Folks,

Rich Stowell, who is the 2006 CFI of the year has just come out with a new book on the subject of Stall/Spin awareness.

If you don't know of Rich, he created the Emergency Maneuver Training program concept and has instructed in that program for many years out of Santa Paula Airport in southern California. If you have the chance, I'd strongly advise you to visit Santa Paula airport and fly with Rich. I've been through his program a couple of times, and will go back. He's a great instructor, and has a really good program.

Rich's web site is at http://www.richstowell.com/ and the web site contains a lot of good information on stalls and spins.

The new book, "The Light Airplane Pilots Guide to Stall/Spin Awareness" can be ordered from Rich's web site.

I've read the first three quarters of the book now, and it is a keeper.

We continue to lose a lot of folks flying the backcountry to stall/spin accidents. Many of those folks are pretty experienced pilots.

Rich has dedicated his career to trying to improve those accident statistics and prevent some of those losses.

Get the book. It will improve your understanding of stalls and spins and high AOA flight.

MTV

I think Stowell is advertised as being one of the speakers at the NW Aviation Show at Puyallup next month.

I heard Rich promoting his book on one of the aviation podcasts I subscribe to and he is very imformative in the very short time he had.

What I got out of the podcast is that a lot of the stall/spin accidents is pilots using the rudder for steering correction while at slow speed and in a bank.

Moral of the story always use the rudder to keep coordinated and always use bank for steering corrections. Well other then when slipping in a crosswind landing.

That got me to thinking...

How do people fly without flaps when they need to do a descending turn on to final? I think this is a technique that Champs etc. use but at the same time the slipping turn would be also very cross controlled and asking for a stall/spin.

So what do you flapless people do?

-Todd Giencke

Todd,

Get a copy of the book. He will explain this in detail.

The short version:

A slip consists of yaw in one direction with roll in the opposite direction. That is uncoordinated, indeed. But not necessarily dangerous.

A skid, on the other hand, is a yaw in one direction, and a roll in the same direction. By definition, a spin is a yaw-roll couple. Uncoordinated AND set up for disaster. Carry the skid just a bit too far, and over you go.

Get the book--it is really worth the price, and then some.

MTV

Fly a J-3 for awhile and you'll soon learn about slips or you'll get good at go-arounds. The slip is a perfectly acceptable and safe means of losing altitude without increasing airspeed.

A skid on the hand, as MTV explained, has no place low and slow. Unless your trying to set up a spectacular, crowd pleasing, snap roll on short final.

Mark

I listened to Rich speak at an evening deal a few years back, it was part of the WINGS program. At the time I was taking aerobatic dual from a guy who trained with Rich in Santa Paula, so we immediately went out and tried the stuff we talked about in a 8KCAB the next morning.

Too much spinning definitely can make you queasy(I felt like barfing for a few hours afterward), but it was a great experience to enter spins. Sure, the spin recovery is important, but not nearly as important as studying the spin entry, in my opinion.

I'll have to pick this one up. Thanks Mike.

I haven't done a slip in years. When I'm too high I find that it actually works better to just get the airpseed down good and slow (stall plus 5-ish)which really (really!) increases the sink rate. Hard to get used to doing, it's seems counterintuitive to pull back on the stick when you're already too high. But it works real well. You just have to remember to either push the nose down to regain airspeed when you get close to the ground so you have enough energy to flare with, or else use power to arrest the sink. Otherwise the nose comes up but sink rate stays the same, resulting in a real slam-bang carrier landing.

Eric