In rec.aviation.student Gezellig wrote:
Michael Ash was thinking very hard :
In rec.aviation.student gatt wrote:
A question the examiner asked him: "You're flying cross-country and
trimmed at 110 knots. You die, and the engine quits. At what airspeed
will the aircraft strike the ground?"

In addition to all the other factors discussed, your airspeed will be
slightly lower than what you had trimmed due to the weight of your soul
departing the aircraft.

Damn, I didn't take that in the weight balance shift forward and all
that...

OK, so I don't really believe that, but I'd love to see what the guy would
say if you told him that answer!

Stop that. Student pilots need no more confusion than I already have.

Joking aside, if your straps were loose enough that you could slump
forward, that *would* affect your CG which would in turn affect your
trimmed airspeed.

There's another issue that I just thought of that I don't think anyone has
mentioned yet, though. Won't you get into a graveyard (bad terminology for
this scenario, as you're already dead) spiral? After all, if you could
stay straight and level just by taking your hands off the controls you
wouldn't need to fear IMC with no gyroscopic instruments. So it seems that
if you start high enough, the correct answer to this question would be
whatever the terminal velocity of your fuselage is without its wings. Am I
off base here?

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon