Post by BrentThat is one of the funniest and strangest differences between canadian and
american flight training
It is a required demonstration for Canadian private pilots and a canadian
flight school cannot be licensed and operate unless it has at least one
aircraft certified for intentional spins. Canadian commercial pilots are
required to recover from an incipient spin as part of fligh training. (In
the last year Canada has shifted the focus from spin excecution to pure
recovery in the incipient phase)
Spins spend altitude like ther is no tomorrow and to my pleasure the biggest
thing i learned from round 2 (insurance signoff of my plane) in the cherokee
140 is just how MUCH it takes to make it spin. In order to spin the plane i
essentially had to throw it out of the sky sideways with a full stomp of
uncoordinated rudder. (mind you it recovers in an almost vertical attitude
requiring swift action)
As a student pilot, I insisted on pre-solo spin training. If I ever
screwed up
enough to get myself into an inadvertent spin, I did not want to be required to
figure out spin recovery for myself!
well said. Especially figuring out spin recovery during short final,
where they are more likely to occur! I was fortunate enough to be part of
the student pilots where spin training was mandatory in Canada in 1999.
We have a Redbird. About $100 per hour. In Canada we can do up to
half of the 40 hours IFR training in a sim, even if it's multi, and
since the Seneca plus instructor is well over $300/hour, the Redbird
does it far cheaper and we don't have to have flyable weather and the
Redbird is never off line for maintenance. The motion is minimal, but
it's enough to create vertigo and the student learns to trust the
instruments instead of his sense of balance. We also do the first few
hours of ab initio in it, saving the student several hundred bucks on
the Private. Much of the first few hours is just spent learning how to
start, taxi, make radio calls; stuff that happens on the ground but
still costs the full rental rate. Again, Redbird is cheaper and it can
be paused to explain something. Hard to do that with the real
airplane.
Spin training in Canada is done to teach not only recovery but the
various scenarios that lead to it. If one never experiences a spin,
it's all theoretical. Once a student has been into a spin out of a
skidding descending turn, he never skids that base-to-final turn
again. Ever. And he learns that trying to raise the dropping wing with
aileron is stupid. Spins are safe if taught properly. They don't
overstress the airplane at all. And they're not taught at 500 feet.
Spins are like taildraggers: they need to be experienced. There's no
other way to get clear of the fear of such stuff.
Dan