Unusual Attitudes

ahsmatt7

ahsmatt7

Well-Known Member
Really screw me up! They get me really queasy and very uncomfortable. What can I do to help. I use to feel like this when I first started out but haven't since I did these this morning. Should I take ginger again or just suck it up. I'm just worried when I do my check ride, the DPE will yank and bank the hell out of the plane and I may loose my cookies. Did any of you feel like this in any part of your training?:(
 
For me, it's all about tolerance building. I went out with my instructor every day for ~4 days and we did airwork including unusual attitudes and by the end, I could do it all day... then I didn't fly for almost a month and I tried to do 1 steep turn and started to feel sick again. I would bet everyone is different, but for me, building up my tolerance slowly is what has allowed me to not get airsick.
 
ColoradoPilot said:
I got incredibly sick the first 4-6 flight, haven't gotten sick since. Is it slowly improving?
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Well the first few flights of my training i felt the same way and it stopped. I have not had a problem with it since which equates to 31 fun filled non ill feeling hours. However, today I went under the hood for the second time. (no problems there because I felt fine) Then we went and did for gos of unusual attitudes and that's when I started feeling sick. This is the first time since the very beginning of my training.
 
Occasionally my students have discomfort with this. Make sure you get the cockpit nice and cool with fresh air blowing on you. Limit your head movement. Some instructors tell students too look down at the floor or a map while they put you into an unusual attitude. You may just want to ask if you can close your eyes and keep your head upright. Probably a little bit more practice will work out any remaining sickness. If you're still having trouble, give you examiner a heads up about it. He'll probably be more than willing to not go crazy yanking and banking into an unusual attitude. Trust me, he doesn't want you getting sick, just as much as you do!
 
Thinking back to past lessons where you felt queasy leads to the next lesson being worse because you're thinking about it for a while beforehand and by the time you're in the plane you're expecting to get motion sickness!

You can't exactly not think about it either.

What you can do is not ever have it on the agenda.

Tell your CFI that you don't want to put them in as part of a lesson but what you will do is tell them when you feel like practicing it. If you've been up for an hour working on stuff and feel alright and it's a nice smooth day, just mention that you want to work on unusual attitude recovery for a couple minutes. If a little bit is all you can take, good enough. Move on to something else and continue again next time.

It will help not having it on your mind, I assure you.
 
TXTBOOK said:
For me, it's all about tolerance building. I went out with my instructor every day for ~4 days and we did airwork including unusual attitudes and by the end, I could do it all day... then I didn't fly for almost a month and I tried to do 1 steep turn and started to feel sick again. I would bet everyone is different, but for me, building up my tolerance slowly is what has allowed me to not get airsick.
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That does make a lot of sense. What happens if one looses it on a check ride? Do you instantly fail and have a talk with the FAA about being medically fit to fly lol.
 
Just keep practicing and building your tolerance. There are some unusual attitude demonstrations in which the student puts the airplane into the unusual attitude and not the CFI. Maybe your CFI could try this.
 
Thanks for the advice guys. Its nice to hear that i'm not the only one. It is ironic how I love doing stalls and steep turns and being aggressive with the controls. However, once my instructor starts doing different things all at once my body slaps right back.
 
ahsmatt7 said:
Thanks for the advice guys. Its nice to hear that i'm not the only one. It is ironic how I love doing stalls and steep turns and being aggressive with the controls. However, once my instructor starts doing different things all at once my body slaps right back.
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I've definitely noticed that too. I really think it's because when you're the one doing it your mind is so preoccupied with flying that you just don't have the time to get queasy. When I'm riding along and somebody else is doing it though I sometimes get a little queasy as well.

Make sure you're hydrated before you go up too. A couple times early on in my PPL training when I got queasy I hadn't had enough fluids that day so it probably didn't help.
 
ahsmatt7 said:
Really screw me up! They get me really queasy and very uncomfortable. What can I do to help. I use to feel like this when I first started out but haven't since I did these this morning. Should I take ginger again or just suck it up. I'm just worried when I do my check ride, the DPE will yank and bank the hell out of the plane and I may loose my cookies. Did any of you feel like this in any part of your training?:(
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I am with you 100%. I HATED unusual attitudes, but then again, power on stalls and steep turns get to me as well. When I went for my checkride, I straight up asked the DPE if he would mind not jerking the unusual attitude around too much. He was cool with it and told me that he didn't like it any more than I did. It was really slow and smooth, and wasn't uncomfortable at all.
 
JordanD said:
I've definitely noticed that too. I really think it's because when you're the one doing it your mind is so preoccupied with flying that you just don't have the time to get queasy. When I'm riding along and somebody else is doing it though I sometimes get a little queasy as well.

Make sure you're hydrated before you go up too. A couple times early on in my PPL training when I got queasy I hadn't had enough fluids that day so it probably didn't help.
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That might be part of it, but I think it has more to do with the fact that you know exactly what the airplane is going to do when you're at the controls. When he is, all movements are new to you, rather than pre-mediated by you having to think about moving the yoke, etc. In short, I think it has more to do with the fact that you're not expecting the movements and so your head is getting disoriented.
 
I've never understood the hard yank, uncoordinated turn stuff to present the unusual attitude. The times I have wound up in a different flt state than desired, it occurred very slowly and undetected. Often it was due to me holding onto the yoke/stick while doing something else or not properly trimming or not paying attention to the airplane as it ventured off. But the transition for desired state to unusual attitude was NOT some E-ticket at Disney. It occurred very quietly and undetected OR it was due to something stupid I did such as seeing how many rolls I could do and after being bored slamming the stick to neutral. NOT good. VERTIGO big time.
 
I can imagine. I remember a couple unusual attitudes with my instructor. On one, I had my eyes closed, and he said "tell me what the plane is doing". I told him confidently we were in a bank to the right and increasing speed. Then, he told me to open my eyes and recover. Turns out, we were in a left turn, nose high, and messed up trim.

Instead of yanking, he was able to put it in that position smoothly and it totally messed up my senses.
 
I used to like to roll the plane into a level, climbing or descending, coordinated turn, maybe varying the bank a bit. Let the ears get stabilized, roll straight and level and let them go at it. Oh, adjusting the throttle to keep a constant RPM the whole time.

And the old "Hey can you look down? I dropped my pencil." added to the realism.
 
Here is a different way to look at it....

Its a valuable experience.

Consider it as an attribute towards helping you should you ever become seriously disoriented in the soup at night, partial panel--i.e. its a real-life emergency , you are suppressing panic, you are dizzy, you are tired and you are puking on the controls and if you don't get the a.c. under control, you will die.


Its tough stuff now, but , God forbid, you are ever in a real bad situation , in the back of your mind, you will be able to "self talk" and say, "I was felt this bad before and handled it, I can do it now."

Training in bad situations is a valuable experience; bad situations without "bad situation training" is a very bad thing--a place nobody wants to be.

All the best,


b
 
beasly said:
Here is a different way to look at it....

Its a valuable experience.

Consider it as an attribute towards helping you should you ever become seriously disoriented in the soup at night, partial panel--i.e. its a real-life emergency , you are suppressing panic, you are dizzy, you are tired and you are puking on the controls and if you don't get the a.c. under control, you will die.


Its tough stuff now, but , God forbid, you are ever in a real bad situation , in the back of your mind, you will be able to "self talk" and say, "I was felt this bad before and handled it, I can do it now."

Training in bad situations is a valuable experience; bad situations without "bad situation training" is a very bad thing--a place nobody wants to be.

All the best,


b
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That's an insane way of looking at it. However I can agree with you 100%. Thanks for that insight.

P.S. I noticed that tower in the background of your picture. That's a very nice structure hahaha:rotfl:
 
My advice, keep doing them until you are incredibly comfortable and confident. It will help with any motion sickness, trust me. Other tips: cool air in the plane, eat (but not too much before a flight), be hydrated, and tumble (like on a mat at the gym when you were a kid, tumble and cartwheel, trust me, it helps). Greatest advice I got when I got queasy once, instructor said, "when your head doesn't know which way is up, tell it. Just do it. Find the horizon, fly the plane, and tell your brain what is going on." (also tell your brain to tell your stomach that cookie tossing is unacceptable...mind over matter man, it can be done.)
 
One of the best ways to put the plane into an unusual attitude smoothly is to do it yourself. With your head down and eyes closed, have your instructor tell you to enter into various turns, climbs, and descents. Bonus points if he/she can sneakily change the trim without you noticing. The result will be that you only move at a speed you're comfortable with and you will definitely wind up in an unusual attitude.
 
Tld said:
tumble (like on a mat at the gym when you were a kid, tumble and cartwheel, trust me, it helps)
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Thanks for the lightbulb. :)

OP: I have never had an issue with being sick, but I did all kinds of tumbling with 5 years of karate and just being an active kid. That said, when I was doing UA work I would always try to think about what the aircraft was doing and where it was going.

I'd try to mentally picture both what I should out the window when I open my eyes and what I think the aircraft would look like from a ground observers perspective (flying RC's for 10 years helped with this a lot). Anyways, maybe I don't get sick because I don't let my brain stop thinking? I don't know, but from other posters on here it wouldn't seem like a bad thing to try.

Good luck.
 
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