I just had the strangest experience

So, there I was, flying IFR from EHAM to LIRP. I’d just taken off with the autopilot running the show. I was about 8,000 ft, going for 15,000 ft when I was asked to switch frequencies. I look down, put in the frequencies and I suddenly hear “stall, stall, stall!” I look up to catch the aircraft flying level at over 45 degrees bank, and the nose dropping into a dive.

I’d never seen this before in a flight sim. Prior to looking down, my airspeed was about 200kn and everything looked normal as normal gets. I didn’t hear any decrease in engine power or anything.

Has anyone ever seen this before? Did I do something wrong, could this have been prevented, or could this have been a weird bug?

What climb mode were you using?

FLC is preferred for climbing, as it will adjust pitch angle to keep the selected speed at time of activation.

VS is a deadly choice if you are doing anything heads-down. VS will keep the climb rate regardless of what your speed is. Which is what I suspect happened to you.

Lesson IRL - don’t use VS. If you must use VS, you need to be heads-up and monitoring speed to prevent a stall.

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Yep, I was using VS. A loss of airspeed is the only thing that I can think happened.