Flight Experience 5 – Diamond DA20
I first flew the Austrian designed, Canadian built, two-seat Diamond DA20 aircraft in Florida back in 2001. The DA20-A1 models back then were also called Diamond “Katana’s”. That time I used it for teaching private pilot students and I flew the plane for about 100 hours. Next time I had an opportunity fly the aircraft was ten years later in 2011. At the time I was living in Chaoyang, Liaoning Province, China. The DA20’s we had in China where slightly improved DA20-C1 models that had dropped the Katana designation. For now on I will just refer the aircraft as Diamond DA20’s.
Chaoyang, Liaoning Province. About 500 km northeast of Beijing, and about the same distance to North Korea.
Working as a CFI
I was working as the Chief Flight Instructor in a Chinese government owned flight school called Chaoyang Flight College of CAUC. The school was part of the Civil Aviation University of China located in the Tianjin metropolis. As the chief pilot of the school I was reporting directly to the CAAC (civil aviation authority of China) about the activities of the flight school. Not many foreigners have held such a position in a Chinese flight school so the job was certainly interesting.
Photo of me and our first class of new flight instructors. It was good to be the Boss! 🙂
Chaoyang Flight College
The school had a fleet of aircraft manufactured by Austrian company Diamond Aircraft. We had several Diamond Star DA40’s, Twin Star DA42’s, and couple of Diamond DA20’s. In this post I focus on the DA20’s.
In Chaoyang we trained pilots from zero flight ours all the way until they received their commercial pilot licenses or in some cases instructor licenses. Some of the basic training requirements include the knowledge how to recover from stalls and spins. The Diamond DA20’s were solely used for spin training.
Diamond Aircraft DA20.
What is a Stall?
When pilots talk about stalls we don’t mean the engine has stalled and stopped working. In aviation we refer to wing stalls which is a situation when the wings are not generating enough lift to maintain level flight. A stall can happen at any airspeed, attitude, or power setting, when certain conditions are met, but are most likely to happen at slow airspeed situations.
What is a Spin?
During training pilots learn to recognize hazardous situations in order to avoid them. They also need to learn how to recover in case the aircraft enters a stall or a spin. Without stalling the aircraft first there can’t be a spin. In a stall one of the wings usually drops down first and the aircraft yaws towards the lower wing; this is how spinning starts. If the aircraft remains in a stalled condition it will keep spinning around until it reaches the ground. That is why an unintentional spin can be very dangerous, and that’s why it is important to teach pilots how to recover from them.
Cockpit of Diamond Aircraft DA20
Getting ready for the first DA20 flight in Chaoyang.
Aircraft for Spin Training
Not all aircraft are approved for spin training. Out of our fleet only the DA20’s were approved for the maneuver. I started working in Chaoyang flight college in 2009 but we received the spin training aircraft only two years later.
Although Diamond Aircraft is an Austrian company many of the aircraft are built in Canada. The two DA20’s were shipped from Canada. With the airplanes the manufacturer sent two Canadian instructors to train our instructors to fly the plane. They just trained me and one of our Chinese instructor to fly the plane. Then the two us would train other instructors and students in them.
It was great being the first one who got to fly the plane in Chaoyang.
The smallest aircraft type in our fleet was still the most fun to fly 🙂
How to do Spin Training
I flew with the Canadian instructors for five times total. First we did some basic flight maneuvers such as stalls, steep turns, chandelles, and lazy eights to get used to the aircraft. After that we spent most of the time spinning the aircraft around.
Slow the Aircraft Down
As I mentioned before, the aircraft needs to be stalled first in order to enter a spin. To spin the aircraft we brought the power idle, slowly increased the back pressure on the control stick, and let the aircraft slow down. Every aircraft has a certain stall speed at which the aircraft normally stalls. For the DA20 the stall speed is 44 knots which is very slow.
Wait for a Stall
When the airspeed was slowing down towards the stall speed there was a loud noise; a stall warning, almost sounds like a mechanical scream. That is when the pilot normally should know a stall is approaching and should recover. But since we wanted to stall the aircraft we just kept increasing the back pressure until an actual stall happened.
Hit the Rudder and Spin
Once the airspeed slowed below 44 knots the aircraft started shaking and felt like it wanted to fall from the sky. At this point we applied full rudder pressure to one direction to start a spin.
The nose of the aircraft would suddenly drop towards the lower wing and start rapidly turning around. To keep the aircraft in stalled condition we would maintain full back pressure with the control stick. This way the aircraft kept spinning and the airspeed would stay below the stall speed. What a Rush!
After the initial rush when the nose drops and the aircraft enters a spin it is actually quite peaceful feeling inside the aircraft; the engine is quiet and you can just enjoy the views!
Recover
To recover from a spin we would apply full rudder pressure to the opposite direction, push to nose down to break the stall, and increase power to the engine. It may feel counterproductive to push the nose down while we are already falling but it is necessary to get airflow under the wings in order for them to produce lift.
Nice day for a flight!
View from a Spin over Chaoyang Airport. You can see this video in another post here!
The DA20 is actually very easy aircraft to recover from a spin. Basically all we had to do is release the control pressures and the aircraft would roll out from the spin by itself. After the initial rollout the airspeed would increase rapidly and we would have to bring the nose up again in order to avoid over speeding the aircraft.
Great Way to Clear Your Head!
Overall I had lot of fun flying the DA20. Since I was the chief flight instructor I had lot of office work to do and taking a plane for spin training was a great way to clear my head! Of course I had other flights to do also, but mostly just stage checks with students before they would move on to a different stage of training. Spin training was more like having fun instead of working. 🙂
Thanks for reading!
∼FunkyPilot Vesa
Next take a look at my Spinning a Diamond DA20 Video!
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