Quote:
Originally posted by BlueSkyJaunte
Surely you've broken the rear end loose in the 911 once or twice in the past?
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Twice, actually, and only once intentionally. I had a slip angle that exceeded the tires' limit of adhesion and spent a brief instant sideways before the tires re-caught. Scared the living horse-puckey out of me, drove slower after that. The other time, I found myself going entirely too quick around a tight set of steep downhill switchbacks one night. I lost it coming around one switchback and fishtailed for what couldn't have been more than about a second while trying to slow down to make the next switchback at something like safe speed. My brain was totally uninvolved in both cases, like a data-logger just quietly watching the action. The second one was really entertaining in the replay, as I remember feeling the back end go back and forth, and I remember watching my hands fling the steering wheel rapidly from one lock to the other, then back to the middle. I couldn't tell you at all what my feet did, or how I somehow managed to be in a lower gear coming out the far side of that switchback. It was kind of neat, in retrospect, though it happened entirely too rapidly for me to really be scared, in the heat of the moment.
In an airplane, iirc, the slip lasts for a while. Like you go sideways, then you go sideways some more, then the passenger panicks, and you go sideways for a while longer, the passenger says his final prayers, then you go sideways for a while longer while the passenger screams in horror, then you straighten out just before impact. Oh, and in a little-bitty plane, it's not straight sideways, like a constant slip -- it's kind of a dancing, bouncing, hopping motion, like some kind of cat-toy on the end of a rubber band. "I don't know where we're going, but it sure doesn't look like we're going to hit that runway."
John, you got any more pictures? That's some sweet stuff!
Tell us some pilot stories!
Dan