Disorientation?? who me??

Always interesting to go through letting people fly aerobatics for the first time.

Of course for most of the people who fly the Pitts Special with us, it is the first experience of flying a plane. We think this is a great thing.. first time flying a plane, AND its a Pitts Special. The stuff of dreams.

Anyway, one of the responses we see quite regularly, is that of being a bit disorientated.

What most people won't be aware of, is that the group of people who suffer more from this than any other, are those who have some flying experience. We have no real idea of why this might be, but it does seem to be the case.

Myself, I do remember clearly, the first time I ever rolled an aircraft, as it didn't go that well! At the time, I had a Private Pilots Licence and probably about 150 hrs flight time. (Not Much!!)

I was in a relatively high performance training aircraft with a very experienced aerobatic pilot, who let me take control and move the stick such that we should have done a nice smooth roll. What we did, however, was roll quickly inverted and then stop. I don't mean stop moving, or stop flying, we just stopped rolling, so we were inverted. I had just stopped making the aircraft roll, as I was so completely disorientated.

My memory is that the disorientation was instantaneous I had no idea, which way up I was, or what to do about it. My response, which in hindsight is completely typical of someone who has done some flying, was to pull on the joystick.

For those of you who understand flying, and aerobatics, this is NOT a good thing to do when one is in a plane, inverted, and disorientated. It IS however, exactly what I have since watched happen with almost every person I have flown aerobatics with, who has some flying experience, but no aerobatic training.

Again, often, those with no previous flying time, just go ahead and complete a really nice roll.

Some do let me know later that they found it quite disorientating, but they NEVER react the way a pilot does.

Anyway, so if you have never flown a plane, and would like to try, and maybe even see what looping and rolling is like, don't worry about being disorientated, as even though you might get a little unsure of which way is up, it doesn't really matter, as aircraft are designed to operate in 3 dimensions. If you are a pilot, and would like to get to grips with aerobatics, don't be surprised if you find that you have no idea what happened on the first aerobatic lesson, as that seems to be quite normal.

Of course, there is no general rule that applies to all, so maybe you will be in the small percentage of people who just end up having so much fun they can't help but laugh and yell as they tumble an aircraft around the sky!

Go try, we think you'll enjoy it regardless.