Here is a picture of the Super Decathlon.
After an extensive briefing on stalls and spins, and a lengthy suit up process with the chute, the flight began with some stalls and dutch rolls. This was great since it really brings home the experience of adverse yaw.
Climbing up to 3500' on the fringe of the DCA class bravo, we then performed some falling leaf stalls. In this maneuver, the goal is to understand the power of rudder authority. With the airplane set up in a stall, opposite rudder is applied to 'catch" the falling wing. As such, the airplane wallows in a nose up descent as the wings slowly oscillate back and forth from high to low, just as a leaf does. Of course, with good feet skills, this can be minimized a great deal.
Then it was time for incipient spins and fully developed spins. With the airplane stalled, kick the rudder and over we went. Two turns and then it was release the stall and pull out from the dive. Simple.
After a couple of those to the left and right, we did two fully developed spins with 5 rotations from 4500'. After two rotations the spin was fully developed and releasing the back pressure had NO EFFECT! The spin tightened and the rotation increased - a stabilized spin. Now, full opposite rudder to stop the rotation, and pull out of the dive. The first one came out at 2500' and 4.4 G's! 2000' of altitude loss in about 15 seconds (if that). The others also were good for 2000'...exactly. Weird, but most things in flying are mathematical, so not too surprising.
After another one of those, we were basically done. My stomach (more literally my brain) had had enough spinning. A simple three point landing (my first ever in a taildragger), and it was
a day. 1.0 on the hobbes meter. Will have to go do it again some time (on purpose) - it was a lot of fun!
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