At 04:15 06 March 2014, Bill D wrote:
On Wednesday, March 5, 2014 8:01:30 PM UTC-7, BobW wrote:
On 3/5/2014 2:53 PM, John Carlyle wrote:
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Agree with your three points of how pilots get into trouble. I also
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ee
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that training is important, and that it's never a bad idea to take a
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de
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with an instructor.
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I'm not sure I buy your theory of an optical illusion in your
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l
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vision causing your central vision and inner ear to start giving you
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d
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data, though. It takes time (probably a minute) without good visual
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s
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for your inner ear to start disconnecting from reality.
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Apologies for the thread drift, but my experience strongly suggests
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"probably a minute" for inner ear to disconnect from reality is
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(way?) too long."
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I once inadvertently entered an utterly benign (no overdevelopment
anywhe=
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that day) thermal cloud by horribly misjudging the base in conjunction
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th a=20
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honking climb rate. In the dry intermountain west, racing another guy
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f a=20
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mile away over the plains of eastern Colorado, it went from CAVU VFR
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solidly-opaque IFR more or less instantly. Flying in a=20
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large-deflection-landing-flap-equipped sailplane (no spoilers)
thousands
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of=20
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feet agl in the middle of nowhere, I wasn't worried about pulling my
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off, but I *was* distinctly irked at my poor judgment, mostly because
if
=
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didn't fly out the side of the cloud quickly, my buddy would gain
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rably=20
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on me. (Standard glider pilot priorities!)
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I'd at least had the sense to establish my climb near the far edge of
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miles-long cloud, had a long-established bank angle/turn-rate, and
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d I'd=20
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a good chance of rolling out on a heading to have me clear of the cloud
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ithin=20
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no more than 5-10 seconds at the most. Without moving my head, once
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e the=20
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solidly opaque cloud, and not touching the controls until estimating it
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time to roll out, I did so, timing/estimating wings level, and waited.
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only thing that happened "instantly" was violent vertigo, and within
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seconds several things were clear: 1) I wasn't going to exit the side
of
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cloud; 2) I'd stalled at least once (at which point I pulled on full
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s);=20
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and 3) it was anyone's guess how long I'd be in the cloud and what my
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ght=20
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path might be while there. Ultimately, I lost 700 feet from my max
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before exiting the thing, out the bottom, steeply banked the
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direction from that entered, and never knowingly having commanded bank
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ter=20
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the attempt to unbank to level. My buddy was nowhere in sight, of
course.
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Point being, don't bet your life on having much time IFR before
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complete control of your glider. Secondary point being (of course!)
don't=
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IFR at all, but if you DO go IFR be prepared to lose your wings and
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life unless your glider has gobs of disposable drag...as has had
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landing-flap-equipped sailplane I've flown. Wonderful things, large
defle=
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flaps!
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Bob - occasionally bozo - W.

The best data says a pilot will lose control of the aircraft in mere
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s in a cloud if not trained and equipped for instrument flight.

The inner ear serves no useful purpose in aviators. It only serves to
indu=
ce one of the many aviation specific illusions and/or vertigo. We didn't
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volve to fly so we must learn to deal with our limitations. The best
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s learn to ignore vestibular sensations and rely on sight - viewing
instrum=
ents or outside cues. This lesson is best learned under a hood with a
CFII=
in the right seat.


One small piece of advice on this, keep your head still, turning it to look
left and right and upwards greatly increases the disorientatation as you
move semi-circular canals in and out of the plane of rotation.

Getting people to do that whilst in cloud has always been part of my cloud
flying training routine, though it normally comes after a few cloud flying
trips to build up experience.