Those planes you fly don’t have a fancy dancy computer flying the plane for you.
Needle, ball, airspeed, compass, and Mark I eyeballs ;-)
With the flying we do, generally in the Champ, the eyeball is more useful than the altimeter. Oh, and the seat of your pants provides a LOT of clues as well.
I love flying direct control light aircraft — you are one with the airframe.
The best was I heard it described, is that they are not “pilots” as much as they are “systems engineers.”
That said, it must have been a scary four minutes.