Thought of the Day... Flying & G-forces

 


When flying and pulling 6G (6 times gravity) your body is, naturally, subject to a lot of stress. At 6G your heart and other internal organs are pulled down 6 inches - which would pretty well put them in the pit of your stomach by your belly button (hmmm, of concern to dribble03)...

Your body can handle positive G (+'ve) a lot better than it can negative G (-'ve G) because all the blood in your body is being pulled from the heart towards your feet. Heading that way you have a lot more muscles and volume in your body to deal with such excess force & transfer. However, under -'ve G all of that
blood pressure is forced up into your head and brain where there is nothing to control it (apart from the few muscles in your neck) .

Accordingly, under +'ve G you can handle up to 6G normally (if trained for it) and with a G-suit up to 9G (and some military pilots are trained to take up to 12G - which, if you weighed 80KG, would make your body feel like it weighed 960KG to all of you tendons & muscles etc). Under -'ve G you can only handle 2 or maybe 3 -ve G. At that point, apart from having a major headache for the rest of the day, you will start to burst the fine capillaries in your eyes and begin to cause serious damage.

It is however - the Sport of Kings...

and don't forget - Flexibility is the key to Airpower...

Flying in Jets

This is not smoke resulting from a fire, rather air condensing into cloud due to the the high forces generated by this tight turning manoeuvre (I won't go into it unless you ask nicely). Next time you're on a commercial flight getting airborne on a moist morning (i.e. moisture laden air), you might see the same effect on, or trailing, the wings - to a much lesser degreee (if it looked like this you probably are on fire!).

Note the fire in the tailpipes, which is an immediate sign of 'afterburner' being used. Effectively, afterburner is achieved when AvGas (highly flammable Aviation Gas) is injected directly into the exhaust pipe (not very efficient but it sure as heck makes the puppy fly).