----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2006 12:49
AM
Subject: [LML] Re: Down anywhere !!
spinning
"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