Roy Smith wrote in message ...
A friend of mine and me tried an experiement once. I put our Archer
into some unusual attitudes, and he recovered using just the synthetic
instruments on his handheld GPS (Garmin something-or-other, might have
been the 295 but I'm not sure). Conditions were night VFR, no
turbulence.

I haven't tried this yet, and I really should.

What I can say is that IME it's significantly easier to fly
a full approach partial panel at night with either my panel
moving map, or my handheld moving map, than it is with both
failed, and that this is not because it's easier to navigate
per se, but because it's easier to *keep the wings perfectly
level* in TB or chop by using the track info on either GPS
to hold a steady track. (Basically, I would hold that navigation
at its most fundamental is simply the ability to hold heading,
and that the ability to hold heading at its most fundamental
is simply the ability to keep the wings level).

Our CFI has absolutely no regard for the FAA's views on
which instruments to fail or how many *g* and we did this
very deliberatly as an emergency exercise, in order to learn
exactly how much info we extract from the moving maps and
the best setup to extract it from our particular equipment.

If he ignored pitch (let the trim take care of it)
and just used rudder to zero out rate of turn on the synthetic TC, he
did pretty well.

I don't have a "synthetic TC", but it sounds analogous to what
I learned to do in the way of zeroing the change on the track.

I'll have to see about trying it with unusual attitudes.

Best,
Sydney