Two particularly scary moments - I've talked about both of them plenty of times before, but here we go again anyway:
Second scariest moment was in a Pitts S2C, doing a loop. First time in a Pitts, which has far more responsive controls than anything I'd flown before. Pulled to enter the loop, pulled a bit harder than I should have done, and didn't ease off enough at the top of the loop. Aeroplane stalled at the top. I felt a buffet and recognised that I was stalling. Also knew that I was upside-down, so it must be an inverted stall. Recovery from an inverted stall is to pull, so I pulled. Aeroplane stalled even more, I couldn't figure out what was going on. Not knowing what's going on is
veryscary - this would definitely count as number one scary moment if it wasn't for the fact that I had an instructor in the front seat who took the controls and pushed until we recovered. It was only afterwards that I realised that, although we were inverted, we were pulling positive Gs. The stall only counts as inverted at negative Gs. It's the wing loading, and not the attitude, that determines stall characteristics (which is just another way of saying that you can stall at any attitude - something your instructor should drill into you during your PPL)
The scariest moment was getting into IMC. Took off early-afternoon with a forecast of 5km vis and improving. I was flying north. Sure enough, the vis was exactly 5km. But, after about 1/2 hour or so it was showing no sign of improving. Eventually, only a few miles from my destination, I came across a band of cloud which was too low to get past. I explored the cloud a bit, trying to find a way round it, but it seemed to go on forever both to the east and the west. Decided there was no way I could make my destination, so I turned round to go home.
I was now headed directly into the sun, and very quickly realised I couldn't see a bl00dy thing.
I knew the M1 was around here somewhere, just a couple of miles away, but I couldn't see any major roads at all! I couldn't figure out what the problem was. But I knew that the town which I was on the edge of was Northampton, and the chart showed that if I followed the southern boundary of the town, I'd get to the M1. So that's what I did. About 2 minutes later, I saw the M1, and realised why I couldn't see it earlier. It was only a couple of miles away, but the vis into the sun was even less than that, probably about 1 or 2 kms.
I now had cloud to the north, and the vis to the south was seriously reduced by the sun. I had to land, and south was the only real option. I had two choices - either Turweston or Cranfield. I remembered being taught to follow line-features in reduced visibility, and the M1 took me directly to Cranfield, so that's where I went. I think it was 3 days before the weather improved enough to bring the aeroplane home again.
My bag of experience still looks very empty, but I can't quite see the bottom of it any more!
FFF
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PS - Beets, a pilot flying IFR in VMC must still keep his eyes outside the aeroplane. If you're going to be flying on the instruments in VMC you must take a safety pilot with you, for exactly this reason. You may have been flying at the wrong level, but even if everyone's at the correct level you may still encounter converging traffic from the left or right, not to mention traffic climbing or descending through your level. I think it's far more likely he simply didn't see you. Which is why I usually ignore any rules about who was right of way - if I see traffic and he's not making any obvious moves to avoid me, I assume he hasn't seen me and give way to him.