Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
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By davef77
#1803443
No, really! :shock:

I decided that today I was going to start working towards flying my first Unlimited sequence.

I am not ready to put everything together yet, so it will probably be a while before I can fly a whole sequence, but I have a 'nice' Unlimited Free Known, that I can use to practice.

It starts with this:

Image

For the uninitiated, that is 1 1/2 rolls followed by an outside loop with a negative flick roll at the top (aka an outside avalanche) and a 2x4 roll on the down line.

My neg flicks aren't very good so this is a good figure to practice to improve them. I flew it about 4 times, by then I had a bit of a headache from all that neg G. So I started flying some push-humptys (vertical line half outside loops to vert down) but with a neg flick in the middle - it saved the hard push at the start of the outside loop!

I flew quite a lot of those :shock:

When I had enough of that I flew a bunch of neg-flicks on various lines 45-up, 45-down and level - not tried on the vertical yet.

Once I had had enough of that I moved on to this:

Image

Again for Aresti non-readers, that is a vertical line with two full rolls on the way up, followed by a wheels-down tail-slide and 1 1/2 rolls on the way down.

The hard part of this is really the 2 rolls on the way up, rolling twice, and stoping accurately is very difficult - but then I remember when vertical half rolls were hard, so I suppose that they will improve with practice.

I stopped when I started to feel a bit sick and my eyes hurt - from all the negative G. I was mostly pushing about -4 but sometimes more.

It is now about 5 hours later and my eyes still hurt a little bit.

I think that I am probably too old to ever fly Unlimited aerobatics competitively, but I am working hard on getting better at flying Advanced aeros, and the experts tell me that "practicing a level-up" is a good way to improve.

It's funny the things that we do for fun isn't it!
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By Miscellaneous
#1803444
davef77 wrote:It's funny the things that we do for fun isn't it!

:lol: :lol: Indeed. I don't even understand your post never mind the manoeurvres.

I'd be happy to give it a go with you flying though. :thumright:
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By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1803456
davef77 wrote:I stopped when I started to feel a bit sick and my eyes hurt - from all the negative G. I was mostly pushing about -4 but sometimes more.

It is now about 5 hours later and my eyes still hurt a little bit.

I'll never forget some things Alan Cassidy said to me once, he was talking about negative G. There was the eyes hurting of course, at the beginning.... and then the headaches.

He said it's best to leave it a few days when the headaches start.

Considering I was still a bit nauseous 36 hours after my spinning lesson with him, I thought I'd probably not bother with the negative G manoeuvres. However, I didn't actually hurl, and I still managed to land the Pitts at the end (G-STUA I think it was, quite a few years ago now). Apart from feeling quite ill, I did have a lot of fun in those short sessions. So I figured I was still winning :)

Respect to anyone that can do it!!
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By Hooligan
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1803479
Might be able to put my mits on a John Blake "pome" about Aresti - I'll have a search after din dins...
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By flyguy
#1803641
Good for you for tackling unlimited level manoeuvres fella! If we're not pushing ourselves then we're not improving.

I had similar mild headaches when I started flying a lot of negative G and always stopped when it started to get uncomfortable. As with all of these things, with time and practice the discomfort went away - although pushing -4 or -5 is always going to get your attention!

A number of years on and I'm comfortably flying about the equivalent of two or three unlimited sequences per day. Hopefully you'll be surprised by how quickly your body adapts to the acceleration. Good luck with your work-up - and never forget that it's supposed to be fun!! :D :D
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By carlmeek
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1803644
Meanwhile I’m finding flying 20 minutes of the simpler stuff +4/-1 pretty hard work on the body. No nausea, just feels like a workout.

-4 sounds nuts. Respect!
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By davef77
#1803798
carlmeek wrote:Meanwhile I’m finding flying 20 minutes of the simpler stuff +4/-1 pretty hard work on the body. No nausea, just feels like a workout.

-4 sounds nuts. Respect!


High-G is physically quite hard work. Certainly after flying an Advanced sequence I land feeling pretty wrung out sometimes.

There is a good recording here of British Team Unlimited pilot, Phil Burgess, flying with a heart-rate monitor.

Phil is younger, fitter and a much better pilot than me, and is flying more difficult stuff, but this *is* a workout he goes from 179 BPM while pulling +8G and down to 59BPM while pushing -5G:

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By davef77
#1803800
Rob L wrote:If it hurts, stop doing it. Aerobatics is like divorces: too many of them hurt quite a lot.


I can kind of sympathise with that, and also not.

It is a sport, and like any sport if you want to get better at it it takes work and some discomfort too. For people like me who enjoy the sport, the discomfort is worth it.

I don't think that this very different to any other form of flying really.

I can remember owning aeroplanes that ALWAYS seemed to be at the back of the hangar when I turned up to fly. The first hour was spent moving aeroplanes to get at the the one that I was going to fly. The last hour was spent putting them back. Some of them were damned heavy!

I flew an open-cockpit biplane for a while. I can assure you that that was significantly more painful, in the winter, than flying +9G for a few seconds.

I have flown in weather that pushed my personal limits a bit closer to the edge than I prefer - a very different kind of "hurt" for sure.

I think that the discomfort, or hurt. is relative, and it seems, to me, to be part of the cost, and the fun.

It is part of the way that I take the advice of the poet - "do not go gentle into that good night". :)

You have got to live a little! 8)
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By davef77
#1803811
carlmeek wrote:Meanwhile I’m finding flying 20 minutes of the simpler stuff +4/-1 pretty hard work on the body. No nausea, just feels like a workout.

-4 sounds nuts. Respect!


I'd also add that is surprising how you adapt. I very clearly remember struggling to keep my whits while pulling +4 and pushing -1. It is weird at first.

I can clearly recall, when I moved into a Pitts thinking, "well, I can't ever see me being able to pull +6 or push -3!". Then a year or two on and that was a normal practice session.

When I moved into my CAP I thought, "I am certainly never going to need +10/-10 G", now I use most of the plus G and a reasonable fraction of the minus and to be honest, it doesn't feel much worse than when I was flying the Pitts at +4 and -2.

It surprises me the degree to which the human body, and psychology, can adapt to something as extreme and weird as advanced aerobatics.

It is certainly true that somehow you build tolerance for more as you learn and train. That is really what I am doing, and what started this thread.

I am just nibbling away at the edges of my current personal envelope. I don't know when my body will say - "Enough!". If I am close to that limit, then I am overjoyed at being able to fly to the level that I do now - something that certainly felt unattainable when I started out in competition flying.

Now I am thinking, "I have an aeroplane that can do it, and I can certainly learn to fly some of those Unlimited figures, so let's see how far I can go". My horizons have expanded as my experience and capability has expanded. I love that competition flying has given me that. :D

As I said at the start, I do doubt that, at my age, that I can compete at Unlimited, but if I can learn to fly one Unlimited sequence I will feel a great sense of achievement from that. At that point - who knows what comes next :D 8)
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By flyingeeza
#1804315
davef77 wrote:
Rob L wrote:If it hurts, stop doing it. Aerobatics is like divorces: too many of them hurt quite a lot.


I can kind of sympathise with that, and also not.

It is a sport, and like any sport if you want to get better at it it takes work and some discomfort too. For people like me who enjoy the sport, the discomfort is worth it.
It is part of the way that I take the advice of the poet - "do not go gentle into that good night". :)

No pain, no gain. Simple innit.
Bloody hooligans... :lol:
Big respect. :thumright:
Best of luck for future comps @davef77
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By ROG
#1804683
I admire those guys who can fly aerobatics---but after a few manoeuvres I decided that it wasn"t for me.
My idea of a challenge is landing the PA-180 on a tennis court---again not for everyone.