Stall Spin Awareness: What Your Instructor Should Be Telling You
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Stall/Spin AwarenessHistory Lesson
Although we have failed to eliminate stall/spin accidents, it is not for a lack of trying from everyone in the industry. There are hundreds of books and articles on the subject and it’s a pretty major portion of our primary training – or at least it feels major when you are doing it. For all this we are doing better; these kinds of accidents were much more prevalent in the past than they are today.
Why?
The reason we still see these kinds of events is that we don’t really train to avoid stalls and spins. Most of the training is to show you how to get into a stall; and recover to satisfy your checkride – no spins. The spin becomes the boogie man because we don’t expose primary students to it. (We barely expose instructors to spins). This creates unnecessary anxiety that can turn up when you find yourself inadvertently in a spin – read panic. Also, we don’t teach you what it will look like when you get into an unintentional stall; safe to say that it won’t be straight and level flight or a mild 20 degree bank.
Redacted Aerodynamics
Stalls occur when the airfoil reaches it’s critical angle of attack. What does that mean in english? In simple terms, it means that the angle between the relative wind (not the horizon) and the airfoil have become so acute that the airflow can’t stay attached and lift is lost. It can happen going straight up or straight down – the attitude relative to the horizon is irrelevant. But we are trained that it happens with the nose above the horizon – totally not true. Also, you can stall at any airspeed. We train in a one G environment which equates to the airplane’s published stall speed (usually at gross weight), but as you add G loading the speed that you stall goes up.
- This is where I believe the majority of us law-abiding citizens get into trouble. I personally lost a friend to this scenario. Here’s the setup: You overshoot the turn to final, maybe you have a little wind pushing you on base leg so you find yourself overshooting final and horsing it around the corner and feeding in left rudder (assuming left traffic pattern) to point the nose at the runway and the next thing you know you have roll-coupled the airplane into a incipient spin with no room to recover. It is vitally important that you not skid this turn and simultaneous load up Gs while letting your airspeed decay. I’m not talking about slips – you can do those all day long with outside rudder, good airspeed control and no G loading to help get down. Bottom line, if you find yourself way out of position, it’s time to go around for another approach; resist the temptation to salvage it.
Engine Out Loss of Airspeed
- This one is not common because our engines are so reliable, but if you find yourself in a low energy state (like on takeoff) with an engine out, you must push the nose down aggressively to avoid a stall and maintain speed. Also, as you are setting up for an off-field landing you have to manage your energy appropriately. Turns are fine, but watch the G loading. Observe your airspeed. It is far better to land under control in the trees wings level than to stall and spin into an open field.
Hot Dogging
- This is a senseless way to crash, but it happens every year. You decide you want to do some low passes with a corresponding aggressive pull-up, maybe throw in a bank for good measure and you have a recipe for disaster. Ironically this stall more closely resembles one of the stalls we learned in training – the power on stall. You just pull and load up the airplane until it’s out of energy. As the accelerated stall occurs and it quits flying, it usually happens without much warning; couple that with the torque of full power, a spin is almost guaranteed. Remember you were doing a “low” pass so recovery isn’t likely before contacting terra firma.
This is a relatively short discussion of a long topic, but I felt that a few points on the subject could help our awareness.
Emergency Maneuver Training : Controlling Your Airplane During a Crisis
Gordon has written dozens of articles and has free videos on EAA.org that you can find the one on stall spin awareness here.
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Thanks for talking about this subject. It is something every pilot needs to understand intimately. Unfortunately, that is not the case. I realize that while we do not want to scare the new pilot, it is imperative we give them the tools to deal with this issue. With all of the focus on judgement and scenario based training, I am afraid that basic airmanship is getting short shrift.
Thanks David!
Seems like training today is about getting through the checkride. The emphasis on airmenship can easily get lost.
I was never formally taught spins, but I did have the good fortune to learn in a Piper Tomahawk, which was very squirrelly in stalls. Every stall I practiced, the plane would try to drop a wing, and I learned to do a lot of dancing on the rudder to keep it pointed straight ahead. It was a very dramatic way of learning the importance of staying coordinated, and as a result I would never ever “cheat” around a turn with a skid as described here.
Like all of us, I’ve overshot base to final turns thanks to a strong wind, but I always just try to be patient and turn back to the runway centerline and then line up. It’s embarrassing, but hardly ever compromises the final approach or landing. So I am a little mystified by the urgency with which some pilots jack the plane around to line up for final with steep banks or skids, sometimes with fatal results.
I think you are likely correct that pilots who learn in tamer planes than I did simply never learn the respect required by flight regimes near a stall, or even what those flight regimes are (AoA, G loads, roll coupling, etc).
Charley,
I flew the Trama-Hawk a few times, that T-tail always made me nervous, it really shook during stalls. I don’t think any have every failed though. You got it right about how to treat a lady. Most airplanes aren’t fond of being horsed-around the pattern.
Oh yes, the tail-wagging. I doubt the tail was in any danger of failing; the shaking was due to the fact that at high angles of attack the tailplane was right in the shadow of the wings, and near a stall when the air over the wings started to separate from laminar flow, the resulting turbulence would buffet the tail and create that shaking. I think the aerodynamic forces involved were pretty light, though.
Much more interesting was during landing, if the pilot flared too dramatically and got into a high enough angle of attack that the same blanking of the tailplane by the wings occurred. There wasn’t any shaking, but some rather interesting things could happen to pitch control, and at a few feet above the ground that’s exactly when you don’t need any surprises!
Sounds like fun!!
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