Flat Spin?

[shotgunneeley]

I love flying the Ta-152 at high altitudes for intercepting bombers, but if you ever have to do any hard maneuvering in that dude then it can get very touchy. Just this night I upped a 152 after a con deep in our airspace. After finally gaining a visual of the con at 40k I realized it was an AFK fighter. I figured, 'oh well, I'm up here so I'll just keep plugging until I catch it'. Right when I got within icon distance of it, the pilot came back and looped back around and over the top of me in an F4U-1a! I had leveled out to gain some speed when he dropped down on my 6 and got within D600. I tried to roll over and dive away, but sometimes my controls get very sluggish and I couldn't even perform a split-S. He pinged me while I was fighting with the controls and I pulled up to get him to overshoot. As he flew past, my plane started buffeting and flipped end over end in a tail-first spiral towards the ground. I would wrestle the controls, trying to get the plane pointed downwards to gain speed but I just kept seesawing between my nose and tail. It was a long ride from 40k all the way to the ground, my question his how does this happen, how do I avoid it and what do I do if this situation occurs again? I tried holding down the elevator trim keys but that didn't work. Its very frustrating when I spend the time to get to altitude to have this happen.
 

[moot]

First, film these sorties.
Next, rule of thumb is to keep the tail in check at all times.  The plane yaws to the right when rolling left and pulling up, and yaws left when rolling right and nosing down.  There's a respectably-big area of the envelope where the tail will completely derail, and you can prevent this pretty much 100% of the time by keeping the plane in line with your rudder.

Getting out of the spin is pretty hard and I don't remember the few formal methods to break out of it.  Having the gears out helps speed up the actual recovery, but putting the gears and flaps out isn't enough to get to that recovery.

[shotgunneeley]

Edit: oookay lets try that again

http://www.mediafire.com/?zwasiiaguax658l

[moot]

Looks like the wrong film - that's a 25H versus warpy C205

[mausil]

 

[kilo2]

Edit: oookay lets try that again

http://www.mediafire.com/?zwasiiaguax658l

Heavy handed on the rudder. And it looks to me like you start to roll over one way and then try to change directions too quickly that will cause the tail to slid out like that.


The method that is the easiest to get out of it is to chop throttle pop full flaps while applying opposite rudder. The plane will the start to flatten out and be horizontal the nose will start to drop a bit throw full throttle and push down on the stick at that point. There is other ways to get out of it but that is the first method I used and it is very easy. There really is no need to throw the gears out but to each their own.

[AAJagerX]

I got into this situation at about 10k just this last week.  After fighting it for a couple of seconds, I shut off the engine and the nose came back down.  I don't fly the 152 all that often, so the tail down spin caused a "WTF" moment.

[Traveler]

Looked like you induced it with a cross controled stall.  Then you either held right rudder or needed to apply left rudder, step on ball.  As a real life CFI  with a couple thousand hours primary instruction given.   I tell primary students, to relax all control pressure.  reduce power to idle, even let go of the controls and wait. 

All General Aviation aircraft are dynamically stable and will stabilize in flight from a stalled condition when in proper trim.  That’s not true for Aerobatic aircraft or military aircraft, or so they say,  however, I’ve found from real life experience that it may take a few more oscillation but they too seem to recover on there own from most of the common stalls. 

I’ve done Power OFF and Power ON Stalls, in the P40, F4U and B25.  I’ve done full blown spins, in  the P40, 10 full turns, 5 to the left and 5 to the right, starting at 15K. 

Because the 152 you were flying has such a long wing, you can get a cross controlled stall situation because of what is known as an over banking tendency.   When you roll left you move the stick left and apply enough left rudder to keep the ball centered.  The 152 rolls left, because of the long wing the upper right wing is actually moving faster through the air then the lower left wing,  Generating more lift,  this causes what is known as an over banking tendency, the aircraft wants to keep rolling left,  the pilot corrects by moving the stick to the right to stop the roll to the left,  but is still holding left rudder because he is in a left bank. The aircraft is now cross controlled.  The upper wing, will stall.  The aircraft generally rolls inverted.

Cross controlled flight and inverted spins are very common for glider pilots.  Because they spend most of there time in a cross controlled situation and on the ragged edge of a stall.   I started flying gliders when I was 16.   

[kilo2]

Looked like you induced it with a cross controled stall.  Then you either held right rudder or needed to apply left rudder, step on ball.  As a real life CFI  with a couple thousand hours primary instruction given.   I tell primary students, to relax all control pressure.  reduce power to idle, even let go of the controls and wait.  

All General Aviation aircraft are dynamically stable and will stabilize in flight from a stalled condition when in proper trim.  That’s not true for Aerobatic aircraft or military aircraft, or so they say,  however, I’ve found from real life experience that it may take a few more oscillation but they too seem to recover on there own from most of the common stalls.  

I’ve done Power OFF and Power ON Stalls, in the P40, F4U and B25.  I’ve done full blown spins, in  the P40, 10 full turns, 5 to the left and 5 to the right, starting at 15K.  

Because the 152 you were flying has such a long wing, you can get a cross controlled stall situation because of what is known as an over banking tendency.   When you roll left you move the stick left and apply enough left rudder to keep the ball centered.  The 152 rolls left, because of the long wing the upper right wing is actually moving faster through the air then the lower left wing,  Generating more lift,  this causes what is known as an over banking tendency, the aircraft wants to keep rolling left,  the pilot corrects by moving the stick to the right to stop the roll to the left,  but is still holding left rudder because he is in a left bank. The aircraft is now cross controlled.  The upper wing, will stall.  The aircraft generally rolls inverted.

Cross controlled flight and inverted spins are very common for glider pilots.  Because they spend most of there time in a cross controlled situation and on the ragged edge of a stall.   I started flying gliders when I was 16.  

152 will keep falling all the way to the ground if you take no action. In game that is.

[Traveler]

152 will keep falling all the way to the ground if you take no action. In game that is.

Understood, I have never flown a 152 in game so I did it off line and while it did recover from power off stalls, and fly it's self away.  It failed to recover hands off from both Power on and Accelerated stalls.    Not a lot of material online about the 152 as far accelerated stalls.  very strange, if it recovers from a power off stall hands off, meaning the nose drops below the horizon and the aircraft builds flying speed.  Once power is removed after the stall in an accelerated stall, you pretty much have the same event taking place.  Yet the nose hung there sky high.  Center of gravity didn't exists for the accelerated stall as it did for the power off stall.   

[moot]

What's the formal meaning of "power off stall"?  Because I'm pretty sure you can power-off the 152 into that stall that's unrecoverable hands-off.  Meaning get into that stall by flying with the power off.

[shotgunneeley]

Yeah I had it full throttle plus WEP and as you can see my airspeed went from 400 to 100 in about 2 seconds. I only encounter this kind of stall in the 152, where you're almost like a leaf rocking back and forth. When it happens, the Ive never been able to recover because I can never get it to nose down without flipping back over on itself

Edit: I have a st-290 pro twisty stick, so rudder inputs are pretty easy to make unintentionally make.

[moot]

Are you sure you weren't ruddering when it departed?  You were doing about 275 IAS or a little more when it went out of control.  There should still be plenty of authority to keep it under control, even at 27k.  You just need to get a better feel for the 152's envelope.  It doesn't take much practice for these things not to take you by surprise anymore.
Fishtail example 1 Fishtail example 2

[Traveler]

What's the formal meaning of "power off stall"?  Because I'm pretty sure you can power-off the 152 into that stall that's unrecoverable hands-off.  Meaning get into that stall by flying with the power off.

Power off means No engine power applied,  Zero thrust or very close to it.   In flight training Students are trained in recovery from different type of stalls,  Power off and Power on.
Power on mean a take off power setting.
Stalls performed wings level, and turning left and right and climbing and descending and the combinations with power on and power off as well as accelerated stalls both left and right, day and night and if the pilot is instrument rated,  at night under the hood.

[Traveler]

Yeah I had it full throttle plus WEP and as you can see my airspeed went from 400 to 100 in about 2 seconds. I only encounter this kind of stall in the 152, where you're almost like a leaf rocking back and forth. When it happens, the Ive never been able to recover because I can never get it to nose down without flipping back over on itself

Edit: I have a st-290 pro twisty stick, so rudder inputs are pretty easy to make unintentionally make.

Stall training:

Once the stall is recognized:

1.   Release control pressure to neutral
2.   Reduce Power to idle
3.   Lower the nose allow airspeed to build for controlled flight
4.   level wings using coordinated flight controls elevator, ailerons and rudder.
5.   Apply power take off power setting  and climb to safe altitude