denverpilot
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Another Saturday time killer for ya.
Inverted spins (Stearman)
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hindsight2020
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hindsight2020
heck those control snapshots looks like my students on a normal touch n go 
Fun, but easier to watch than do I'd wager. Taking some glider aerobatic lessons many years ago I inadvertently stalled at the top of an attempted loop and got into an inverted spin. I had NO idea what was going on. I said to the instructor in back, "you've got it." But I think he knew that. He just laughed and recovered. It was very disorienting,
manac
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Manac
I was spinning my Cessna one day. I messed up an ended up in an inverted spin. Had done a lot of jumps so the whole sky, earth thing was pretty clear. Saw earth when I was expecting sky and immediately thought “do not want” recovered really quickly, same recovery as normal. 120 is as honest plane as ever was made.
denverpilot
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jimhorner
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At least for me, easier to watch than do, and I don’t know if fun comes into it. Before I could get checked off for solo acro in the club’s Decathlon, I had to demonstrate an inverted spin to my instructor. Yeesh, it never did seem to develop into anything that wasn’t just a tumbling type fall as far as I could see. We did several, and the hanging from the straps while flip flopping all over the place just wasn’t much fun. The recovery technique of opposite rudder and stick back worked, but, yowza, it was messy.
Upright spins are fun. Inverted, not so much.
You got that right!
kyleb
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Drake the Outlaw
Never snapped inverted, but scared myself looping the RV-6 one day when I went flying at lunch on a workday. I was out over NW Georgia just messing around and looked over and someone was stunting a Stearman at my altitude a couple of miles away. His loops were probably 400' in diameter and I was doing 800' diameter loops. I wondered to myself, hmm, I wonder how big of a loop I can do? I soon found out that a thousand foot loop is right at the limits of my capabilities. I was reeeaaal slow going over the top, and as the nose fell through, I was very motivated to keep the ball centered...
Nah, ya didn't. If you stalled on top of a loop, you stalled with the glider under positive G, since you're pulling over the top....unless you were doing an outside loop, which you weren't. I've yet to see a newbie acro pilot/student push the stick so far forward on top of a loop that they transition from positive G to so much negative G that they produce a negative G stall and enter an incipient or actual inverted spin. If you spun out of a loop it was a normal upright spin. That fact that you were inverted when you stalled doesn't mean it was an inverted spin. I see folks misunderstand this a lot. So now ya know!
Unless you were hanging from your lap belt, all the dirt on the floor made a cloud as it fell to the ceiling, AND your engine quit due to negative G, you were not in an inverted spin. Inverted spins require you to hold the yoke fully forward. Were you doing this?
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That was fun.
Reminds me of a story I read some years ago. There was a rash of instructors accidentally departing the aircraft. Seems instructors likee to do inverted spins to scare their students. In certain conditions during an inverted spin, the wind through the cockpit caused a harness strap to bang against the buckle, causing it to release. In negative G the instructor would then shoot right out of the cockpit, leaving the green student to figure things out. Sometimes the student would bail out too, sometimes they'd try to land it, with better or worse results depending on their experience level. Took them awhile to figure out what was happening and redesign the harness to prevent it.
Reminds me of a story I read some years ago. There was a rash of instructors accidentally departing the aircraft. Seems instructors likee to do inverted spins to scare their students. In certain conditions during an inverted spin, the wind through the cockpit caused a harness strap to bang against the buckle, causing it to release. In negative G the instructor would then shoot right out of the cockpit, leaving the green student to figure things out. Sometimes the student would bail out too, sometimes they'd try to land it, with better or worse results depending on their experience level. Took them awhile to figure out what was happening and redesign the harness to prevent it.
manac
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Manac
Fixed it for you.
I messed up and ended up inverted. As soon as I was inverted I neutralized controls and applied opposite rudder. Less than half a rotation.
Hope your happy.
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‘Inverted spin’ means a specific thing. It was worth pointing out.
You may be right, I don't know. But the film the OP posted says at the beginning "the best method for entering the inverted spin is from the half loop position," and it is very difficult, almost impossible, to get a Grob 102 glider to enter a normal spin, and the instructor said we'd entered an inverted spin. I am certain my spatial awareness had left the building.Nah, ya didn't. If you stalled on top of a loop, you stalled with the glider under positive G, since you're pulling over the top....unless you were doing an outside loop, which you weren't. I've yet to see a newbie acro pilot/student push the stick so far forward on top of a loop that they transition from positive G to so much negative G that they produce a negative G stall and enter an incipient or actual inverted spin. If you spun out of a loop it was a normal upright spin. That fact that you were inverted when you stalled doesn't mean it was an inverted spin. I see folks misunderstand this a lot. So now ya know!
The only reason to enter it from a half loop is because it's an easy way to quickly set yourself up for both an inverted attitude and low airspeed. You still must then push the stick fully forward on top to get an actual inverted (negative G) spin. Again, this is just not something newbies and students accidentally do on top of a loop attempt.
Your instructor was also mis-using the term "inverted spin". Most airplanes that are difficult to spin upright are even more difficult to spin inverted. Again, inverted spins require you to hold the elevator fully forward with full rudder, and will see you hanging from the belts under negative G. Does this sound like what happened? I'd be shocked if it was...not that inverted spins are any big deal. They are symmetrical to upright spins - the airplane doesn't care about the difference, only pilots do. Again, most folks who accidentally spin from an inverted attitude are pulling the stick back and stalling under positive G, which causes the airplane to do a normal upright (positive G spin). Just like you can stall an airplane in any attitude, you can also enter a spin in any attitude. And regardless of the attitude, stalling with aft stick is an upright spin, and stalling with forward stick is an inverted spin.
denverpilot
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Note it says “easiest” but not “only”. Later in the vid, they simply roll the airplane inverted, remove power, and push the stick forward to the stop. It starts with an inverted stall. Add rudder and around they go...