Spin ground lesson

The candidate can teach spin awareness, spin avoidance, and spin recovery to a Student who will never intentionally spin an airplane. At the end they have taught it, not recited it, and they have built a teachable lesson from the accident category that actually kills people in primary training.

This lesson happens before the candidate ever spins an airplane. That ordering is US-6.1 and it is the entire point: the flight confirms an understanding that already exists rather than creating one in an airplane that is rotating.

Per US-6.1 and Decision 7, this lesson's existence does not depend on North Aero acquiring an aircraft approved for intentional spins.

Two reasons, and both are worth saying to the candidate.

1. What they teach is avoidance, not recovery. A private student's spin content is AI.X.I spin awareness. The candidate will spend a career teaching people to not be there, and that teaching is a ground and pattern-work skill, not an aerobatic one.
2. The endorsement is separate from this lesson, and it is the candidate's to obtain. 61.183(i) requires a logbook endorsement from an authorized instructor certifying that the applicant received flight training in stall awareness, spin entry, spins, and spin recovery, and is instructionally proficient. North Aero does not provide that flight training and does not book a provider. The candidate arranges and pays for their own; North Aero assists, checks, and verifies. See policy/EXTERNAL-SPIN-MODULE.md. This lesson is the ground half, it is North Aero's, and it is required regardless of who provides the flight half.

This is a ground lesson and it is not a substitute for the flight. Say that plainly. A candidate who leaves here thinking they have covered spins has misunderstood the lesson.

Element 8 is the lesson. Everything before it is background the candidate mostly already has. The content that is new is how to make a Student who will never intentionally spin nonetheless respect the conditions that produce one, and that is a teaching problem rather than an aerodynamics problem.

Element 5, and this is the one to be careful about. Recovery procedures are aircraft specific. The approved procedure in the flight manual of the airplane being flown is the procedure. The general technique is a framework for understanding and for the case where no procedure is published, not a substitute. Cross-cutting requirement 5 applies: no procedure or number from a flight manual is reproduced in this document. The candidate opens the manual for the airplane they will fly.

This lesson picks up the base-to-final overshoot from lesson 6 rather than introducing a new scenario, and rather than restating that lesson. This is the US-5.6 thread and the second of its three appearances: lesson 6 builds it as a teaching problem, lesson 31 supplies the aerodynamics underneath it, and lesson 33 flies the cross-controlled stall demonstration that is its shape at altitude.

Open the candidate's lesson 6 work and build on it. They wrote a teachable lesson around this scenario in phase 1. Ask what they would now change, having done phase 2 and eleven flights. The answer is usually that they would move the intervention point earlier, and noticing that themselves is worth more than being told.

Open item, carried from lesson 6, and it moved on 2026-08-14. US-6.1 names "the stall and spin material in this folder." That material has been located. It is reviewed and it is not adopted, and this lesson is unchanged: it is built from AC 61-67C, FAA-H-8083-3C, and the ACS, and it says so. Teach it as written.

What was found. North Aero's private pilot aerodynamics and spin awareness lesson plan and its question bank, in materials/reused/. Three layers, from multiple choice through short answer to scenario, with model answers written as marking guidance. It is good material and it is written for a private pilot who will be tested on it, not for a candidate who will teach it.

Three reasons it is not adopted, and the third one is the one to know before you teach this lesson.

1. The lesson plan and its own question bank describe the same accident differently. They disagree on the pilot's experience, on whether weather was a factor at all, on the sequence, and on the probable cause. One says a low pass in good weather. The other says a departure toward a fog bank with an inaudible stall warning horn. They cannot both be right and the accident record has not been read.
2. A load factor answer key in the auto-graded quiz is arithmetically wrong. Load factor in the turn is what lesson 32 requires the candidate to teach.
3. It teaches PARE as the spin recovery procedure with no manufacturer-first qualification, and this lesson teaches the opposite. Element 5 above is "the airplane's own approved procedure first, the general technique as the framework", which is what AC 61-67C with Changes 1 and 2 directs. If a candidate reads that material alongside this lesson, they meet two North Aero documents that disagree about how to recover from a spin. Until the material is corrected, this lesson governs, and it is worth saying so out loud if a candidate arrives having read it, because several will have taught from it as private pilot ground school.

Owner: Erick. Full working in materials/MATERIALS-REVIEW.md, findings 1, 2 and 4.

Ground only, 90 minutes. Reconciles with the declared 1.5 ground and 0 dual.

Instructor: AC 61-67C. FAA-H-8083-3C. FAA-S-ACS-25 at AI.X.I. The flight manual of the airplane the candidate normally flies, for element 5 and element 10. A model airplane or anything that can be held in two hands and yawed. The candidate's lesson 6 written work.

Candidate: their lesson 6 scenario work, the flight manual of the airplane they normally fly, their written lesson plan on spin awareness.

No airplane. This lesson is ground only and is not conducted in a cockpit.

Taught Ground Lesson: yes Meeting title convention: CFI Ground Lesson - L31 Spin Awareness - <YYYY-MM-DD> Participants: each on their own device, headset, Workspace account Candidate reads their own Session Transcript before the instructor's review Coverage maps to: AI.X.I Fallback if capture fails: instructor attests from contemporaneous notes; the lesson is not lost and is not re-taught for the sake of a recording

1. Establish the ordering out loud at the start. Ground first, flight second, and the flight is the candidate's own to arrange. This is the lesson 31 checkpoint: confirm whether a booking exists and on what date, and if none exists, raise it that day rather than at the end of the phase. Give them the verification checklist from policy/EXTERNAL-SPIN-MODULE.md before they fly, not after, and remind them that a course completion certificate is not an endorsement.
2. Teach the aerodynamics with something in your hands. A spin is the one topic where the model in two hands beats the diagram, because yaw at the stall is a thing to be seen rather than read.
3. Make the candidate open the flight manual for element 5. Not recite a memorized technique. The procedure belongs to the airplane.
4. Do not let the developed spin dominate. It is the interesting part and it is the least useful part for a candidate who will teach primary students. Budget the fifteen minutes and hold to it.
5. Play the Student for the taught presentation. See the script.
6. Ask the lesson 6 question: what would you change about the lesson you wrote in phase 1? Let them answer before you offer anything.
7. Critique using standards/CRITIQUE-STANDARD.md. Self-critique first.

Simulated Student script notes

Not in the study guide. The Simulated Student here is a private student in the pattern phase, not a commercial pilot.

1. Arrive having read AC 61-67C in full and with a written lesson plan on spin awareness.
2. Work through the aerodynamics with the instructor, including autorotation with a model in hand.
3. Find and read the spin recovery procedure and the spin approval status in the flight manual of the airplane they fly.
4. Revisit their lesson 6 base-to-final scenario and say what they would now change.
5. Teach spin awareness to the Simulated Student, who is a private student in the pattern phase.
6. Self-critique before hearing the instructor's critique.

Identical wording in the study guide.

1. The candidate teaches spin awareness to the Simulated Student for at least ten minutes, pitched at a private student in the pattern phase, and answers at least four Student questions without reading from notes. A recited answer does not meet this standard. A delivered lesson does.
2. The candidate distinguishes a stall from a spin in the taught presentation, naming yaw as the second ingredient, in terms a private student can use in the pattern.
3. The candidate names the entry conditions that produce a spin and connects at least two of them to a specific phase of flight a private student will actually be in.
4. The candidate describes the four phases of a spin and states why an incipient spin and a developed spin are different problems for a Student at pattern altitude.
5. The candidate locates the spin recovery procedure and the spin approval status for the airplane they fly, in that airplane's own approved material, and states both out loud.
6. The candidate teaches spin avoidance as the primary content, and can say in one sentence why avoidance rather than recovery is what a private student needs.
7. The candidate revises their lesson 6 base-to-final scenario, naming at least one specific change and the reason for it.
8. The candidate delivers a self-critique before hearing the instructor's.

Standard 1 is the shape requirement, per US-4.1: the completion standard is a taught presentation, never a recited answer.

Falling short does not block lesson 32. No proficiency gate (Decision 9). It triggers policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md. It does not block the external spin flight either, but a candidate who has not met standards 2 through 4 should not be sent to it yet, because the flight is supposed to confirm an understanding rather than build one. That is a scheduling judgment, recorded and named, not a gate.

These are candidate errors, per ticket 37, distinct from the Student errors a maneuver lesson lists.

Not applicable. This is a ground lesson and no airplane is flown.

The field is retained rather than deleted, per the template. The intervention threshold that matters for spin content appears in lesson 33, where the cross-controlled and elevator trim stall demonstrations are flown, and in the external provider's own briefing for the spin flight itself.

Verbatim in the study guide.

Read:

• AC 61-67C with Changes 1 and 2, Stall and Spin Awareness Training, in full. You skimmed it before lesson 6. Read it properly now.
• FAA-H-8083-3C, the chapter covering stalls and spins.
• FAA-S-ACS-25, task AI.X.I, in full.
• The flight manual of the airplane you fly: find the spin recovery procedure, and find whether the airplane is approved for intentional spins and in what category and loading. Both facts, from that document, not from anywhere else.
• Your own lesson 6 base-to-final scenario work.

Deliverable: Write the ground lesson you will teach on spin awareness, to the template in standards/LESSON-PLAN-TEMPLATE.md, pitched at a private student in the pattern phase. This is one of your seventeen P3 plans, and it is the one the parameter names specifically. Bring it on paper.

Also bring one sentence: what you would change about the base-to-final lesson you wrote in phase 1, and why.

VS-31-1

Type: Exemplar | ACS task: AI.X.I | Status: empty What it should show: an incipient spin entry recognized at the yaw and recovered before rotation develops, from a cockpit view where the yaw is visible Reference Critique: not applicable for an Exemplar

VS-31-2

Type: Error | ACS task: AI.X.I | Status: empty What it should show: an uncoordinated stall entry from a base-to-final overshoot geometry, flown at altitude, showing the roll toward the inside of the turn Reference Critique: to be written from the Instructor Debrief of the flight the Clip is taken from

Both slots are hard to fill and that is expected. They require footage from an airplane approved for the maneuver, which North Aero may not own. Per Decision 33 and cross-cutting requirement 10, that does not hold up the lesson and never will.

This lesson is complete and deliverable whether or not its Video Slots are filled.

Listen for the pitch, not just the content. The most common way this lesson fails is a candidate delivering an accurate commercial-level aerodynamics lecture to a Simulated Student who is a private student in the pattern. That is a US-4.1 failure and it is worth naming as one, because the candidate will experience it as having known the material well.

The "can we go try one?" question is the most diagnostic sixty seconds in the lesson. A candidate who answers with enthusiasm and no mention of the airplane's approval status has told you what they would do with a Student who asked. Grade it, say so, and it will not happen twice.

Record whether the candidate's spin training is booked, on this day, and on what date. This is one of the four checkpoints in policy/EXTERNAL-SPIN-MODULE.md and it is the last natural one before the flight has to happen.

The gating item is the completed 61.183(i) endorsement, and obtaining it is the candidate's responsibility, not North Aero's. North Aero does not provide spin flight training or book a provider. What is being checked here is whether the candidate has acted on what they were told at enrollment and again at lesson 7. A candidate who reaches lesson 38 without an endorsement or a firm date has a checkride-gating problem, and it is theirs, which is precisely why it is worth raising now while there is still time to fix it. Risk R7.

Tracker Status set by the instructor, named, dated. Coverage for AI.X.I proposed from the Session Transcript, confirmed by the instructor under US-12.5. Coverage credits only the candidate's speech: a topic the Simulated Student had to raise is a prompted gap, not Coverage.

• ✓Traces to a story. US-6.1, US-5.6, US-3.5
• ✓Carries ACS tasks and Part 61 references
• ✓Completion standards are observable behavior, and the standard is a taught presentation
• ✓Common candidate errors listed, each with the instructor's response
• ✓Intervention threshold marked not applicable, with the reason, rather than deleted
• ✓Student preparation named, in the student half
• ✓FAA references verified current, 2026-08-13
• ✓Passes the design system check
• ✓Appears in the program structure and coverage matrix, hours reconciling
• ✓Both halves exist
• ✓Video Slots named, and the lesson states it is deliverable with them empty
• ✓Vocabulary matches CONTEXT.md
• ✓No em dashes, no reproduced flight manual procedures or numbers, no pricing
• ✓Falling short does not block progression (Decision 9)
• ✓A dedicated ground lesson, not a sub-topic of a stalls lesson (US-6.1)
• ✓Stands whether or not North Aero owns an approved aircraft (Decision 7)
• ✓Connects to the lesson 6 scenario rather than restating it
• ✓The stall and spin material US-6.1 names is raised, not silently worked around. Located 2026-08-14, reviewed, not adopted, and the disagreement it has with this lesson about spin recovery is stated on the lesson's face rather than left for a candidate to discover