Ever watch Bob Hoover video of him pouring a glass of ice tea.. or was it
lemonade.. with one hand while rolling his AeroCommander with his other
hand. He had a ball on a string below the board that held his glass. The
board was mounted to his glare shield. He kept the ball centered below the
glass through the entire roll 1G roll. You can see the real horizon through
the front windshield as he rolled.

Strings in cockpits are only slip skid indicators, as someone else also
posted.

BT

"bildan" wrote in message
...
On Dec 29, 10:37 am, mattm wrote:
On Dec 29, 11:45 am, T8 wrote:

On Dec 29, 11:25 am, GARY BOGGS wrote:

I am amazed that anyone with a pilots certificate would actually think
anything hanging in the cockpit would tell you anything about the
horizon!!!! Please tell me these aren't certified pilots!

Gary

I'm with you there, Gary.

The spit bit, I may need to clarify, was intended as wry humor.

-T8

A number of years ago an article in The Atlantic magazine by William
Langewieche (son of
S&R author and current Vanity Fair chief editor) described an old
story that an airline pilot
had used a pocket watch as a turn indicator when his gyros failed. WL
tried it by flying out
over the open ocean, where the horizon disappears. He hung a pocket
watch from the ceiling
of the cockpit and used it as a pendulum. The pendulum DID work as a
crude turn indicator
but it tended to dampen out after a few swings. Nonetheless, if/when
ever stuck in the soup the
correct approach is the benign spiral. It does pay to try that
whenever you get checked out
in a new plane so you have confidence it will save your butt.

-- Matt

Nothing is quite as terrifying as pilots with zero "hood time"
discussing how to fly in clouds.

A weight on a string simply works as a poor ball bank by indicating
slips and skids but says NOTHING WHATSOEVER about bank, rate of turn
or pitch. A ball or yaw string are far better instruments. A ball
will work even when a wet yaw string is stuck to the canopy.

If you think trying with this looks like fun, PLEASE find an old
school instrument instructor (CFII) and an old airplane with a "turn
and bank". Ask for some "partial panel" (Needle-Ball-Airspeed)
instruction. (Airplanes newer than ~1965 will have the cursed 'turn
coordinator' which indicates nothing but turbulence by wiggling.)

The killer is panic. Virtually every first timer will panic when his
gut sense and the instruments say different things - and they WILL be
different. The most basic instrument flying skill is to suppress what
you feel and concentrate on what the instruments are saying. That can
be VERY difficult.