Unusal Attitudes

Nothing to do with the people here but lots to do with aviation. Today's lesson was about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. Basically, the instructor made me sit in the brace position with my eyes closed and not touching the controls. He then proceeded to throw the aircraft up, down, left and right to try to disorientate me/make me dizzy. After about 10-20 seconds of this he told me to open my eyes and regain control of the aircraft which by this time was banking at 45 or more degrees and hurtling towards the ground at a rate of knots. We did this two or three times and clearly I managed to regain control by virtue of me reporting it on my blog. The highlight of the lesson, though, was the demonstration of zero gravity. He put a pen on the dashboard, pitched the aircraft into an almost full power dive, and we sat back and watched the pen float up off the dashboard (or slam into the windshield on the first occasion as we did some inadvertent negative "g"). Not for the faint hearted or weak bladdered. Pity the airlines won't let us do this occassionally. Apparently they all want something called "straight and level"