You are in IMC, when *everything* fails! Now what?

"Julian Scarfe" wrote:
"As for rudders - I teach - rudder to STOP yaw. Not to pick the wing up...."

We're starting to diverge a bit here in what we're talking about. The
original thread had to do with what you do in IMC with no gyros. The
ONLY information you have is what you can get from thw wet compass and
(as the argument evolved) a moving map GPS giving you a course line.

All you can deduce from a GPS moving map is heading, and even that, only
if you assume that heading more or less equals course (certainly
d(heading)/dt is very close to d(course)/dt for small values of heading
change. So, as I said, you use the rudders to correct deviations off
the GPS course line. This corresponds exactly to stopping yaw. In IMC
with no direct roll or bank information, picking a wing up isn't even
possible, except as a by-product of holding heading.

Perhaps we're just arguing different arguments. I'm assuming that you
just lost your entire panel in IMC, in which case it's not unlikely that
you've entered an unusual attitude by the time you figured out you had a
problem. Maybe you're in a steep spiral. Maybe you're close to stall,
or have stalled already. Maybe you're in a spin. Using rudder to
counter course change indicated on the GPS is the only thing I can think
of which will work in all those cases.

As for "I resign myself to the fact that at best we will make constant
small s-turns all the way", If I've lost all my instrumnts in IMC, I'll
be very happy if the worst I do is make small s-turns until I get into
visual conditions.

I certainly agree that once the plane is on an even keel and stable,
using coordinated aileron and rudder is superior to just using rudder.
It would be foolish to argue otherwise. But if you're not sure if
you're upside down or not, I'd stay away from the ailerons.