It was a day not unlike any other... early summer of 2006 if memory serves. The air was warm but not oppressive and I was well rested and healthy. I climbed into the cockpit with Brock sitting next to me in the left seat even though I was going to be the PIC for this flight. I needed a little practice at shooting approaches.
The weather was really crummy, which I thought was great. I like a good challenge for approaches and there's nothing quite so satisfying as breaking out right at minimums to the view of the approach lights and a runway. We ran through the checklist and I reached up to take the safety pin out of the Red Handle. As I did this, I exchanged a knowing look with Brock. He laughed.
Everything was going fine, ATC vectored us around for an ILS and I had that nagging "I'm bored" feeling... which always makes me nervous. I double checked the checklists, verified the configuration, and made sure I had the Garmins and MFD set the way I wanted them. Nothing else to do, so I briefed the approach again. I was hand flying since that skill gets rusty first and it's my rule to never let the autopilot take me anywhere I wouldn't go by hand. It wasn't very bumpy, so the trimmed airplane was easy to control almost hands-free. I was a little less bored as we intercepted the localizer and actually started to feel pretty engaged about half way down the glide slope. The winds were shifting around and I had to change my crab angle to hold course. I think there might have been some thermals based on the power adjustments I needed to stay on the glide slope right at 100 knots.
We got close to DA and I started calling out the last 200 feet: "200 to go..... 100 to go.... 50.... minimums." I looked up and there was nothing, so we did the usual missed approach procedure. We used the 4 C's of a missed at that time... we've expanded them to 5 since. Up and away, we headed for the published hold where we'd figure out what to do next. I entered the hold and got an EFC time from ATC. The entry finished, I settled in and discussed the next approach with Brock.
As I made my 3rd or 4th turn in the hold, I think we got a bit of an uneven thermal as my wing wasn't coming down as quickly as normal when I started to roll out on course. I pushed a little harder, having felt this a few hundred times before. Three seconds later the wing still wasn't coming down very fast and I got confused. That's reeeeallly weird... and I found myself subconsciously pushing a little harder on the yoke to roll out of my 15 degree bank. I lost a little altitude during all this so I applied a little aft pressure to bring us back up to altitude. Two more seconds and I went from "Hm... odd..." to massive confusion. Something was waaaay wrong. I could feel my control inputs in the seat of my pants but nothing was happening on the PFD. The G forces felt *wrong*. It was then that I glanced down at my backup Attitude Indicator and saw a 90+ degree bank in the wrong direction. One of these gages was lying to me.
I think it was then that my head started swimming... the G forces were really not what I knew they should be and I haven't been beyond 60 degrees bank in... years.
That was it. I think I said something along the lines of "Aw crap" and swiped the throttle and mixture back to idle. I honestly don't remember if I did it with my right or left hand but it seemed like the red handle was being pulled simultaneously. I never looked at the airspeed.
An eternity later, I was thrown hard against my restraints as the chute opened and began to slow us down. We jerked back and forth, progressively less, for a few more seconds. Whew! I just pulled the chute! What happened? How did I get here? Wait a minute... isn't there something else to do? I started swiping switches off but remembered to give a quick mayday call before turning off all the electroics. I was just getting to switching the fuel tanks to "off" when we passed through 500 feet AGL. I hurried, braced, and felt the impact.
A few seconds later I could hear Cliff, the guy who was training me on how our full motion simulator works, chuckling behind me. Time to have a chat.
At that point, I think I had around 5,000 hours in Cirrus aircraft and close to 6,000 total. I flew between 700 and 900 hours a year in Cirrus airplanes (most of it spent teaching) and had done so for the past 6 years.
Want to guess what got me?
-John Fiscus
Chief Pilot
The Flight Academy
www.theflightacademy.com 
Posted
12 Mar 2009 17:31
by
John Fiscus