one can avoid stalling by keeping an eye on the ASI during all low speed regimes (approach and landing basically)
Hi Peter, actually you can stall at any speed and any attitude. Like Lewis Carroll’s comments on a stopped clock, if the aircraft is in a zero g condition then you can’t stall it, but otherwise a stall is possible at any speed. Exceeding critical angle of attack defines the stall.
Peter wrote:
FWIW I have been “spin tested” in a C150 so I know what it looks like, and you would need to be completely clueless to get into it by accident in any normally behaving plane
If ‘normally behaving’ means anything certified since the 50s, like the C150, I’d agree but I would not agree for earlier certified planes of which many will be flying indefinitely. I think the change in FAA policy generally followed that evolution in aircraft design so if you’re interested in flying older and/or more interesting planes, spin recovery training in the type is usually not a bad idea. The broad brush approach doesn’t work.
Obviously and in addition if you’re doing aerobatics you need to be able to get out of an unintentional spin. I’m reminded of a friends description of flying a Pitts S2B he owned years ago – apparently every botched maneuver, attempt to try something new etc ended up in a spin, often inverted. He’s the best stick and rudder pilot I’ve met, unlimited aerobatic competitor etc.
Here is a balanced article on stall/spin trends from AOPA.
Hello Malte,
mh wrote:
took the opportunity to look at the CAA sttistics, I would like to have that good data in Germany.
Me too. Thanks for posting this. Actually, I´ll ask around if there is something like this for Switzerland. The UK trend definitly looks interesting.
mh wrote:
Please be my first.
Actually, what I meant was in a broader sense of cost: 18-25 k CHF is simply too much all in all for a PPL. That is not only the exams, these are relatively cheap, I agree. But the over all is way too high. What I am looking at right now is at prices elsewhere, so when I have people who justifyably shy away they can go to another EASA country to do a PPL for less. At the time it cost me 2 monthly salaries, for a normal guy here, it is 4-6 today. That is a relation which does not help.
Re the theoretical exams for PPL, I have not looked at them recently, so I´d have to look at them more closely. I did look at IR 7 subject exams before the CB IR got here and those had really weird stuff like internal electronical work of the VOR receiver, like stuff out of jet POH´s and more of the same. But I understand this has improved. On the regulation level, I´d like to see a similar approach than in the USA, where you can do all of the theory for yourself and apply for the exam without a ATO or FTO´s accord. I generally think, it might be better to get away from too elaborate theoretical exams and place more emphasis on an oral before the final flight exam. That is what the FAA does, and it makes more sense then learning stuff by heart but not understand it. Do the stuff you need to in written, the other stuff in oral. That may be harder but more effective.
mh wrote:
Work done twice is a problem of the organisation, not of the certification.
First thing I hear of this. I guess people like Mooney, Cirrus or Cessna know how to avoid this costs, still, today the average time from scratch to a certified airplane appears to be much higher than it used to be. I recall that Grumman built the AA5 from nothing in 2 years and had it certified. Today, many of the newer planes spend up to 5-6 years in certification. Maybe what you say has impact in it, as long as it is not something they have to change during discoveries during flight testing, which I´d consider normal. But what is really striking is the massive difference in cost of production of a certified vs non-certified plane or avionic. With basically identical material, why does a non-certified engine cost 50% less than the same model certified, with avionic, the difference between the certified and non-certified Garmin EFIS are not that mind boggling and functions identical but the price again is massively different, ergo the difference means certification and insurance. These two factors are a main problem why a plane today costs more than a nice house. And that is no relation.
I appreciate your long post, including the dry understatement at the start :) Thanks for taking the time.
Best regards
Urs
Mooney_Driver wrote:
What I am looking at right now is at prices elsewhere, so when I have people who justifyably shy away they can go to another EASA country to do a PPL for less.
I paid around 8500 EUR for my PPL in France (theory + 55 h on C152 + 2 years of club and FFA membership). Plus of course the cost (material and immaterial) of commuting 1h20 per way which was a bit tedious. I actually studied all my PPL theory on the train rides. I didn’t choose this club for cost reasons though but mainly because I already knew it and the people there.
This price only works because instruction is mainly a volunteering position in French aeroclubs (we have a salaried chief pilot, mechanic, and secretaries, but all other flight instructors are volunteers). Also because most airfields where I trained didn’t have landing fees (including home base where it’s an annual fee per plane based there). But you don’t go to the club as a “customer” so much as more a “member”. We do have a fair share of members who come from the neighbouring countries. Knowledge of French is a big plus though if you want to (learn to) fly in France, but we have some students who do their training in English as well.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
On the regulation level, I´d like to see a similar approach than in the USA, where you can do all of the theory for yourself and apply for the exam without a ATO or FTO´s accord.
This is basically how my CB IR TK worked out. Yes, I had to waste one weekend for the classroom part of the distance learning course. But apart from that, I never talked to the school again and taught myself from the books.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
with avionic, the difference between the certified and non-certified Garmin EFIS are not that mind boggling and functions identical but the price again is massively different, ergo the difference means certification and insurance.
There is more competition on the non-certified market so I would think that, in the case of Garmin, a significant part of the difference comes from the margin. And I don’t think they can wash their hands of product liability just because it’s not certified.
Martin wrote:
And I don’t think they can wash their hands of product liability just because it’s not certified.
They can indeed. Meaning they are only responsible for functionality. It becomes like any other consumer product. If it doesn’t work, just send it back, and you get a new one. They are not responsible when you trust it with your life. That is your choice, and your responsibility alone. It’s a concept that is hard to grasp by the modern, risk averse, “blame someone for my misfortune” – city dweller.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Really? I’ve held a Swedish glider license (ICAO compliant, pre-EASA) and it didn’t include any spin training.
In Norway is does, and also Belgium where I first flew gliders. You won’t get a gliding license without showing how to enter and exit a spin.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Because it won’t. When the FAA removed spin training from the PPL syllabus, it was because spin training going wrong killed more pilots every year than did stall/spin accidents by license holders!
Any real references for this? I have read this here and there, but have seen no real evidence, no references, no data. This is pure speculation and fairy tales IMO. It doesn’t make sense either. Why should spin training kill pilots? It has never killed any glider pilots. In 95% of small GA, with two person on board in the front seats, you can just let go of the controls and it will sort it out all by itself. That is IF you manage to enter a spin at all, not just a “wobbling” spiral dive after the initial enter. At MTOW and CG way aft, this is another matter, but by then most aircraft are not correctly loaded for spinning maneuvers in any case according to the hand book. This is just yet another “feel dangerous/scary/difficult” kind of thing that ends up being a law.
Martin wrote:
Certification is the process of verification that something meets a given specification (it doesn’t matter whether it’s done internally or externally by some independent body)
That is the whole difference. It DOES matter. With certification a third and independent party takes care of the QA. It does this by issuing licenses, ratings, authorizations, TSOs and so on. The idea is the customer can be reasonable sure the manufacturer has done what he is supposed to do, and the product is within specifications, even when there is no contact between customer and manufacturer. The customer does need to be a technical expert, he only need to look at stamps and signatures. It is a pure bureaucratic construct. It works, no question about that, but it has to be financed in some way. Also, certification has legal “advantages” regarding liability and responsibility. The only responsibility of the customer becomes to make sure all things are certified/authorized at all times, and the only responsibility of the manufacturer/maintenance is the same (roughly speaking and a bit idealized, but that is the idea).
The normal way in most industries involved with complex and expensive machines is the customer specify what he wants, either alone, or most often together with engineering consultants companies. Then throughout production, there are meetings, acceptance tests, inspections and so on. Contracts are written and followed up, but in the end, the only responsible party is the customer. This is how the military work, it’s also how experimental homebuilds work. The are no certification involved.
Now, in a world of professionals that are dependent on using highly advanced, expensive equipment, and where malfunction has severe consequences (airline and medicine typically), certification has its place. There are tons of money to pay for it also.
But, for private GA, where literally 100% of all fatal accidents are pilot error (that is what the statistics for Norway show in the last 10 years), and the number of pilot errors per flight hour is 100?, 1000? times that of airline traffic, the whole idea of certification becomes not even of academic interest. Adding to this that fatal accidents of non.certified aircraft are also due to pilot error, not technical error, then the whole situation becomes interesting. Clearly certification has no real effect. It is irrelevant regards to fatal accidents. The reason is, the planes we are flying are not even closely complex enough to make an effect, and we are way too poor pilots, even if the technical issues should make an effect. The liability issue also becomes irrelevant because it’s all pilot errors in any case.
LeSving wrote:
Any real references for this? I have read this here and there, but have seen no real evidence, no references, no data. This is pure speculation and fairy tales IMO.It wouldn’t be easy for me to dig up the statistics from the 1940’s that were the basis for the FAA decision. And even if I did, I am certain it wouldn’t make any impression on you. You haven’t changed your mind on anything else after discussions here so why this?
Why should spin training kill pilots?
I can’t believe you are seriously asking that question.
It has never killed any glider pilots.
To paraphrase… Got any references for this? Are you so well acquainted with accident statistics in gliders from all over the world for all the years we have been flying gliders?
Any real references for this?
I believe I’m right in saying that spin training was stopped in the UK in either the late 70s or early 80s. I can’t be bothered to search them out again, but there are quite a lot of statistics online regarding the pros and cons. I think I found them through Google scholar.
The UK still has incipient spin recovery if I recall Lesson 11A? Not sure if mandatory, and not available in some types (Warrior), but generally is taught at most PPL schools. FIs are also required to demonstrate spins as part of the rating, and good schools will actually teach precision spinning with recovery on a heading, which was the old FAA CFI standard.
Below is a screen shot from the GAPAN lesson guide.
