Tail wheel endorsement today

[E_Dawg]

Well here's the FAA's opinion... I did them as a student without 'chutes and I'd like to think it was legal

:

[ QUOTE ]
QUESTION: Situation is, I am a flight instructor and I have a student who is a Private Pilot and is rated in a single-engine land airplane. This pilot is not seeking any further rating, but wants me to give him flight training on "stall awareness, spin entry, spins, and spin recovery techniques" just like it reads in § 61.105. The question is, under §91.307(c) are parachutes required for this kind of training?
.
ANSWER: Ref. § 61.105; No parachute is required. Historically the FAA's position on this issue, we have determined since this training is a private pilot requirement that is addressed in § 61.105 as an aeronautical knowledge training area and the person is merely receiving training on a piloting skill that is a pilot certification requirement for receiving, and for maintaining, that private pilot certificate, parachutes are not required. The rationale of this determination, also covers student pilots, commercial pilots, airline transport pilots, and flight instructors. But as always, the FAA would never discourage the use of parachutes.
{Q&A-136}

[/ QUOTE ]

 

[Josh]

The training side of it is pretty well spelled out. Spin awareness is in there for all ratings I believe, so no problemo there, as Ed has shown from that quote. CFI is not the only rating to require spin awareness.

Taking it one step further then, on the crewmember thing.

The acting and flying PIC can come into this thing here too.

Two private pilots. One has tailwheel endorsement, one does not. One whom does not wants to do spins in said tailwheel plane. Can't act as PIC, so someone who can must be brought along (crewmember, in this case, even a required one, though logging for this endorsed person and non-endorsed person is another question all together; anyhow). Non-tailwheel-endorsed private goes and does spins, and neither of them would have to wear chutes since they are both crewmembers.

 

[Alchemy]

The whole spins w/o chutes argument is just one more thing Ed had to enlighten me about a few months ago....

I'm pretty sure every CFI at my flight school if not the whole airport was (and probably still is) postive that you cannot do spins w/o chutes unless you're teaching an initial CFI candidate. One of our CFI's even got asked about this by the FSDO inspector on her initial CFI practical. Her inspector told her that the only time it was legal to do spins w/o chutes was if she was teaching an initial cfi candidate....

Now, going by the regs, I tend to agree with Ed in saying that you can execute a spin in a spin approved aircraft w/o wearing parachutes if only the req. crew is on board. Now, what is the definition of required crew? Good question....technically, a cessna only requires one pilot, so there is one "acting PIC", and that is the only required crewmember. However the argument could be made that the person "logging PIC" by acting as "sole manipulator" (ie the student) is also required, in which case spins would also be okay. But what about a student pilot who is not rated for the aircraft being flown? In what way are they a required crewmember? Spin awareness is required for the certificate being sought, but spins themselves are not.

For me doing spins w/o chutes with students other than initial CFI candidates is one of those things that's legal, but I probably wouldn't do it for liability reasons....plus it's a whole production to get a 172 into utility category.