Ever see an airshow acro plane do a Lomcevak? You just described it to a tee. I'm told the word is Czech and is (mis)translated as "crazy mixed-up headache". Having ridden through a couple in a Pitts, I can vouch for the accuracy of the term. The ultimate sensation of hostageness. You ever notice that nobody does them at low altitude at airshows (or anywhere else)? Takes a few seconds to uncage your eyeballs afterward.The airplane performed a portion of an inverted snap roll, faltered momentarily and then did one or two turns of an oscillatory inverted spin. It then moved suddenly into a normal left hand spin
Days of future passed! That sort of behaviour, an inverted oscillatory spin with the nose whipsawing up and down and the rotation rate and bank angle fluctuating randomly and not synchronously, became pretty common in the jet age. IIRC, spin in the F4J was described as: "random oscillations around all three axis with buffeting, a high rate of descent, and probable dual flameout". IIRC, recovery was: "average fluctuations of AOA needle to determine if positive or negative stall, average turn needle to determine direction of rotation, apply appropriate stick and rudder for type of spin. Deploy RAT if flameout occurs. If control not regained passing 10,000 AGL, EJECT."
I knew a crew who missed that last directive by a thousand feet, stopping rotation by 9,000 and still augered in. They managed to achieve a level pitch attitude passing through 1,000, but at some phenomenal G load and an impossible sink rate, and the plane snapped inverted in the midst of the ejection sequence.
Cheers,
Wes
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