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Stall Spin Awareness Training

John Clark

Well Known Member
"Stall Spin Awareness and Emergency Maneuver Training presented by Master CFI Rich Stowell"
Topic: Stall/Spin Awareness and Emergency Maneuver Training - Controlling your airplane during a crisis
On Saturday, June 6, 2009 at 10:00 AM

Location:
Logsdon's Restaurant at Santa Paula Airport
824 E. Santa Maria Street
Santa Paula, CA 93060
Select Number:
WP0125527
Description:

Master CFI Rich Stowell discusses Stall/Spin Awareness and Emergency Maneuver Training. This event is sponsored by the Aviation Museum of Santa Paula as part of the Swingin' 40's Weekend Celebration.
To view further details and registration information for this event, click here. http://faasafety.gov
The sponsor for this event is: Van Nuys FSDO
The following credit(s) are available for the WINGS/AMT Programs:
KEB 1.00
 
John,

Good post.

Most pilots seem to forget the basics when things get ugly.

1. Aviate
2. Navigate
3. Communicate

1. Aviate - Keep the airplane under control. Get it to best glide speed ASAP and trim it there so you can spend more time doing #2 & #3.

2. Navigate - Find a place to land and aviate over to it. Don't second guess yourself and don't forget to look behind you. More than one pilot has had an engine fail just after passing a runway and continued to fly away from it. Use the nearest button on your GPS, if you have one. (Don't forget to configure your GPS for the runway's you can use. Heliports don't do us much good in an RV.)

3. Communicate - Airplanes fly perfectly good without a radio so use your radio only after you have the airplane under control and are heading towards a suitable landing spot. If you don't have time to tune your radio and talk, then don't do it. It is much better to crash under control (Bob Hoover, "Fly as far into the crash as you can." or something like that.) then spin in while trying to tune your radio and talk to someone. You can always call someone after you are safely on the ground.

When should you trouble shoot? It all depends on what altitude you are at. If up high, try turning on your fuel pump, switching tanks, pulling on carb heat, etc. after you have it under control and before calling out on the radio.

If down low, say right after takeoff, you probably won't have time to do anything but aviate and if you are lucky you will be able to navigate to an open field.
 
Along with 1, 2, and 3 above, the other thing my CFI taught me that's forever reverberated in my head was,

"Don't try to stretch a glide..."

-- Chris
 
"Flying it as far into the crash as you can"

Flying into the crash is how you survive the crash. There are numerous stories of seemingly impossible forced landings where the occupants walked away. The first thing to remember is to save yourself, not the airplane. Way too many fatal crashes can be traced to stall/spins from stretching the glide. "If I could just make it to ..." doesn't work. Quick thinking and a little creativity can save your life. Many years ago a Bonanza lost power over a heavily populated area. The pilot "flew it into the crash," navigating between two buildings on the ground. The clearance was plenty for the fuselage but not the wings. The result was that the wings were separated from the fuselage using up a lot of energy in the process and slowing the remaining bits of airplane. Everyone walked away.

John Clark
RV8 N18U "Sunshine"
KSBA
 
John,

You are so right. There are a couple members here on VAF who have proven it in RV's and rockets. I personally know of three such folks who faced rather dire circumstances over heavily/densely populated areas. In all cases the pilots survived with varying degrees of injury - the planes did not. In all cases the pilots FLEW the airplane all the way.

On the flip side, there have been more than one VAF member who have been faced with almost identical issues while flying past, over and sometimes crashing into; wide open, flat grassy fields where neither the pilot or airplane survived. In most of these cases the airplanes were stalled at impact.

If many of you haven't seen it, you should try to get a copy of Doug Rozendaal's RV safety presentation. It's easily the best and most concise presentation of RV's and safety. Focus includes spins, dumbdumb moves, etc.. I think one of these days it may end up as an article in Kitplanes because it's VERY valuable to any RV pilot, new or old.

I don't have much else to add to this thread other than that.

My 2 cents as usual,

Stein.
 
Sooooo

So where would one get a copy of this? I enjoy and find real value in listening to wiser peoples advice. Tell me where one can get a copy and i am all ears.

Rick
 
I don't know if Doug has actually written the whole thing out or not, it's a presentation he usually gives in person with a powerpoint slideshow to RV builders groups (VAF meetings), CAF meetings and such. I'll give him a call one of these days to see if he's written it our or not, or if he plans to do it for a magazine. Maybe I can get someone to video his next live presentation, because his personal experience is really hard to argue with.

Cheers,
Stein
 
Training

I must say that the most valuable training (apart from my instrument ticket so I can travel in the NW the other 9 months of the year..:)..) has been a 10 hour course of aerobatic instruction.

There are shorter classes dealing just with spins, but spins are a bit like skidding a car...If your trained, you recover without even thinking about it..Same is true with a spin.

Of course one would hopefully not be doing this at less than 1000feet, but that probably where most fatalities happen..But even then, speed of recovery is vital.

Frank
 
I "Googled" Doug Rozendaal, after being intrigued by Steins reference, and found this on a Warbird Forum from 2005 - very apt for all pilots.

"All,

You are receiving this because you are in my address book and you have some affiliation with Warbirds, or someone else forwarded it to you because are in the Warbird community. (Please pass this on to your friends in our
business.)

I have spoke about Warbird accidents at NWOC, CAF, EAA, ICAS and just about anywhere I could get Warbird pilots to listen. I have shown informal data that says over the last 10 years, an average of 10 people die each year in Warbird accidents and 2 of those deaths are in CAF airplanes.

Most of you know by now that Art Vance was killed last weekend. Art's accident started me thinking about our losses this year so I looked up the fatal NTSB reports. Guess what? Arts accident is a sad milestone. We have now made our 2006 numbers. 10 deaths, two of them in the CAF. Let's use Arts death to cause us to pause and look in the mirror for a moment.

Why is this so predictable? Why do we keep doing this? None of these people planned to die. Can any of us say that we haven't done any low altitude maneuvering this year? Can any of us say that we haven't missed a checklist item, or just skipped the checklist completely, this year? Can any of us say that we haven't pushed the weather this year? Can any of us say that we haven't done a show off zoom climb on take-off this year? Have any of us flown when we were "rusty" in a particular type of airplane, maybe we didn't read the book as well as we should have the night before? My hand is not up.

Anyone who responds to this information by thinking about the other people who need to fix what they do wrong, is missing the point. Because we fly these airplanes, we are all part of the problem and the pilot we have the most control over is the one in the mirror. Figuring out what the "other"
pilots need to do, is not what is needed here.

There are three historic common themes among warbird accidents, judgment, proficiency and recurrent training. Maintenance is an issue, but flying a broken airplane is really just poor judgment. Mechanical failure not related to poor maintenance does occur, but very seldom.

My apologies to anyone who was offended because they are so good, they can be no better. That should be a pretty small group. The rest of us have to figure out how to do better. What has the pilot in the mirror done, to improve, especially the contributing factors, judgment, proficiency, and recurrent training, this year?

Lets put this in Warbird pilot language. "If ya always do what ya always
done, you'll always get what ya always got." We got 10 dead friends every
year, and that ain't cuttin' it.

Tailwinds,
Doug Rozendaal

5-9-05 T-6 Kissimmee FL, Structural Failure, 2 Fatal
5-28-05 Stearman Taylor TX, Power Line, 1 Fatal
6-16-05 PT-26 Williamson GA, Downwind T/O, 2 Fatal
7-23-05 Yak 52 Claremore OK, Airshow Roll on T/O 1 Fatal
7-26-05 P-51 Malone WI, Maneuvering Flight, 1 Fatal
8-3-05 BT-13 Lyme NH, Stall on T/O 2 Fatal
10-8-05 F-6F Cookville TN, Unknown 1 Fatal"
 
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