How do you make a plane spin? I've seen articles on spins, both power on and power off.

Technically a spin is a complete stall. Spins are entered with a high angle of attack at stall speed. When stall speed is reached full rudder is kicked in and the airplane begins to spin. At this point both wings are stalled and the airplane spins slowly, almost flat with a nose low attitude. if it is more vertical it is known as a spiral. To exit a spin you will need to neutral the stick and feed in opposite rudder. Now that s a spin in a full size aircraft, A model will do it like that but most of the time unless you have a ton of rudder you need to feed in aileron the same direction. Recovery is basically the same. When you get really brave you can cross control and watch each spin gain RPM. before you know it youll be doing 20 turn spins (spirals) and recovering on heading. With power on it will tend to flatten out the spin, if it will spin w/ power. A power on spin should be entered with power off and at stall full power applied during rudder deflection. other wise you are probably just snap rolling the aircraft, or rudder rolling it.

Hope it helps.

JB

NO SINK [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

Some aircraft have strange spin characteriestics...
The Fokker Dr1 tends to just spiral if power is off (engine idle... NEVER stall a Dr1 dead-stick.), but with power, it spins like crazy.
The average trainer has to be forced to spin at all... and they don't continue spinning after you neutralize controls.
Fun-fly type models, after entering the spin, slowly reverse the ailerons, (as you get the feel for the technique, you can apply the reverse aileron faster) and the spin will flatten. If the CG is at the aft limit, some will climb while dong the flat spin at full power.

You should know the tall/spin characteristics of your aircraft. Practice with PLENTY of altitude, especially with flat spins. Remember that some panes can not recover from a spin if the engine dies...