Re: [GZG] [SG] Cracking Eggs with a Sledgehammer, was Power

On Sat, 8 Oct 2005, Mike Stanczyk wrote:

> Do we have any pilots on the list?  What's average G tolerance for
> an untrained (non pilot) person? 6g?

A lot less than that, if you expect to remain awake and not vomiting
thru
the proceedings. 2-3g applied suddenly can do ugly things.

I've about 10hrs of aerobatic training, in a plane that's legal from
+7 to -2g; my personal maximums so far have been +3.5 and -1.5 or so.
+3.5 is OK; you're just heavy, tensing all the muscles in your trunk,
neck
and legs.

True negative G - below around -0.5 or so - is very, very odd,
especially
if you enter it abruptly from a +G situation. I did that once, blew a
spin exit and went from +2 down to around -1 -- your eyeballs feel like
they've just flipped inverted somehow, and all of a sudden you're tensed
in the wrong direction.

Accelerating into a negative G situation like that feels much different
from ordinary inverted flight, where you are of course subjected to -1G
while upside down.

Humans have a much, much lower tolerance for true negative
G/acceleration
than they do for positive G. -6G could probably kill even a healthy
person
- blood pressure going odd, especially inside the skull, and nasties
like
that.

And if local acceleration suddenly switches from +6 to -6, that's TWELVE
G
of acceleration, which strikes me as very ugly indeed.

(Remembering for the above the maxim that acceleration is locally
indistigushable from gravity...)

Brian.
www.warbard.ca/games.html

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