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"Hmmm... Tom, what airplanes
are we talking about? C152s? If it had two needle-ball isntruments, one on
the left and one of the rightpanel, would they show the plane was yawing both
ways at once?. This is strange."
The article which discussed the ball behavior
was written after the author went through spin training in C152 Aerobat.
In fact, according to the article, this aircraft had two turn coordinators
installed; one on the left side of the panel and one on the right. The
author stated that during a spin, regardless of direction, the ball on the left
side of the panel would deflect to the left while the ball on the right side of
the panel would deflect to the right. While this may not be intuitive (it
was not to me) if you think about it for a bit it gives some interesting insight
into what the plane is doing while in a spin. Something else to remember
is that fuel in the wing tanks reacts the same way as the ball; i.e.
it will slosh to the outside of both tanks. The author said
that somewhere between 8 and 13 turns the engine would quit so they
always did their spins within gliding distance of an airport, even though
they were always able to get the engine restarted.
Tom Gourley
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