On May 17, 9:43*pm, "Jay Honeck" wrote:

Your point that seat of the pants pressure sensations are used during
instrument flight does not disprove MX's point about the necessity of
relying primarily on your instruments for accurate information in IMC.

Actually my point does!

The fly by the seat of my pants did not feel like I had a 20 to 30
degree pitch up which my horizon indicator showed (which was
waaaaaaaaay more then Vx pitch).

Had I followed the horizon indicator and leveled the plane soley by
the HI, I would have been in a 20 degee pitch down and augured it in.
There was nothing accurate about my HI and it was my seat of the pants
feeling that set all sorts of alarms and bells out in my head..

It was the seat of my pants that said no, don't trust the instrument,
something just doesn't feel right and start looking at my secondary
instruments for assistance. I saw my VSI at a 700 foot climb rate and
90 knot airspeed. In my Sundowner, that is my normal climb for 2000
feet MSL for a normal climb pitch.

My DG regressed on the climb, so I had no true knowledge that I was
even off the heading until I check the GPS ground track, and was only
10 degrees off my assigned heading. So, for bank information, I now
had to switch from my DG to my GPS track as the HI was useless and my
turn coordinator is out of my scan area.

It was at this point I notified ATC that I had no vacuum system so if
I had deviations, they would know something was not up to snuff on my
end.

Again, by flying by the seat of my pants and knowing how my plane
feels at given stages of flight, that really saved my skin especially
in the identify the problem stage!

Had I taken Mx's advice and your implied advice, it wouldn't be a
pretty picture if I "solely trusted my instruments" Had I trusted the
instruments, I would have lowered the nose, airspeed builds and the
rest is history.

Allen