<<I'm willing to contribute to a fund for Legacy spin testing.  I think
there are already
over 100 Legacy builders -- if everyone pitched in $500 that's over
$50K...>>

Okay, how about the ES?  $500 would be cheap to obtain the knowledge about
spin recovery capability and techniques.  I would think that the factory
would know about this one, as I have heard that the potential expense of
being able to certify recovery prompted the change in airfoil - after the
spin chute had to be deployed once.  Just a story, or is there real data on
the behavior?

Gary Casey
ES project

ps:  I have no direct experience, but in the past I have talked separately
to A-7 and T-38 instructors.  They both said that the standard turn rate in
the pattern was 60 degrees and 2 G's.  The problem they had with students
was that it was hard to convince them of the huge increase in drag during
these low speed, "high" turns that required almost full power to maintain
altitude.  Here is a mach-1 aircraft that almost can't maintain altitude at
full power...  I wonder if the same thing is true of some of the accident
scenarios of our high-performance planes.  During a dirty, low speed high
bank-angle turn it would seem you have 3 options - increase the power a lot,
lose altitude fast, or lose airspeed really fast.  Most of us are probably
running quite low power in the pattern as we are slowing down and losing
altitude at the same time.  Throw in an unexpected high bank-angle turn and
things change fast for the worse.  Just a thought.