I had a flying buddy do something similar last fall in a Velocity.
Sort of a falling leaf maneuver that he inadvertently entered and
could not escape from. He went all the way to planet earth. He
walked away alright, but never would have left the field alive if not
for a farmer who saw him go down. He now sees the world with one eye,
and just returned to work last week after a 4 month recovery from
broken ribs and other very serious injuries. Don't try it! Also,
there have been many people suffer broken backs in Piper Cherokees
from hitting the ground flat with little forward speed. Or, so I've
been told. Don't ask me for proof as I have none. More than one
flying instructor has relayed the story to me, though. Something to
do with sorry seats and the way they stall I suppose.

Joe Schneider
CHEROKEE 8437R

"Roger Long" om
wrote in message ...
I prefer doing long controlled mush descents instead of classic
stalls
because it provides more of the really valuable part of the stall
practice,
experience with the aircraft at absolute minimum airspeed. Today I
rode our
172 N down about 2000 feet with the yoke full back and the airspeed
on the
bottom peg. I was able to make gradual heading changes and rock the
wings up
and down with the rudder pedals. This is super practice compared to
the
fleeting moments of wallow you get in the textbook stall.

I looked at the VSI and realized that my descent rate was within the
range
of a Cirrus with the BRS deployed. Of course, the Cirrus under its
parachute
wouldn't have had my 40 knots or so of forward speed to be absorbed
by
seatbelts and my face against the glare shield. The real value of
the Cirrus
system is the elimination of that forward motion and the rugged
seats and
airframe. However, deploying it in a 40 knot wind could change the
horizontal motion part of that.

Still, it demonstrates that flying a conventional plane in distress
all the
way to the ground provides lots of options for impact reduction. If
I'd gone
into treetops in the dark like that, I think I would have had a good
chance
of walking home.

--
Roger Long