an"I learnt about flying" moment

When you are learning about flying there are one or two lessons that even if you have an understanding of the aerodynamics, still can be cause for some anxiety prior to the actual flight lesson. Stalling, is one of those. We aren't going to go into that here, but most people have the idea that "stalling" an aeroplane must be right up there on the list of "things not to do in an aeroplane". Oddly, it actually is very benign, and if demonstrated well, a passenger hardly knows it has happened.

Another that is cause for some preflight nerves is "spinning" and I still recall the first time I did this, being pretty wound up (no pun intended!) prior to the lesson. Very simply, the aeroplane is not flying as such, but more like a sycamore seed, it is just rotating in a very tight spiral and losing a lot of height very quickly. So not something you do intentionally at low altitude.

The specific flight and spin I am recalling was one in a lovely little biplane, much like the Pitts Special, called an Acrosport. The pictures are of the plane.. Love the colour scheme, and actually I still think it is a better looking aircraft than the Pitts. Anyhow, the flight was an instructional one where the student was actually another instructor who I was teaching aerobatics.

The loop is one of the basic manoeuvres that you need to be comfortable with, and is pretty straight forward as long as you do not enter it timidly, as this can result in being either at the top, or nearly there, but completely out of airspeed, which is a little exciting, as the aircraft will fall for a while before you can control it again. No real drama, but pretty hair raising the first time you do it!

When you pull up at the start, you are going quite fast, and with simple engines/propellors you have to reduce power as you dive to stop the engine overspeeding, and then add power as the aircraft slows down during the rapid climb. So it is a mistake to not add power, as the first problem (no airspeed) is likely to result. I don't mind when students do this, as it is important to be comfortable with the mistakes people make, and to let them do so, as otherwise they don't always understand from just talking about it.

However, what made this particular loop entry very memorable was that the pilot (I am just there to talk and do the odd demo) realised very late into the entry to add power, but did so when the aircraft was almost stopped, or at least going very slowly, and about to start falling. The result of going to full power at that precise moment was quite surprising, or at least it was at the time!

From the ground; we were later told; it looked very spectacular as the aircraft sort of tumbled all over the place for a few seconds in what seemed like some complex controlled manner. From inside the cockpit, however, I could not really tell what was happening other than it felt and looked pretty extreme, and from which I could not seem to get it to stop! Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and even though I still don't know exactly what it did, the unusual rotations in every direction were partly due to our efforts to get it to stop. Pilots are control freaks! We think we should be able to make the aircraft do whatever we want, and to stop doing so when we want as well!!!!.

After yelling "I have control" I spent a few seconds wrestling with the aircraft trying to stop it doing this awful movement, until I remembered that " if all hell brakes loose, LET GO" and so I did. WOW!!!! so it stopped tumbling, and now it was spinning and doing so upside down at a rotation speed like you would not believe. It was going around so fast, that I could not even tell which way it was spinning. Talk about exciting!!! ..... NOT! scary though.... as I knew how high we were when we started, and how fast we now must be falling! yikes.. or words to that effect!

At this point, an article on spinning that I had read recently came to mind (handy that!!) the main point of which was that: If spinning, and unsure as to how or why, the first thing to do is shut the throttle... OK.. do that.. whew.. the rotation speed dropped, and the nose went down, still spinning, and still inverted, and still no idea which way we were rotating, which in spin recovery is VERY IMPORTANT!!! ok.. next step.... LET GO.. already done that!!!! now.. third step.. push on the heaviest rudder pedal.. rrriiighttt!!!!! I HAVE NO IDEA WHICH IS HEAVIER!!!!! keep in mind we are losing height (I calculated later) at about 10 000 ft per minute, and we were only at about 4500ft when we started...... and the really useful bit at the end.. "push one rudder, count to three, if nothing happens, TRY THE OTHER ONE!!! again..WOW!!!.. the rotation stopped so fast it almost made me dizzy. (there is a good reason for the inverted spin stopping so quick, but we won't get into it here.)

So now, its a simple upside down, gentle dive, and all we need do is a simple half roll to upright, and now we can breath again.. I would guess that the whole thing took less than 15 seconds, but I remember looking at the altimeter and noting that as we pulled out of the dive and started climbing we had got below 1500 ft.. way tooo close for comfort..

Just to show how cool I was, we climbed back to 4500ft and did a few rolls and loops (properly now) before heading back to land..

After this, I spent a couple of hours on my own playing with inverted spinning.! I still don't like it, but it isn't scary anymore!