Jet Fighter Ride - Somewhere up in New Jersey, I pulled the oxygen mask off my face, worried I was going to throw up.
Maj. Jason Markzon, the pilot of our F-16 fighter jet, had just flown the plane for two difficult times, as part of a flight exercise called G-exercise. Seconds later, Markzon—whose Air Force nickname was Flack—suddenly rolled the plane onto its side, a move called a "knife-edge roll" that puts the plane's short wings on the ground. He brought us back into position, then pulled the plane hard to the right. I cried.
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The hard bumps and high-speed turns were taking a toll on my body—it was a ride I wanted to finish. "Do you want more?" I asked.
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"Rob, how are you man?" Flack asked, his voice coming through the speakers on my red, white, and blue helmet.
We took off about 20 minutes early, all eight of the plane's engines fired up and we were jettisoned onto the runway at MacArthur Airport, Long Island. We screamed out of the ground and into the blue sky on a breezy late May morning. A few minutes after takeoff, Flack pulled the control stick with his right hand, sending us into a 60-degree climb at something north of 400 mph.
The F-16's seats are pitched at 30 degrees, so a 60-degree climb feels like you're going up. We were flying at about 10,000 meters. It lasted about 30 seconds and hit us with 5.4 Gs, or more than five times the force of gravity. I weighed about 155 pounds, but at that speed, it felt like I weighed more than 800. Flack finished the four climbs and stretched us out in a slow roll. For a while, we were friends down there.
We entered the Farms, and Flack went around in 90-degree spins, then a bad 180-degree spin—a long hard pull and a steep corner. I got 6.2 Gs during the process. (Aircraft typically tolerate three or four during takeoff, and an F-16 and its pilot can handle nine.) Emergency operations are part of our G exercises, which are routine first. the plane can hit the crew with high Gs to be sure. An airplane, and anyone on it, can take stress. I didn't pass.
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It's hard to describe the terrifying feeling of pulling heavy Gs. It's an overwhelming feeling that pushes you back in your chair. It's hard to breathe. The force pushes blood away from your eyes and brain, which can give you tunnel vision. It's not uncommon for young children to feel stung by Gs—some even lose something—and shake it off like a pig with airsickness.
The Air Force occasionally gives reporters a ride in an F-16 when the Thunderbirds are in town. The group, the Air Force that made the Blue Angels, and their F/A-18 planes, the Navy, was formed in New York in May.
Pilots often refer to the F-16 as a "snake," a reference to the spaceships that appeared in the original Battlestar Galactica and the fact that the plane is so manoeuvrable, it seems to snap like a snake's head. (The official name is "The Fighting Falcon," but it's out: "viper" is cooler.)
Flack took me to an F-16D Block 52, a two-seater built in the early 1990s. It has a Pratt & Whitney F100 turbofan engine that provides more than 29,000 pounds of thrust and afterburner. Keep the car open, and if you have enough fuel to remove the cargo, the plane will fly up. I sat in the Aces 2 ejection seat, which I armed before take off by running a small blade.
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The Air Force added the F-16 to its fleet in 1979 and the aircraft is still in service today; the sleek, single-engine plane is lighter than the Navy and can travel at twice the speed of sound. It is known for its aggressiveness and ability to accelerate quickly from low speeds. "The F-16 was the most important aircraft of the late 20th century," said Air Force colonel Mike Torrealday (call sign, T-Day), who designed the aircraft for about 25, he was fired from another Utah. after the fire. failure. "This is probably one of the most powerful planes to fly."
Movies like Top Gun can't show the extraordinary complexity of a fighter jet that can, as T-Day puts it, "get 9 Gs in less than a second." Pilots are elite athletes and endure years of training to master the power of acceleration. This is important to avoid a problem called G-LOC (pronounced gee-lock), or G-induced loss of consciousness.
Before we were strapped to our snake, Flack and I wore G-suits—a highly visible vest worn over a flight suit that had a tube attached to the air vent. mid flight. As the pilots increase in speed, the suit fills with air as they bleed, compressing the legs and breathing. That prevents blood from pooling in the extremities, stopping in the chest and head and reducing the risk of losing consciousness.
More important than the equipment is an exercise called the anti-G-straining maneuver that requires strengthening of the calves, hamstrings, quads, and glutes while holding the stomach. Imagine sitting in an office chair, pulling your legs back as you rotate and pull forward. That helps keep blood flowing to your heart and brain, keeps your lights on and keeps you, as the pilots say, from falling asleep. Airplanes do this by rapidly inhaling and exhaling for three seconds or more by making a "keh" breath.
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Pilots quickly learn these techniques in a training flight and apply them to the centrifuge, learning to get it right—and get it wrong. Cheryl Lowry, a colonel in the Air Force, and a teaching physician at the University of Texas Medical Branch, said: "You can see someone almost melt in front of you if they don't do the right thing against G-straining.
You can't pull that many G's safely without wearing a suit and training. Your heart rate will increase as it struggles to keep the blood flowing upwards instead of pooling anywhere else. You will lose your front vision and be able to see colors before going blind for a while. "Once that's gone, you're at risk of having a G-LOC," Lowry said. When you realize it again - if the plane hasn't crashed - you will feel bad.
Pilots rarely get lost; According to Air Force statistics, it takes about 200,000 flight hours or more to produce one G-LOC. At least nine incidents have been reported in the past three years, including a death during a Thunderbirds practice in Nevada in April, 2018. Maj. Stephen Del Bagno after he felt a terrible 2 Gs (a condition that can occur if the plane is flying, causing blood to rush to the head), while flying face down before an 8.5-g dive. The Air Force concluded that the "push-pull" effect of those two extreme conditions destroyed Del Bagno's endurance to force and reduced the effectiveness of his G-straining technique, to arrive at G-LOC.
Computer code can help. The F-16 and some F-35s use a system called Auto-GCAS to avoid a crash if the pilot is lost. According to the Air Force, this method saved eight lives. But the Thunderbirds avoided technology because its pilots often flew at high altitudes and were confined, and did not want to risk being controlled by computer technology.
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Military pilots spend many years mastering the skills necessary to handle the challenging conditions of flying at high speeds. I have about four hours of training that covers the basics like what to do during an ejection. (One tip: "think tires and buses" when approaching power lines.)
Suffering a G-strain is "like taking a golf swing," says Jan Stepanek, a physician and chair of the Mayo Clinic's Aerospace Medicine Program in Scottsdale. Professional pilots like Flack rely on muscle memory to pull, to know how many G's they can withstand before they need it, and they do. I'm not sure I did it right.
Flack had another advantage over me: Since he was in control of the plane, he knew what was coming. Sickness traveling in a fighter jet, as in fact even in the back seat of a car, is caused by the disconnection of what your eyes see, the senses. Although I enjoyed a clear view of the sky and the land below (but not in front of me, because Flack's seat and other equipment blocked the view) on the bridge, the pressure I could hear in my ear my inner one was too big.
I enjoyed being on the plane—for an aviation enthusiast, it was one of the most stressful and stressful times of my life. But the chaos of it all adds up.
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