Nonchalantly approaching my homebuilt into my home strip in a full sideslip at idle. It's a very draggy plane anyway, but I was very high and too lazy to fly a proper circuit. At about 150ft agl the nose drops violently and speed heads for VNE with the stick on the backstop. Before I know what’s happening I'm through the vertical. I wanged the throttle full and pushed the stick forward - Instantly airflow is restored over the tail plane and I have control again. I just managed to recover below my landing strip (it's a hilltop site) and turn away from the hill. I gingerly fly a circuit and land.
What happened? Well, I think it was aerodynamic blanking of the tail from the thick wing in a full slip with no power and it absolutely terrified me - I really, really thought I was going in. I didn't fly for two weeks and promptly made a will.
To this day I don't know what made me add power and push when all my senses and training told me that was the wrong thing to do. I would be dead otherwise, and probably just another stall/spin statistic.
On homebuilt aircraft every flight is a test flight - remember that folks!
Kingy
** I've posted this before - just copied and pasted it here. Sorry if you've already seen it...!**