Precision Aerobatics

I haven't throw up and I've flown 5 Precision Aerobatic flights (2 of them solo) since my last entry so it's been a good week in flight school.

As I was told on my first complete Precision Aerobatic flight, anybody can do Aerobatics, by definition they are any move that incorporates more than 60-degrees angle of bank (leaning to one side or the other), 45 degrees nose up or down and/or 2 Gs (or more than 2 times the force of gravity felt by the plane and pilot). However, what they teach in the Navy is Precision. The goal is to give me a better feel for the plane and to accurately move it around in the air in all different sorts of attitudes.

I really love it, essentially I get to throw the plane around the sky using very specific movements, following specific parameters and starting or ending up at specific altitudes, headings and airspeeds. I find it to be extremly challenging. It's not like a video game there is no cursor to follow or anything aside from numbers on dials or checkpoints on the ground to tell me when, where and how to move the plane.

The maneuvers I do are very simple including loops, rolls, wingovers and variations of such. The loop is the one I've usually started out with, mainly because it is the most fun and the easiest one that doesn't make me want to puke. I start out by accelerating up to 200 knots and then pull back on the stick until the aircraft (and me) experience 3.5 Gs. I keep the pull until the top of the loop, easing a little pressure so I don't stall and fall out of the sky like a leaf (I had that demonstrated to me, it was actually pretty cool) and then finish on the opposite side by pulling another 3.5Gs ending up at the same altitude and heading.

Pulling Gs, believe it or not, is actually a pretty intense experience. Suddenly your body weighs 3.5 times it's normal weight (for example). It's a feeling of being sucked into the seat, limbs feel heavy and are difficult to move, breathing is okay but we're taught to bear down and breathe in a gasping way while clenching all the muscles in our body to keep the blood in our heads.

I pulled through a Split-S (they talk about this one breifly in Top Gun) and it involves flipping upside down and then pulling back to complete the second half of a loop, going from high to low. It looks like one is drawing the letter "C" (or an "S" split in half) but again starting from high to low. When upside down, I experienced 1 negative G, my blood rushed to my head. When I pulled through the bottom, like the loop, I pulled 3.5 positive Gs. I "Grayed out" the change from negative to positive is notorious for causing problems with the body and causing G-Induced Loss of Consciousness. "Greying out" is the first step on that road, followed quickly by "Blacking out" and finally by losing consciousness. As the blood left my head, my vision narrowed and although I don't remember losing my color vision, everything got dimmer and I saw lots of tiny spots dancing in my field of view. I kept pulling through and finished the maneuver (pretty well too, according to my instructor).
It was an interesting experience for a number of reasons. The first, obviously, is that I was close to losing consciousness, the second that if I were alone and lost consciousness it would be a disaster and the third is that I'm willing to bet that it's exactly how we feel when we die. When our hearts stop, blood no longer flows to our head, just like what happened when the Gs came on. I'm kind of glad to know that, though I hope it's a very long time before I find out for real.

In the meantime, I am having a lot of fun, and I've got to say that it's a great feeling to land the plane with nobody behind me. It's an incredible rush, there's no safety net, either I land the plane properly or I run a very real chance of dying. Luckily I've been taught well and paid attention to my procedures so (mom) it's nothing to be concerned about, but it is a pretty exciting thing to do regardless.
On one hand, I can't believe they let me do it (and pay me) and on another, I enough confidence where I can't imagine why they wouldn't.