I'd suggest this definition of a spin which I'm paraphrasing from Stick and Rudder:
When there is an asymmetric stall of the wings, resulting in autorotation around the more stalled wing, the aircraft is in a spin. ------------ The Coupe gets stalled air beginning at the wing root with full up elevator travel. This happens at higher power, especially on the C & D models that do not have the slipstream cutout in the elevator. Yet, enough of the wing is still flying that, in all conditions, control can be maintained or recovered. Sure you could enter a spin by getting a deep stall such as in a hammer-head stall. Yet, if the plane is within specs & CG, there should be no way the plane can continue to autorotate out of control. Even full back elevator, full right aileron and left rudder (on a 3-control) and high power setting should not be able to keep the wings (asymmetrically) stalled enough to keep autorotating. With linked controls you can't make the conditions anyway near that bad. I tested this on my 415-D. (Caveat: I chickened out on _fully_ _cross_ _control_ testing at 1400 lb. gross weight at about two hundred rpm below max power on my straight elevator 415-D with 9 degree of up-travel.) I think, IMHO, that if you are unhappy with the 9 degrees of up travel on a 415-D, don't use 13 degrees. Instead, buy or have modified your elevator to have the cutout. Then the slipstream goes mostly through the cutout removing that high power condition as a problem. With that elevator, you can have 20 degrees of up travel allowing the slightly slower landing speed you would have gotten with 13 degrees. -- Ed Burkhead Peoria, Ill. N3802H
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