I was wondering if anyone else has had the odd kip whilst flying.
Beleive it or not, I have succummed to the odd nap whilst flying. Fortunately i was single pilot ops so no-one was there to scare. The first couple of times it happens it does come as a shock to you however after you get the knack of it, it's really not that much of a drama. My first experience was when I was doing a ferry flight a few years ago in a C172 from thailand to Aust. I had been up all hours the night before with two lovely oriental ladies (money well spent) and a bottle of Vodka and woke feeling a little tired. Looking in the mirror i realised my eyes looked like piss holes in the snow but i had to deliver this aircraft back to it's owners so i departed. After about 8hours flying a started getting heavy eyelids and then that was it until i heard the stall warning going on and off intermitently. I woke and found i had dozed off and lost several thousand feet but apart from beeing pissed off that i'd have to climb all that way back to height, nothing was wrong. It was then that i realised the stall warning has 2 functions. 1) notifying the pilot of an impending stall condition and 2) a very simple wake up device. If you are flying single pilot and require 40 winks than go ahead. BUT MAKE SURE YOUR HAND IS TIED TO THE CONTROL COLUMN. This is very important as after a minute or two of sleeping your whole body will relax and your hand will fall back against your body, pulling the controls back and stalling the aircraft. Stall warning goes off and you wake up. Get back on height and do it again. You can do this many times and when you get to your destination you arrive fresh and ready for your next international ferry flight. I like to call this technique "macro-naps". These are far more productive than micronaps as you get longer periods of Z's. You can modify the length of the string to modify the period of sleep and the frequency of wake ups. Give it a go fellas, but make sure you are in trim!!!
