I don’t have the stomach anymore, but everyone should get spin training, if nothing else just to see how violent one is, I’ll never forget my first time, I expected to still see the horizon, but it seemed we were pointed straight down, not at all what I expected.

Just go in a Utility category airplane with someone to show you how your first few times.

[DXB]

9 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

So six pages later we are back to don’t spin the thing, but what I don’t understand is why would anyone want to?

I was at KACJ one day, Americus Ga at one of our dealers when this old guy flew in in a Tiger Moth, I had never seen one and it’s certainly a classic so a few of us went over to talk to the guy, we had all heard the thing had evil stall manners so one asked him how did it stall.

The old guy looked at him like he had a horn growing out of his head and said, why in the world would I want to do that?

He had a point, it’s well known the thing is evil in a stall, so don’t stall.

But seriously, spins can be fun, I don’t have the stomach anymore, but everyone should get spin training, if nothing else just to see how violent one is, I’ll never forget my first time, I expected to still see the horizon, but it seemed we were pointed straight down, not at all what I expected.

Just go in a Utility category airplane with someone to show you how your first few times.

Honestly I have zero desire to stall my Mooney except a few feet off the runway when I'm landing. I'm not too uncomfortable demonstrating a power off stall from level-ish attitude, watching the ball and recovering not too long after hearing the horn.  Power on stall? No thanks.  I foolishly did my first BFR after getting my Mooney with a random early 20s CFI with no Mooney experience - when he asked for a power on stall, I flat refused - he then made me land and go back up in a 172 to demonstrate it - big waste of time in my view.

My current Mooney instructor has deep experience in the type and won't do power on stalls during the BFRs.  According to him during my last BFR, "the last two students I had do it got into an incipient spin, and I had to get them out, so now I just demonstrate it."   His "demonstration" was still pretty hair raising for me.

I did once get some spin recovery training in a Decathalon - it was utterly shocking and paralyzing when experiencing a spin for the first time, even though it was super easy to get out of it once I regained some executive function via coaching.  The main thing I learned though was that I don't ever want to experience that in my plane.  

[RLCarter]

During my transition training in my E, we did power on and power off stalls. I had read on MS that Mooneys lose a lot of altitude, so all the initial stalls were done above 5000agl and 75% power for power on stalls (65% is allowed in the ACS). As training progressed I would routinely do full power on stalls at 3000agl, to me it wasn’t much different than stalling the 172. Fast forward to June 25th, 2022 while having lunch with my current CFI and a DPE (was my CFI) I was told that today your going up with the DPE and knock out my spin training in the 172….. After a little ground school, verifying we would be in Utility category and removing/securing everything loose in the cabin we were airborne. I was amazed at how fast we got to 5000agl in a 145hp 172 on a hot June day in South Texas, or maybe I was just wanting to prolong the lesson. He demonstrated the 1st one which caught me a little off guard, but not too bad. I ended up doing a total of 10 spin entries and recoveries, power on and power off entries, turns left and right with both skid and slip entries, next was a right climbing turn (accelerated stall) skidding and then one slipping. He saved the best for last, left climbing turn with full left rudder, it rolled over on its back a lot faster this time and around we went, one more and I’m done, climbing left turn and just before it stalled full right rudder (which stalls the raised wing, rolling you over the top). I thought I was ready for it, after all I had just done one to the right…wrong, it rolled over the top so fast I swear when I recovered me and the CFI had swapped seats…. All in all it was an eye opener on just how fast things can happen once you get to that point.

side note: I did my spin training from the right seat… oh, and I had Chili for lunch, no issues but had I’d know what they had in store for me I would have ordered differently 

[cliffy]

On 10/10/2022 at 3:27 PM, GeeBee said:

No, that is incorrect.  It went into alternate law, but the computers were still operating the controls just some envelope protections were removed. I could write about three pages here on what really happened, but the real failure was failure to hand fly the airplane by attitude and power (aka attitude instrument flying). By the time the airplane was stalled, it was unrecoverable because the stab trim was full aft and it overpowered the elevator even if the stick was full forward to the stop. How did stab trim get there? The Airbus auto trims and if the pilots had kept the nose at 2.5 degrees rather than apply back pressure to the stick the stab would not have over trimmed. This true when stalling Boeings, you have to be careful not to over trim the stab although the pilot is more engaged in the stab trim position on a Boeing, until the MAX came out.

May I suggest you read "Understanding AF 447" by my friend Bill Palmer. You are making several mistakes in understanding Airbus, fed by unknowledgeable sources. I hear them often.

I am rated in the AB 320 series and I have not read Palmer's book but I feel the real culprit (or part of it)  might have been the training regime for AB. One of the first items shown to new hires is they tell them to fly with the stick held all the way aft and show how in normal law (3 computers on) the airplane won't stall. I'm willing to bet that played a part in their thinking as they were going down- 'IT CAN'T STALL I HAVE THE STICK ALL THE WAY AFT!"  When in danger you go back to your training, ESPECIALLY if you are low on total experience.

I, too, could go on for pages on stuff I tried to teach in sims on the 737 and 757. Stuff that was obvious to me but unheard of to my students even at that level of training. 

I have only heard (as I'm long retired off the pig) that now they have to check the overhead to see how many computers are on IF they have a control anomaly (there should be 3 lights right on the front panel one  for each computer that is alive and not back over you head on the overhead). As you can tell I am not a fan of the bus for me its Boeing all the way (and maybe only up to the 767 era). 

Bill Wheat and Stowell seemed to agree that in a Mooney you don't want to spin it. Since they are WAY beyond me in that experience I'll defer to their opinions.  As the old commercial said (paraphrased)  "When they speak I'll listen!"

I was always against the FAAs decree that new pilots only had to go to the first indication of a stall. If you've never been on the other side and had to recover you won't have any idea what to do if it ever happens to you. I am very grateful that my mentor had me doing spins and full stalls (power on and off, flaps up, flaps down) before I even solo'd  

[GeeBee]

10 hours ago, cliffy said:

I am rated in the AB 320 series and I have not read Palmer's book but I feel the real culprit (or part of it)  might have been the training regime for AB. One of the first items shown to new hires is they tell them to fly with the stick held all the way aft and show how in normal law (3 computers on) the airplane won't stall. I'm willing to bet that played a part in their thinking as they were going down- 'IT CAN'T STALL I HAVE THE STICK ALL THE WAY AFT!"  When in danger you go back to your training, ESPECIALLY if you are low on total experience.

I, too, could go on for pages on stuff I tried to teach in sims on the 737 and 757. Stuff that was obvious to me but unheard of to my students even at that level of training. 

I have only heard (as I'm long retired off the pig) that now they have to check the overhead to see how many computers are on IF they have a control anomaly (there should be 3 lights right on the front panel one  for each computer that is alive and not back over you head on the overhead). As you can tell I am not a fan of the bus for me its Boeing all the way (and maybe only up to the 767 era). 

Bill Wheat and Stowell seemed to agree that in a Mooney you don't want to spin it. Since they are WAY beyond me in that experience I'll defer to their opinions.  As the old commercial said (paraphrased)  "When they speak I'll listen!"

I was always against the FAAs decree that new pilots only had to go to the first indication of a stall. If you've never been on the other side and had to recover you won't have any idea what to do if it ever happens to you. I am very grateful that my mentor had me doing spins and full stalls (power on and off, flaps up, flaps down) before I even solo'd  

I have had, on three occasions, the AF 447 profile introduced into the sim sessions unannounced, un-briefed. On all occasions I simply attitude flew the airplanes. If at cruise as they were, simply put it 2.5 degrees nose up 83% for P&W, about 89% for GE. Fly the airplane. At that attitude and power setting it is not going to stall. Attitude + power equals performance. I've also seen on Boeings during complete electrical failure, experienced Captains who could not fly the airplane on the standby instruments because they could no longer attitude instrument fly an airplane. Again, the problem is not stall recognition, or training in stall recognition, the problem is not being able to attitude instrument fly the airplane. The idea in attitude instrument flying is not to get the airplane in extreme situations to start with. If you do and you cannot attitude instrument fly, no amount of stall training is going to save you.

 

[Pinecone]

15 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

But seriously, spins can be fun, I don’t have the stomach anymore, but everyone should get spin training, if nothing else just to see how violent one is, I’ll never forget my first time, I expected to still see the horizon, but it seemed we were pointed straight down, not at all what I expected.

Just go in a Utility category airplane with someone to show you how your first few times.

Yes, they are good fun, and everyone should do some.

One caveat, if you do spins in a Tomahawk, do NOT look back at the tail.

For the most fun, see if you can find an original Tomahawk.  It will have stall strips only installed in the outer 1/3 of the wing.  There was an SB to install inboard strips and it greatly tames the behavior.  With only the outboard strips, it half snaps to inverted, then the nose falls through to be very nose low in the actual spin.

Spinning a Cessna will give you a false sense that spins are very benign and hard to maintain.

I have spun Citabrias (several models), Decathalons, Pitts (various S-2 models), CAP-10, Cessna 150, Tomahawk, Great Lakes, and T-37, that I recall.

[Pinecone]

28 minutes ago, GeeBee said:

I have had, on three occasions, the AF 447 profile introduced into the sim sessions unannounced, un-briefed. On all occasions I simply attitude flew the airplanes. If at cruise as they were, simply put it 2.5 degrees nose up 83% for P&W, about 89% for GE. Fly the airplane. At that attitude and power setting it is not going to stall. Attitude + power equals performance. I've also seen on Boeings during complete electrical failure, experienced Captains who could not fly the airplane on the standby instruments because they could no longer attitude instrument fly an airplane. Again, the problem is not stall recognition, or training in stall recognition, the problem is not being able to attitude instrument fly the airplane. The idea in attitude instrument flying is not to get the airplane in extreme situations to start with. If you do and you cannot attitude instrument fly, no amount of stall training is going to save you.

IMO, part of the issue was that they did have the nose near the horizon and a reasonable power setting, but did not realize that the aircraft was stalled.  This based on a couple of accounts I have read.

And that is where stalling a swept wing and a straight wing are different.  In swept wing you don't get the break with the nose well below the horizon.

[GeeBee]

2 hours ago, Pinecone said:

IMO, part of the issue was that they did have the nose near the horizon and a reasonable power setting, but did not realize that the aircraft was stalled.  This based on a couple of accounts I have read.

And that is where stalling a swept wing and a straight wing are different.  In swept wing you don't get the break with the nose well below the horizon.

No that is incorrect. The nose was 12-16 degrees ANU before stall which is not good in the FLs.