I closed my eyes and placed my chin on my chest, he manoeuvred the aircraft into a variety of high/low energy, climbing/descending profiles and then I had to recover with a minimum height loss/gain technique.
I am amazed that that sort of nonsense is still used by some simulator instructors. I just cannot imagine in a jet transport aircraft the pilot closing his eyes and placing his chin on his chest and miraculously waking up to find his 747 inverted.
In a real situation that caused the UA in the first place it is likely the pilot would have had his eyes glued to the flight director which had gone ape and wondered which inputs were needed to get out of trouble. But eyes closed and chin on chest sleeping soundly - can't imagine that happening.
In ab-initio instrument flying training in real aeroplanes, for decades different sorts of in-flight cloud simulation was used. In my day we had two-stage amber screens and blue goggles which worked a treat because you couldn't cheat by peeking outside. Next came instrument flying hoods or even pulled down baseball caps. Both did not prevent pilots from glancing up or sideways - anything to see a bloody horizon. So instructors told the student to close his eyes while the instructor did awful things with the aircraft and said handing over Bloggs.
But some students only closed the eye nearest the instructor and cheated with the good eye. So then came the time when the instructor said look down at the floor AND close both eyes and then he would do more awful things designed to give the hapless student the practice at righting the aircraft to even keel solely by using his flight instruments. All this to prevent the student from trying to see a visual horizon to aid in recovery on instruments. If the student looked up from the floor the instructor could see the bastard was trying to cheat.
But in the simulator we can simulate cloud and so the student has now no choice but to recover without cheating even though he can watch the instructor wrestling the controls in all directions before the dreaded "Handing over Bloggs". Ergo - no more need to close eyes and chin on chest.
