Unusual attitudes

Apparently this doesn’t mean what I think it does! What I do know is that this not something you should ever attempt on someone like me. You simply can’t take someone with a type A personality like mine and say to them “Right I need you to close your eyes while I do something completely messed up with your plane.” Because we find it almost impossible to relinquish that kind of control, really.

It is seriously stressful, not the recovering from an unusual attitude but the anticipation leading up to it. I’m sitting there, foggles on. Hands up on the dashboard, head bent down; desperately trying to gauge what Bob is doing to the plane, despite knowing that the whole point of the exercise is that you can’t sense what is going on. I'm on tenterhooks for every small change in engine sound. Second guessing what is going on.

Bob calls “recover” and adrenaline shoots through me. Momentarily confused, I feel like we are nose up but the ASI is creeping upwards towards the red. Despite what my inner ear tells me, I decide to pull back on the throttle. Next I sort out the wings; high airspeed means we were never close to stalling, despite my brain telling me that we were nose high. A touch of aileron input will sort that bank angle out.

I wait for Bob to tell me that I messed up, that I mistook a stall for a spiral or vice versa. Nothing. So let’s get us flying again. Cruise attitude, a touch of power and we are flying again.  Needles back to where I’d expect them

Recovery good, a little slow in getting us flying again. Not too shabby after all. It’s still a crappy thing to do to a control freak though!