On Wednesday, July 8, 2015 at 3:42:46 PM UTC-4, kirk.stant wrote:
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

Ummmm...... chill a bit. Quite a few, "What if I went IFR in a sailplane" questions being bandied about recently.
1-A good pilot attempts to AVOID the "what if".
2-It won't be the first, or last, "issue" that "happens".
3-If it happens and the pilot is not equipped and trained, it's likely yet another front page issue.

I will admit "scud running" in a SEL many years ago. I knew the terrain and good landmarks so the issue of hitting a "granite cloud" were limited, still didn't mean I wasn't worried (got stuck between cloud layers over northern NJ coming from the south heading to my home airport in lower NYS).
Just because I did it does NOT mean I want to repeat it or condone it.

While I hate to see stupidity, nature has a way of dealing with it.......
Some say "Darwin", others say "God"..... either way, the end result is the same..... someone is DEAD....... "There is no such thing as gravity, the Earth sucks!".

I can understand the VERY LIMITED discussion for the, "Major WTF, it just happened" conversation, I feel for the most part it's someone trying to justify a "stupid frame of mind", nature/God will deal with it down the road.

BTW, when my step father had access to a, "pilot assessment questionnaire", he gave it to me. The results were, "You would make a GREAT fighter pilot, if I didn't know you better, I would NOT let you fly my planes......!".

I still fly his stuff, no, I have yet to break anything..... hope to continue the trend......