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Re: Spins

     I taught Out Of Control (OOC) flight (spin recovery) at the Navy Test
Pilot School and I've done some of the spin testing on the F/A-18, so I feel
I'm qualified to comment on the recent discussion on spins even though I
haven't spun a Lancair myself.  Dave Morss' statements and comments track
true for me - there is no inconsistency in what he has said.  Changing the
inertia in the wings (spinning with partial wing fuel) will change the spin
characteristics myriad different ways depending on how much fuel there is.
Once the autorotation has started fuel will move through the baffles to the
outer rib (the ends of the dumbbell get heavier) and will increase inertia
and slow the recovery or possibly prevent it.  Bugs, the small differences
in the wings themselves kit to kit, engine rpm, an aft CG, will all
contribute to differences airplane to airplane.  From Dave's original work I
tend to believe the LNC2s are reasonably trustworthy for spin recovery.  The
fighters I flew while in uniform were operated aggressively near the edge of
the maneuvering envelope, so it was important to understand how close to
disaster the "edge" was.  The F-4 was unrecoverable in a fully developed
spin, so we were pretty careful.  The F/A-18, as it turned out, was quite
recoverable from the classic spin.  Unfortunately, the Hornet also has a
"falling leaf" OOC flight regime which is not well understood and which has
caused the loss of a few airplanes.  Differences between airplanes (?),
maybe; something we didn't discover in the test program (?), probably.
     If you plan to do aggressive acrobatics close to the ground it makes
sense to train in stalls and incipient spins just in case as Dave did.  To
go out and do spins for the fun of it is asking for trouble in my opinion.
Stay in controlled flight.  I always knew that if I couldn't stop the
autorotation of a spin I could "pull the handle" and at least live to talk
about it later.  Getting out of an LNC2 in a spin, unless you can blow off
the canopy, is NOT going to happen.  I plan to do aerobatics in my LNC2,
which I'll do in a build up fashion.  I'm not going to the expense of
rigging a jettisonable canopy so I'll not be doing spins.  From what Dave
has told us, I think most of us can recover the airplane when we're
confronted with an out of control situation for the first time.  Just my 2
cents.

With regards to the forum,
Pete


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