Date & Time: Friday, 18th July, 1997, 16:00 CDT
Where: From T41, local flight
Instruction: 1.5 hrs (air) total 1.5 hrs. Running logbook total: 36.2 hrs, 9.9 hrs solo
Aircraft: Cessna 150-Aerobat, N2721J
Dual instruction with Tom Heidorf.

Unusual attitude!
   I pulled back on the yoke further and further to deliberately stall the airplane. Add a little rudder... a little more... The stall horn started to wail its usual dismal tone. Stall! The wing dropped off sharply, and the aircraft began to rotate. One turn...two turns...this is a SPIN! Below me, the practise area and its familiar pile of sand rotated round and around at ever increasing speed. All that was visible through the windshield was the ground. The stall horn continued its mournful tone! Now fly the airplane...full opposite rudder, yoke smoothly all the way forward and try to force the ailerons to neutral. The airplane first responded by increasing the spin rate, then after a couple of turns, started to slow, then stopped. The stall was broken... recover from the dive to a slight climb as normal...

   If you were observant just then, you'll notice a slight change in the heading. C150 Aerobat? What's happened to the 172? And what's this T41 (La Porte) nonsense... that's normally SPX.
   Our 172 is down for maintenance so an excellent opportunity presented itself for...spin training! It's something that might save me one day, and I had been meaning to do it for some time. I know I have been neglecting practising stalls solo for precisely the reason I'm worried about accidentally spinning the airplane. So I called up Harvey and Rihn Aviation - they are an aerobatic school in addition to doing the regular ratings. I get there and meet the instructor I will be with, Tom Heidorf. We go off to have a look at the Cessna 150 Aerobat to check it out.
   I preflight it (H & R's checklists are a bit different in the order they are done than the ones we have for our 172, but are essentially the same). This time we are going up with half tanks to keep the wing loading down. I had forgotten just how much smaller a 150/152 is compared to the 172. This particular one is slightly wider than the one the Club used to have - there's actually a space between the seats - it's probably nearly as wide as the 172 inside. The airspeed indicator is also in MPH rather than knots. This airplane gets shaken up a lot - and when I hit the masters, nothing happened... the battery connections had worked loose! We fixed that, and I went round with my checklist.
   This done, it was time to get the parachutes, as are now required by the FAA for spins. There's another reason why we only fly with half tanks... the parachutes weigh a few pounds as well. Tom shows me how to put it on, and we go to the airplane where he descibes how the quick-release doors work should we be unfortunate enough to have to get out in a hurry, and what to do with the D-ring on the parachute once you've jumped. But don't worry he tells me - the 150 Aerobat is practically unbreakable, and spins aren't hard on the airframe.
   Another thing I noticed in the instrument panel is a G meter. There's a needle that shows the max number of G's pulled since the reset, another showing the lowest G-number we have got, and a needle that shows what we are currently doing.
   OK, says Tom, the only instrument we need set today is the altimeter! So I set this to 24 feet, and follow the pre-start checklist and crank her up. We get rolling, and head off towards runway 12. The run-up goes fine, so we taxi on, make the radio call, and hit the power.
   We do our ground work (so to speak) as we head off towards the practise area, which is the same one as I use going from SPX (that explains the Citabria I saw the other day). It's a bit further to the practise area - about 10 miles more or so, than going straight from SPX. We talk about the different kinds of spins we will do, as the 100-horsepower Continental pulls us gradually up towards the altitude that we want to be at. First, we'll just do a couple of power on and power off stalls, showing the principles of how to tell which way it's going to start spinning. Then the spins will come themselves!
   The 150-Aerobat is a pretty nice aircraft to fly. It needs only very light control pressures, and feels like a sports car (wheras the 172 has much heavier controls). The controls are even lighter than I remember the 152 in the club having. You also sit pretty low  in the seat - I couldn't see very much ground over the nose when we taxied out, or in level flight.
   Once we were at the practise area, we did a gentle climbing spiral until we were at around 5,000 feet, and did the stalls to introduce some concepts. If you line the airplane up with a cloud as you stall it, you can see which way it's going to go by how you move relative to the cloud. If the nose is moving left relative to the cloud, that's the way you'll spin. Then came the fun part...spins!
   The first one was done by starting with the power on. Tom demonstrated the normal thing a nervous student might do whilst practising these stalls with the power on - putting in too much right rudder to counteract the left turning tendencies. As stall horn started, I could see the nose was starting to move to the right. When the airplane stalled, we were very quickly in a spin! First came the incipient stage, as the airplane beings to spin. We recovered at this point - it's very easy at this stage - just use rudder in the opposite direction to the spin and release the back pressure to break the stall. I must admit my nerves were jangling a little... this is the first time I'd even started rotating like this! However, I now knew how it would all start out. The next one was going to be the fully developed spin.
   Tom demonstrated. He stalled the airplane and put in full right rudder. As the stall happened, the right wing dropped quickly and then we started to rotate. Recovery procedure! Power to idle, full opposite rudder, neutralize ailerons with the yoke and push the yoke full forward. The rotation stopped, the stall ended and we were in a dive. We recovered, pulling 3.5 G's in the process. That was the last time that the attitude indicator (artificial horizon) was actually useful! It had tumbled, and during the rest of the flight showed some pretty unusual attitudes. It felt pretty odd being pressed into the seat at 3.5 times my normal weight! I remarked on this and Tom said "Oh here's a quick weight loss program!" and promptly pushed the yoke forward. I rose out of my seat slightly, restrained by the straps and shoulder harnesses! The G-meter registered just below zero-G on the negative side, and 3.5 on the positive. Tom showed me the effects of adding power during the next spin we did. It made the spin faster, that's for sure! However, the spinning could be stopped quicker with the extra air flowing over the controls. We throttled back to avoid redlining the engine (airspeed builds quickly in the following dive).
   Now it was my turn to do some spins! We climbed back up to 5,000 ft., checked for traffic, then I did a power off spin to the right. I pulled back on the yoke (it's much easier to do than in our 172, or in the 152 we used to have), and as the airplane began to buffet as the stall was approached, I put my foot down hard on the right rudder. The airplane responded by putting us into a spin very quickly. OK - incipient, one turn, two turns - recover - full opposite rudder, and push the yoke forward. The airplane stopped spinning, and I did a normal stall recovery, bringing the airplane into a slight level climb.
   As I spun the next time, Tom demonstrated the effects of aileron during the spin. Turned into the spin, the spin would tighten up. The other way would make for a flatter spin. The important point is that the ailerons will not stop the spin. We were now in a very developed spin (we'd probably gone around at least 6 times by now), and it took a further 2 turns to recover, holding the spin recovery inputs.
   The next spin I did was a bit unusual. During this one, Tom told me to spin it, then just release the controls and watch it recover by itself. I got the spin going, and on about the second turn, let go of the controls and took my feet off the rudder. The airplane wasn't really hurrying up about getting out of the spin itself. Tom said "OK, better put some anti-spin inputs in." I got on the controls to recover, and suddenly the engine quit!
   I was now looking at a very still propellor, with Galveston Bay going round and around beneath me! OK, come on...fly the airplane, forget the engine, I thought. I pushed opposite rudder in and moved the yoke full forward. The spin didn't slow down at all, in fact I think it might have increased a bit. After two more turns, however, the world stopped going around, and the stall was broken. I pulled up smoothly, pulling a few G's in the process. In the meantime, Tom had been checking the engine controls, and once I had returned to straight and level, pulled the starter handle (the 150A has a handle instead of the normal key start). The engine roared into life! Phew! Funnily enough, I had very calmly just thought about good places to land after the spin recovery. I had expected to suddenly break out into a cold sweat any second now, or even worse panic. However, my mind had gone into a rather cool and analytical "this is not a drill, fly the airplane" mode that I didn't even know I had. That makes me feel better, since I know that I can keep the biggest killer - panic - at bay. What had probably happened was this. The fuel is actually drawn from the inboard part of the tanks. As the spin increased in speed, the fuel disappeared over to the far side of the tanks, and no doubt there wasn't much pressure in the lines. Since the engine was at idle, it didn't take much of an interruption to stop it completely. Had the engine not restarted, we already had a good plan of what to do next - the practise area is made up of nice big fields with not much in them, with a couple of surrouding dirt roads. A deadstick landing would have been safe here - the worst thing literally would have been the long walk to the road to flag someone down!
   We did a couple more spins after that - and it certainly demonstrated that the longer you keep the airplane in a spin, the longer it takes to get out of one. After a 4 turn spin, it takes another couple of turns for it to stop, but it will stop.
   Time to head off home... and time to have some fun on the way back, too! I looked at the G-meter and noticed that we had pulled 4 G's on one of my recoveries. That was an interesting experience. Tom then said, 'How about a snap roll'?
   'Okay, I'm game!'
   A snap roll is almost like spinning directly forwards. What you do is this. You check for traffic in the normal way, and make sure you have enough altitude. Then you put the nose down, and gain airspeed being careful not to redline the engine. When the airspeed in our 150A gets to 130 MPH, you sharply pull up and punch in full rudder in the intended direction (left usually works out best). The sharp pull up puts the airplane into an accelerated stall, and the rudder input flips the airplane in a very quick roll. As you're almost done, you put in full opposite rudder to stop the roll, and recover straight and level. Tom demonstrated it to me. That was a blast! You maintain positive G's all the way round, and although the horizon suddenly spins round in front of you, you never really feel it through the seat of your pants. Now my turn. OK, push the nose down...airspeed 125... 3... 2... 1... Pull up! Full rudder! The horizon flipped over... Opposite rudder... bit too quickly! I ended up doing a snap roll and a half, and ended up pointed in the opposite direction! My first aerobatic manoever! That was fun!
   "OK, how about a roll?" asks Tom.
   "Go for it"
The 150A only has 100 horsepower, so again you pitch down to gain airspeed. Tom demonstrated, and when the needle hit 130 m.p.h, he smoothly pulled the yoke back. As we came to the top of the loop, he gradually relieved the back pressure. We held positive G's all the way around, although at the top of the loop there were not many G's at all... Then the horizon appears, with the land at the top (or Galveston Bay, in our case). Smoothly, you keep it coming until you are once again in level flight (we recovered to a slight climb). Now it was my turn!
   I pushed the nose down, and made sure I wasn't going to redline the engine on the tach. The needle came to 130 on the airspeed, and I pulled back quickly but smoothly. The G-forces pushed me into my seat, and we went up! I eased the pressure as we came to the top of the loop, and kept gently pulling as we came through inverted, then facing directly down again, then back to level flight. That worked out really well! I half expected to stall it halfway through, but I managed to be smooth enough with the controls that I did a pretty nice loop! I might just have to sign up for their aerobatic course once I've got my ticket!
   The next thing we tried was a half Cuban-8. A full Cuban-8 is where you pull up to do a loop, and as you come down inverted, instead of continuing to pull, you roll the airplane rightside up, and then repeat the procedure, drawing a large figure 8 in the sky (actually, more like a figure 8 on its side - a huge infinity symbol...). Tom demonstrated this to me, before our final manoever for the day (we were running out of time - we left with 2 hours of fuel, and to keep the legal and safe half-hour reserve, we needed to head home. Too bad!). The cuban 8 feels pretty similar to the loop, and it starts out like one - you do a full loop and as the ground is over your head, you turn back the right way around. The G-forces were light once we had done the initial pull up for the rest of the manoever (and you can feel yourself float a little in the seat!) Tom pulled the airplane into the loop, and as Galveston Bay started to fill the windshield, he rolled the airplane back from inverted. What a rush!
   OK, time for one more, then we'll head on in. "Want to see a hammerhead turn?"
   "Yeah, go on!"
A hammerhead turn (sometimes called a wingover - but a wingover is in fact a much simpler manoever) is where you pull up as for a loop, but hold the airplane going up vertically. As the airplane comes to a stop with the nose pointed up vertically, you use full rudder deflection, and turn literally on your wingtip. You have to do this before the airplane starts sliding backwards and flops down! (You woundn't get good marks in a competition if you let that happen) Tom demonstrated this to me. Up we went, and I could feel the airplane slowing. All I could see out the front was blue sky, and looking to the side showed us going up vertically. As we stopped, practically hanging on the propellor, Tom pressed in full left rudder. The airplane winged over, with the left wingtip being practically a pivot. As you start to go down, you can feel yourself floating in the seat at more or less zero-G's! What a feeling! After going down vertically, we recovered at pretty much the same altitude we had set off at.
   Back to La Porte we went, once I had figured out what direction we were supposed to be flying (all those manoevers had pretty much done in any directional orientation I had!) Soon the crossing runways of La Porte were in full view, and we went down to the 800-ft pattern altitude that La Porte has (which incidentally feels incredibly low when you are used to 1,000 foot patterns), and went for runway 12. The normal checks done, I came to the hardest part...landing an airplane that I'd only flown in once!
   Since I was used to Houston Gulf's skinny runway as well as the picture out of the 172's windshield (as I said, you are perched higher in the 172), I managed to flare a little high... Tom told me just as my peripheral vision noticed that the left edge of the runway was not where I usually like it! No worries - just let it down a bit, and keep it coming. We touched down, and rolled back to the Harvey and Rihn aviation hangar, just off the end off Runway 12. All in all, not a bad landing after all the exitement I'd had!

Conclusion.
   Well, stalls will never be the same again! Hopefully, in my next solo session I won't have sweaty palms and jangling nerves as I practise stalls and recoveries. My biggest fear was accidentally spinning the airplane and not doing the right thing to stop it (reading about it is one thing, but actually doing them is a completely different kettle of fish). I'm very glad I did today's spin session - it's something that could very well save my bacon one day.
   Aerobatics is excellent fun. I got a big buzz from doing those manoevers on the way back to La Porte! They are not violent at all - the key is smoothness. You'll pull a few G's, but not suddenly. If you get the chance, or know an aerobatic school in your area, you will not regret going to do some spin training and aerobatics. It will make you a better pilot and give you a better appreciation of the way the machine handles. (Also it's nice to have some altitude below you in case you foul up... extra space for recovery never hurts!)
   What's really good is that Tom said I did an excellent job! I asked him how he thought I was going for a 30-something hour pilot, and he said that he was very impressed! It's nice to get this sort of good feedback from an independent source!

   Unfortunately, our 172 is out of action for up to another week. They found 2 exhaust valves showing burn, and the camshaft needed an overhaul. The owner is putting in a factory remanufactured engine in, and this takes a little time.

What was learned.
Lots of things!
   - An airplane will get out of a spin much quicker if you catch it in the incipient stage. Just follow the procedure in the airplane's handbook (usually the airplane will have a placard, too).
   - When the spin has got really developed, it may take a couple of turns to recover. Don't panic! Just keep following the spin recovery procedure - in an airplane certified for spins, it will recover using that procedure if you just keep following the spin recovery procedure.
   When the engine quits, don't panic! Fly the airplane! In my case I needed to keep holding anti-spin inputs to recover from the spin before even thinking about mucking around with the engine. Fortunately, I found out that I was up to that job today. It's quite something to have the propellor stilled before your eyes, and nothing but the sound of the wind rushing past...
   All in all, spins are not a violent manoever, and they are actually good fun to practise! If you're learning or have never done a spin before, find your nearest FBO that gives spin training. It's a really good thing to know about.
   Aerobatics are exiting and instructive. The few manoevers showed me that if I'm smooth with the controls, controlling the airplane is not a problem and you can get a suitably equipped (ie one certified for aerobatics) to do some pretty good things! I'd always wondered what it would be like to be in the cockpit in one of the Pitts or Extras you see at airshows, and I got a good taste of that today.