"Alright, Cowboy. One more trial to go before we can conclude testing. Reduce speed to 200 KTS. Enter level flight, and while the alpha limiter is disabled quickly pull back hard on the stick. Pitch down after reaching vertical. Control power throughout the maneuver and attempt to maintain constant altitude. Watch the RPM gauge and warning lights as you do this. The intakes weren't designed with extreme angle of attack changes in mind. We only want to see if we can safely push your aircraft past its design envelope."
I get down to around 6000 feet, level off and reduce power. Here goes nothing.
I quickly jam the stick into my gut. The aircraft pitches wildly, assuming vertical attitude in under a second and slowing down to a crawl. BANG! The right engine OVERTEMP light shines briefly, and the RPM gauge goes a little crazy.
"Holy stuff! Tower, Cowboy, requesting emergency landing! I think one of my engines just flamed out!"
I can't quite pitch down quickly enough to recover, and the yawing of the engines sends me into a gut wrenching flat spin.
"Cowboy, we have sight of your aircraft and have given you landing clearance on all runways. Can you recover?"
"I should be able to! Gimme a moment here!"
I'm losing altitude fast. Fighting against the thrust imbalance I jam the rudder left and pitch down, bring the aircraft under control and manage to pull out of the dive just shy of a thousand feet.
After coming to a full stop on the runway and powering down, I quickly climb out of the roosterpit. The ground crew arrives shortly and tows the M4K back into a maintenance hangar.
I could've died there.
Poll