On Sunday, July 5, 2015 at 10:50:39 PM UTC-7, wrote:
You've blundered into the white room. You have primitive gyro guidance in the form of a turn rate indicator and so you are keeping the wings level, sort of. You are trimmed for 55 and the airspeed has just risen (alarmingly rapidly) to 85 and then temporaily plateaued there, staying constant for a couple of seconds. Answer quick: what do you do with the stick?

Wait, WTF are you trying to ask?

If you are planning to "blunder" into a cloud, you better know how to maintain attitude and airspeed via needle-ball and airspeed, if that is all you have in the cockpit.

Oh, and unless you are on an instrument flight plan (and trained and equipped) you are busting the FARs big time, so might as well declare an emergency and get ATC to give you a lot of room to screw up.

Then, fly the damn glider! Nothing primitive about needle & ball & airspeed, gliders do it all the time in other countries. If you can't control the airspeed, you should never have put yourself in the situation of being in a cloud!

It sounds like you are really worried about getting stuck IMC during a wave flight. If so, get a good T&B or even an attitude indicator, and some instruction under the hood in a power plane until you can safely fly on instruments.

Remember, the guy who lost it over Reno had tons of time IMC in fighter jets - and trust me they are not forgiving on the gauges - and he lost it when he went IMC....

Then you suggest to "push aggresively and hold the airspeed"! Really? That is a recipe for a quick trip past VNE! No **** "the airspeed will soon decrease rapidly" - when you impact the ground!

All this talk about benign spirals and phugoids are really BS - you HAVE TO FLY THE EFFING GLIDER, UNLESS YOU HAVE TERMINAL VELOCITY LIMITING DIVE BRAKES. PERIOD, DOT.

Arrrgggghh!!!

Kirk