Around the Pattern

In part one of this two-part series on spin training in the Cessna T-37 I covered some of the spin characteristics of the T-37 and the six-step procedure that we used to recover from an established spin. I didn’t address the aerodynamics of spins, since there are several other sites which cover that subject in detail as well as entire flight courses dedicated to spins. Wikipedia covers spins here , and Rich Stowell’s Stall/Spin Awareness Training is described here. My Google search also found an online aviation book by John Decker that has a very good description of stalls and spins.

I left off Part I with a comment about an ‘unusual attitude’ I experienced during one of my spin training sessions.

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A recent AOPA ePilot newsletter included a segment about an incident where a female flight instructor and her student were killed accomplishing spin training. Preliminary indications are that the larger male student may have frozen at the controls during a spin recovery. Additionally,  the August 2009 Instructor Report (AOPA member sign-in required) from Flight Training Magazine discusses the psychology of spin training. Both of these articles took me back to my T-37 instructor days and our spin training sessions.

My second assignment as a USAF pilot (back in the mid 1970s) was as a T-37 instructor at Webb AFB, TX.  At that time all students attending USAF  Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) started with an orientation in the Cessna T-41 (Cessna 172 variant), then progressed to the T-37, side-by-side jet trainer and finished up with the tandem-seat, supersonic Northrop T-38. The T-37 was a fun plane to fly. It wasn’t a super-fast airplane, but in my opinion that made it much more fun to fly. Aerobatics took fewer g’s and less altitude to complete than the T-38. Then there were the spins. The training syllabus in the T-37 included spin entry and recovery while the T-38 training only included various types of stalls.

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