Maybe I'm just adding fuel to the fire, but this talk about practicing stalls is, to me, a little confusing.  It is generally acknowledged that a stall in the pattern is unrecoverable, and that seems to be true for certified aircraft as well(I've not heard "I stalled/spun in the pattern and lived to tell about it).  So the objective is to avoid that stall.  Recovering from a stall at altitude is apparently recoverable, but there are almost no accidents caused by high-altitude stalls - I think.  So some recommend practicing stalls as a way to do what? avoid stalls, right?  Maybe.  There doesn't seem to be a lot of accidents caused by not recovering from stalls correctly - the accidents is caused by getting into the stall in the first place.  But isn't the best way to practice avoiding stalls to practice NOT stalling?  Just a thought - practice in most other fields of endeavor involves repetitively doing the thing that gives the desired outcome.  We don't practice the wrong thing (the thing that produces the bad outcome) to see what it is like.  I've got nothing against practicing stalls, but perhaps not doing it isn't a sure-fire path to the coffin.  What percentage of the people that perished in a stall/spin had previous stall/spin experience compared to the general pilot population?  I have no idea, but I'll propose that it might not be any different.  Just a thought.

Gary Casey

ES157, Chelton stall warning, AOA stall warning, stall strips and ventral strakes installed