Scary spatial disorientation encounter

slavinger

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yippie
This happened recently, and really woke me up to the dangers of SD. I read IFR & IFR Refresher cover to cover and come across many articles about SD, and I used to think it wouldn't happen to me since I keep my head movements to absolute minimum, have iron grip on the instrument scan, blah blah. And after 10 years of flying IFR I figured if it were going to happen to me it would've happened by now. So I'm on a x/c, bases at 2k, tops at 10k, I'm at 8k, in the soup. Bouncing around a bit for an hour (enough turb to ask for a block), I ask for 10k, since ride reports indicate a smoother ride at 10k. I'm feeling just fine for the first hour or so, even having fun. (I should mention that I'm a 36 y/o male, non-smoker, in good shape, not prone to motion sickness and not in the hypoxia risk group.) As I get to 10k, I'm in the clear just above the clouds and the cloud deck is slanted. So I figure no problem, false horizon, I'm perfectly good with it, just stick with the instruments. Wellll... 20 or so min later I'm starting to feel like I'm having to fight to stay on the instruments, just getting that nasty disorienting feeling... It's now completely smooth, and I'm feeling worse & worse. It dawns on me that Approach is going to start descending me for the approach pretty soon, and I'm not confident at all that I can hold it together on the approach. Ceilings at my destination are reporting 1,400 OVC. I tell Approach I'm not feeling so hot and ask for a climb to get away from the clouds just below me, but don't want to go all the way up to 12k. He gives me 11k and I carefully pitch up and climb up to 11. Doesn't seem like much but I seem to feel better. I ask to continue on present heading for 5 min to take a few deep breaths, try to relax and clear my head (and take a few bites of a cereal bar and a sip of Starbucks mocha, I figured extra carbs could help). So the controller asks if I'm ready, I say affirm, he gives me a 20 deg turn and pilot discretion to 5k (I would be arriving essentially on an IAF on this heading). Everything is so far so good, the funny thing is as soon as I went back IMC it seems like the feeling was gone, or maybe the carbs kicked in. I'm motoring along, get a freq change, get cleared down to 3k, cleared for the approach, and the controller asks if I need any medical help on the ground. Oh great, now the whole world knows. The first leg of the GPS T procedure goes well, but as I start to turn inbound (90 deg turn) I get that disorienting feeling again, it comes on quickly and is very powerful. It's like getting hit by a brick out of the blue. I literally break out in sweat, my hands all clammy and sort of shaky, I'm thinking "I'm almost there, don't lose it now, everything is fine, almost there". I give tower a call, they can immediately tell something's up, they ask me again if I need any help, I reply that if I get on the ground in one piece I'll be alright. My autopilot tracks the 430 flight plan laterally but not vertically, so I'm trying to descend as smoothly as I can with no pitch changes. It helps that there's no turbulence. Finally at 1,500 I break out of the clag, almost blind from sweat and trying not to vomit all over the cockpit, and manage to pull off a decent landing. Even on the ground I continued to feel queasy while taxiing and for the next hour or so. I almost fell out of the plane, my legs felt like they were made of cotton. I've heard of stories where pilots have kissed the ground after a harrowing arrival, I never thought I'd be one of them, but I really felt like doing just that. Man, what an eye opener! This is after 10 years of being IR and having flown hundreds of approaches, in various "hardness" of IFR.

Afterwards I chatted with a friend of mine who's an MD and a pilot, he said this can easily happen to both newbies and old timers alike, with everyone inbetween, and it can happen randomly from time to time, and come on suddenly (obvious risk factors aside, like colds, ear infections, etc). So there's no way to eliminate this from happening, you just sort of have to live with it and take the risk into account. He also said possible hypoxia at higher alt's probably got to me, with brain consuming O2 quicker due to higher workload (first turbulence, then dealing with slanted horizon, then approach in IMC). As a result of this I decided to fly IMC at lower alt's from now on (8k max, preferrably 6k), and thinking of purchasing an oxymeter and a portable O2 system (recommendations?). Other than that, I'm not sure what else I can do to insulate myself from a similar occurrence.

So have you guys/gals had your own SD experiences? What were your lessons learned?
 
You did fine,you need a little more time IMC to get comfortable.deep down your brain is still not comfortable when IMC. Also know how you feel about the decent. Set up the rate you want and fly it,watch the speed as you start down. Glad you did alright.
 
WoW...
First this type of flying is way over my head for I only fly in calm weather and stay close to the pattern in a small eab. But seeing how this can happen to anyone, I read and listen to everything I can about this subject.

I happened to sit in on a class that was put on by the military for their pilots. Its about hypoxia and how it happens. As I was reading what happened to you, it was like I was listening to that instructor. The story was the same. As I was reading I am thinking " hypoxia " then you asked to go higher. This instructor talked just about this same exact thing.
You are a better pilot today because of this. I say this for you learned a lot as we all did reading this.

Thanks for sharing.

Tony
 
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You did fine,you need a little more time IMC to get comfortable.deep down your brain is still not comfortable when IMC. Also know how you feel about the decent. Set up the rate you want and fly it,watch the speed as you start down. Glad you did alright.

He said he's been instrument rated for ten years and flown hundreds of IMC approaches. If he needs a little more time then many of us are completely screwed! :)
 
I see you're looking at a pulse oxymeter and o2, good call. I live at 8100 ft half of the year, in excellent physical condition, but still see sats in the upper 80's at 11k w/o the o2.
 
From your description, you might consider this:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103463398

I have a friend who dealt with this, and he says it was a very powerful experience, much like yours.

Good news is that it was easily treated in his case by physical therapy to dislodge the crystals.

Might be a reach, but just consider your disorientation may have had a physical cause.

My SD experience was less intense than yours. I'll try to post it later.
 
As a result of this I decided to fly IMC at lower alt's from now on (8k max, preferrably 6k), and thinking of purchasing an oxymeter and a portable O2 system (recommendations?).

Thanks for sharing. Sounded like the autopilot was a real lifesaver. One of my personal rules for single pilot IFR is a functioning/reliable autopilot if it's anything more than just punching through a layer.

Oxygen is pretty simple to do, Aerox and Skyox are about the same. A 24 liter bottle on low-flow (0.5 to 1 liter/min) in a conserving cannula will last a long time. Re-fills can be a pain depending on your FBO. Anyway, I live at 5,000 ft msl and use O2 freely at night and anytime I'm up high for extended periods - say over 15 minutes or so. It helps a lot but takes awhile to get used to. I finally got a headset mounted boom cannula and that makes it much easier/faster to get flow going. I don't use the pulse oxymeter much any more but used it a lot when learning about my body's response to altitude.
 
Wow glad you are alright! I'm instrument rated and have never felt SD. I wanted to with my instructor during training but you can just make it happen. Glad you kept your cool and pulled through. I know it's bound to happen to me at some point and I hope my training kicks in and keeps me calm on focused to trust the instruments. Good job!
 
I think this is a good testament that even instrument rated pilots, not just VFR pilots can fall prey to this. Thanks for sharing. I only have about 30 hours actual so I still have plenty to learn!
 
I'll be brief with mine.

I was departing Copperhill, TN (1A3) in my Tiger with a low overcast.

There's higher terrain in all quadrants, but the least if you head roughly south after takeoff. Plan was to then climb to 4,000' to clear all terrain, at which point a turn direct HRS is safe, then as filed.

Bear in mind, I was a CFII, but that most of my instrument time was in FL, so very little time with low stratus right after takeoff.

In any case I took off on RWY2, climbed straight ahead to 500' and began a standard rate turn to the left, planning a turn to about heading 200º IIRC. Then climb on that heading to 4,000', then direct HRS.

Everything was going according to plan, up until I glanced at my heading indicator - it said I was still headed 020º. What??? That's not good - there's climbing terrain and rocks in that direction! But my attitude indicator and turn coordinator both showed a turn.

It's hard to describe how disorienting the whole event was. As soon as the instruments disagreed with each other, a cold, panicky feeling came over me. I rolled my wings level and went to best angle as I sorted things out, still on 020º.

Long story shorter, I punched out of the low stratus layer and sorted things out.

Turns out my Tiger was not used to cold weather. And I did not conscientiously "spin" the knob on the heading indicator to make sure it had popped back out after setting it to runway heading. It had not, essentially "caging" it.

Easy to say that a cross-check should have resolved that immediately. Yet even commercial jets with competent crew have been brought down by fixation on one instrument. The ability to think logically is one of the first things to go when panic sets in.

I've posted this before, but Warren Zevon (R.I.P.) said it best...

"You're a whole 'nother person when you're scared."
 
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Oxygen is pretty simple to do, Aerox and Skyox are about the same. A 24 liter bottle on low-flow (0.5 to 1 liter/min) in a conserving cannula will last a long time. Re-fills can be a pain depending on your FBO. Anyway, I live at 5,000 ft msl and use O2 freely at night and anytime I'm up high for extended periods - say over 15 minutes or so. It helps a lot but takes awhile to get used to. I finally got a headset mounted boom cannula and that makes it much easier/faster to get flow going. I don't use the pulse oxymeter much any more but used it a lot when learning about my body's response to altitude.

Thanks for the info!
 
I would be worried about a possible physical problem that may have caused this. If you were reasonably current you should not be getting serious spatial disorientation to the point of nausea in smooth air. As mentioned earlier hypoxia could have something to do with it. Might want to have another discussion with the Dr. and get some basic tests done.

I've never had disorientation that wasn't cured within a few seconds of recognizing it and taking a moment to remind myself to look at my instruments, and i've only experienced it when not very current. If it helps any, I find that giving a little wing waggle with the stick and seeing the AI respond appropriately is all it takes to shake off any disorientation.
 
Great write-up. Just wondering if this was really SD, per se, or just a bout of good ol' fashioned air sickness.
 
I've gotten the onset of SD when it was extremely hazy over one of the Great Lakes. Gave the airplane to the other guy for a few minutes, took some deep breaths, and got my head back together.

It's not fun. I've had 0 issues in the soup, but it was something about that day that did it.
 
It is such a head game.

I just remind myself that I don't have to fly the next 30 minutes on the gauges - just the next 30 seconds, and I know I can do that. Then another 30 seconds... and so on.

Mental game, but it helps.
 
He said he's been instrument rated for ten years and flown hundreds of IMC approaches. If he needs a little more time then many of us are completely screwed! :)

Well, I said I've done hundreds of approaches, I didn't say they were all in hard IMC or to minimums. ;) I still get a bit nervous flying an approach with ceiling much below VFR, my personal mins are no lower than 500, vis 2 miles (and I have to be well rested, practiced, & ready to go). If terrain is a factor, I'm not going unless ceilings are at 1k+, vis 3. A fair amount of my instrument flying is VMC/MVMC enroute with approaches in VMC. In other words, I'm not (yet) a professional. Ron is right, I do need more time in serious IMC and low WX to feel truly comfortable, although I don't think this particular SD case was directly attributable to comfort level or stress - I was perfectly relaxed and enjoying the ride until SD started setting in. Hypoxia could've very well been a factor, as another poster stated.

Here are a few other things I could've done / will do in the future:
- take another IR pilot along (I usually fly with someone else but in this case I was solo)
- I thought about asking for VTF consisting of several smaller turns than one big 90 deg turn, at the time I thought that banking and leveling several times would mess me up more than one big turn, in addition I would be either hand-flying the turns, instead of having the AP do it, or messing with the heading bug for the AP to follow. I chose to have the AP fly the big turn.
- have the foggles ready. I wonder if I hadn't been so aware of the false horizon when I popped out on top, maybe I would've done better with SD. Maybe it would've been better to enjoy the view for a minute and then put the foggles on and block out the visual cues. But then I'm supposed to see & avoid traffic...
 
Slavinger, thanks very much for posting this. It is a great reminder. I don't have a ton of IMC time but I will tell you something that does bother me, If I'm in the goo I want to be in the goo. Being in the tops and to some extent the bottoms is more disorienting IMHO. popping in and out of the tops at over 100mph is distracting and almost strobe like. I recall once coming back from Gastons breaking out above a layer only to find that I was between two layers that weren't very far apart. That can be a bit bothersome as well.

I think your idea to get a Pulse Oximeter is a good idea. I asked my Dr. for a recommendation and he told me just to pick one up at Walmart. Here are some very reasonably priced units.

http://www.walmart.com/search/searc...d&_ta=1&search_query=pulse oximeter&_tt=pulse
 
Wow glad you are alright! I'm instrument rated and have never felt SD. I wanted to with my instructor during training but you can just make it happen. Glad you kept your cool and pulled through. I know it's bound to happen to me at some point and I hope my training kicks in and keeps me calm on focused to trust the instruments. Good job!

I remember when I was going through training with my CFII doing unusual attitudes with me under the hood, there were a few times when I felt this intense intolerable feeling when I almost lost it. Had to grab on to the leather dash cover, it felt like I was tumbling in free fall (and I'd skydived prior to that, which didn't induce the same feeling). What I felt during training was different than I experienced during the flight (actually worse).

During the worse of it, I actually had this thought that the more I forced myself to focus & trust the instruments, the worse I felt. The feeling is hard to describe, it's not that I wanted to bank when the AI said to stay level, it was something else, like all your senses screaming at you that something is very wrong and you better pay attention. It may or may not be the same feeling victims of graveyard spiral experience, but I don't think I felt the urge to disregard the instruments, it was just a really intense disorientation, like not knowing which way is up/down/left/right, and what I'm doing here, it's like an out-of-body experience, you're watching yourself in slow-mo. Crazy ****. You can only go so far telling yourself the instruments are correct and everything's fine, when you're flirting with incapacitation, at some point the brain just stops buying it. In addition I was constantly scanning the instruments which probably wasn't helping once SD set in. Towards the end of the approach when I really wasn't sure if I was gonna make it, I thought what the heck, it can't get much worse than this, so I relaxed my focus and looked at a point above the dash and really tried to breathe evenly and slowly, which helped almost instantly. The moving of the eyes during instrument scan was making things worse. Thank God I broke out right about that time, not that being in VMC helped all that much with queasiness, but at least now I could go visual and look outside. If I had another couple hundred feet to go in the soup and kept the scan going I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be here.
 
Again, thanks for sharing. Good story.

I suspect you may have been having both a bit of hypoxia and dehydration. I go on O2 if I'm going to be cruising above 6K for more than an hour, and go on O2 if above 10K for almost any length of time. Hydration is critical, and a lot of pilots fly under-hydrated for fear of needing a bio-break. I find bananas to be the perfect in-flight food. Once I'm an hour out from my destination I start drinking a good bit of water so I'm sure to be well hydrated during the approach.

Jeff
 
Again, thanks for sharing. Good story.

I suspect you may have been having both a bit of hypoxia and dehydration. I go on O2 if I'm going to be cruising above 6K for more than an hour, and go on O2 if above 10K for almost any length of time. Hydration is critical, and a lot of pilots fly under-hydrated for fear of needing a bio-break. I find bananas to be the perfect in-flight food. Once I'm an hour out from my destination I start drinking a good bit of water so I'm sure to be well hydrated during the approach.

Jeff


Thanks for the tips Jeff, which O2 system do you use?
 
Thanks for the tips Jeff, which O2 system do you use?

Aerox 4-place system. I lay it down between the seats (we have a long, thin bottle), strap the bottle to the seat frame of the rear seat so it is secured, and the regulators end up in an easy reach-down position between the front seats of the 182. I like having the individual flow regulators for each position, saves a lot of O2.

Jeff
 
SD hit me one time climbing out. The forecast was for 6500-7000 BKN [field elevation = 828], and I had filed for 10K. I was actually cleared direct to destination [somewhere south or southeast of KHTW]. I was anticipating climbing into and maybe out of the clouds. It was nice and clear with great visibility below that.

Wrong! Bases were at 9700, and leveling off was the hardest thing I've ever done. I may have crept up to 10,300 or even 10,400; at one point ATC asked if I was OK. Other than the shakes, a light sweat and the feeling that I was about to fall out of the air, everything was great . . . I'm not certain, but I think my non-rated wife was with me.

But I really, really wanted to keep pulling back. The altimeter was reading too high, the VSI and AI both showed climb, and my body was screaming steep descent. A few minutes after I finally leveled off, the feeling went away, but it was incredibly difficult to ignore the fiery visions in my mind and push forward on the yoke when I just knew if I pushed forward I would fall out of the clouds and into the mountains far, far below.

Spatial Disorientation can happen to anyone, at any time. This was my second time, far worse than sliding out of a turn in the clouds with my CFII and correcting when I saw the ridgeline below. This time, instead of being fat, dumb and not going where I wanted, I was absolutely certain that I was going to die if I didn't keep pulling back. And I recognized that the instruments told me I was climbing when I shouldn't be, but it was very, very hard to believe my training and trust them and not do my what my mind was screaming.
 
It happens to navy carrier pilots. They are sent back to the states for special training to combat this problem. If it can happen to them, with their excellent training, why not you?
 
It happens to navy carrier pilots. They are sent back to the states for special training to combat this problem. If it can happen to them, with their excellent training, why not you?

...and what's included in said training?
 
The altimeter was reading too high, the VSI and AI both showed climb, and my body was screaming steep descent. A few minutes after I finally leveled off, the feeling went away, but it was incredibly difficult to ignore the fiery visions in my mind and push forward on the yoke when I just knew if I pushed forward I would fall out of the clouds and into the mountains far, far below.

Geez, you're making me relive my experience. :hairraise::yikes: Yep, fighting every fiber of your being during the real thing is very different from what we experience in controlled env't. BTW, from what I recall, that F-16 crash at OSH a few years ago was SD-related. IIRC climate or pressurization system malfunctioned and the pilot kind of lost it on landing. I have to go back and re-read that.
 
Hypoxia may have been a contributing factor but I suspect the angle of the cloud described by the OP was the most significant factor. For O2 it may be done with a modest upfront cost and virtually nothing in ongoing costs after the initial purchase. If you are unsure or don't think you have suffered from hypoxia, think again; if you fly above 8,000 msl you are at risk especially if you live at lower elevation. Pulse oximeters are available cheap - like $25 - on ebay. They provide worthwhile information.

Go on ebay or craigslist and buy:

1-2 small o2 tanks for the plane. I have M6 tanks available on ebay for around $25 each.

1-2 300 cu ft cylinders to use as supply to refill the small plane tanks. Look on craigslist. I found mine from a ebay guy who got them from a mining outfit.

A transfill adapter. Any CGA540 to CGA870 will work. Here is what I bought:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Oxygen-Trans...item1e7b7755db

A couple regulators - i like the pulse 5 regulators (around $50 on ebay).

A couple nasal cannulas.

You can refill the large tank for about $30 at airgas and use it for hundreds of hours.
 
Thanks for sharing your story. I'll add that flying back from Vermont on Sunday, I had a few moments of queasiness toward the end, flying into the sun in very hazy VMC, something that almost never happens to me. At one moment, a small movement of my head while checking the instruments triggered that butt-sink feeling that I'd just dropped about 10 feet. Fleeting moments like that. The cause? I was stressed out from a weekend of interviewing, had been functioning on 3-4 hours/night of not very restful sleep for the previous 4 nights, and I was definitely dehydrated (intentionally since I don't have a passport, so putting down in Canada for a pit stop was out of the question) and had been at 8000 for the last 4 hours, not very high but I live practically at sea level.

So it is possible that what happened to you was physiological without being a sign of illness. I can easily imagine that it could have been me on Sunday, if the conditions had been IFR landing back at home.
 
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