He spinning the knobs  (sic)

     Grammarly speaking it would likely be "He is spinning the knobs" or other sentence, who knows?

     Spinning the knobs, like Dale said, seems like having to do tuning a radio, switching to an station, broadcasting something, playing music, etc.  At least for radio (slangy) people it seems like that, as in:

      Several weeks ago, WSSR (95.7 FM, "Star") switched to urban-formatted (hip-hop, R&B) "The Beat," spinning 10,000 songs in a row before it will introduce new DJs. 
     

       Even the DJs who mainly spin CDs frequently bash liberals between tunes.

      Spinning the radio knobs you quickly dial in ATIS to get an update on the airport surface conditions, but the transmission is broken and cutting out. You can’t make out the wind direction and runway in use but you did hear that they are experiencing peak gusts of 25 knots!  Switching to the tower frequency, the broken transmissions sound as if the entire east coast fleet of general aviation aircraft is trying to land at your airport of departure. What should you do?
Let’s discontinue the practical example at this point, go back to the beginning and analyze what a pilot practicing good aeronautical decision making, or judgment would have done.