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I've been away from PE for too long! I finally had some time open tonight and decided to fly IFR from KSNA to KBUR. Shortly after passing SLI and joining V23, WHAM!? A crashing sound and sudden 50+ degree bank and substantial yaw to the left. I recovered, checked to make sure the visible pieces still intact...bird strike?

Socal was very helpful with my emergency, setting me up to land at Long Beach, which, as they courteously pointed out, was pretty much right beneath me (I had spotted Torrence in the distance but hadn't yet figured out I was right on top of KLGB).

Once on the ground and parked, I checked the x-plane aircraft failures and couldn't find anything - quite odd. I looked at the video replay, and if I had been in the airplane, the sudden attitude change might have given me whiplash and certainly would have thrown my charts off the kneeboard.

The PE controllers were so calm, I wondered if they had scheduled this

How interesting! I had a similar experience this weekend -- I flew from KSNA to the El Toro practice area, did some maneuvers and local VOR tracking and suddenly the a/c banked to the right-- Had to input almost full left aileron to keep it level. Since I was over a “non-existent” field, I checked all control inputs and centering in-flight- all normal. Failures- normal, all operational. I decided to transmit on the practice area freq and put down at said “non-existent” field (probably not what to do in the rw!). I ended up having to reboot X-Plane and all was fine after.

(full-size sim, C-172 fuselage, X-Plane v9.70 x 6 PCs)

Hmmm. Are there some stealth UAVs around KSNA?

Here's a link to an x-plane replay video from my encounter (?) tonight: http://vimeo.com/49651315

Man, sure looks like you hit something.

* Orest