Spinning the Spit (and other warbirds)

[Holbeach]

Auto rotating with controls centred.

 

 

 

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[escaner]

I have been trying spins in the Spit and sometimes it auto-recovers, sometimes it does not. The longer you force it into the spin, the harder seems to auto-recover, which looks fair to me.

 

The manual says that you can easily recover the spin using the proper method, which is true in DCS. It does not say that it cannot recover by itself. The problem here is that this depends on other factors. E.g. if your trim is full back and full into the spin, it most probably will never recover. If you keep power, it may help keep the plane spinning, etc. This is why there is a procedure that will let you out of the spin in the shortest time (hopefully before getting to the ground).

[philstyle]

nice to see quite a few bits of good video evidence coming forward now.

Thanks all.

[DD_Fenrir]

I don't know if Phil means incipient spin, which I suspect, in which case there are two different stages to the spin.

 

The first is incipient; this is the point at which during the onset of the stall that one wing stalls before the other and as such you have unbalanced lift forces across the wings and an uncontrolled rolling moment occurs; it is an inherently unstable state as the aircraft is accelerating or diverging.

 

The developed spin differs crucially as it is a stable state, all the forces are balanced and generally there are no accelerative aerodynamic forces acting upon the aircraft.

 

Generally the incipient spin can be arrested by prompt control actions to unstall the stalled wing, centralised aileron, pitch down and maybe corrective rudder if necessary to prevent the uncontrolled roll. It is generally recognised that recovery at this stage is preferred over attempting recovery of a fully developed spin, for obvious reasons.

 

Most aircraft will incipient spin. No two wings are ever identical so one will generally stop flying first.

 

However an incipient does not necessarily result in a developed spin; the stability of the airframe can mean that the wing drop and nose down tendency can self correct at this stage and many aircraft will require active control input to push them into the fully developed spin.

 

The nature of the Spitfire's wing - being able to develop good amounts of lift at low airspeeds - could be a factor here as to why she seems resistant to spinning without aggressive control inputs since it does not take much to unstall the stalled wing.

[philstyle]

I don't know if Phil means incipient spin, which I suspect, .

 

 

 

Hi mate,

 

 

No, I've been talking about the "fully developed" spin. This has been clarified three or four times in the thread, and the OP was updated to stress this.

[Holbeach]

This is loosely related to this thread and completely opposite, (not spinning the Spit), but might be of interest.

 

This is a no power, no stall, no spin, no rudder or stick use, descent, to a wheels up landing in a field. This method was taught to me many years ago by my instructor and works well with the Spit. Set the controls up correctly and it won't stall or spin and will settle at a speed of 72 kts.. A very small amount of rudder trim can be used to line up for the landing, which you will walk away from.

 

 

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[OnlyforDCS]

Nice video. Falling leaf technique? Just a quick correction, thats a wheels down landing. Not wheels up. :) (At least that's what it looks like from the external view)

Edited May 26, 2017 by OnlyforDCS

[Holbeach]

Nice video. Falling leaf technique? Just a quick correction, thats a wheels down landing. Not wheels up. :) (At least that's what it looks like from the external view)

 

Thanks.

 

 

I put the wheels up just before touch down. This also helps with bringing the nose up.

 

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