@chipwich came up with the idea of a thread featuring funny stories from the aviation industry. A Great idea!
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Meh Iâll go first
Weight and balance people.
I did a trial lesson for a guy, had about 60 hours under my belt and was on top of the world at being chosen by my school to do a bit of experience flying. Free flying for me, great drills and a wonderfully exciting feeling to be âthe teacherâ
Iâm 10 stone â â â â wet through btw.
Took this guy up. 17 stone. Tl-dr we were over weight fully fueled. I cocked up the weight and balance. hard. I had planned on being in a rotax engined falke half full of fuel not a stehr one with 20hp less and fully tanked
We taxi out, line up, Gun it.
I knew INSTANTLY this wasnt good. We used the whole runway and, i believe only got airbourne due to a fairly substantial bump at the end of the runway about 50 yards from the hedge.
Now, i forgot mention, that about 400 yards beyond the boundaries are 4 wind turbines, normally not even the slightest obstacle.
On this flight, i had to crawl around them 100ft off the ground, 60 knots begging for altitude.
Normally, id be at 500 ft. Easy peasy. Customer is having the time of his life, loving every second. I am nearly crying trying to get either speed or altitude. I am already fretting about landing. 2 minutes into flying.
We get to about 2k feet, all is actually fine. Fly around a bit and let him have control and play albeit gently. Come in for landing and on final, can see the owner of the plane, his mrs and the chairman of the club.
Genuinely, i â â â â â â â grease it. Perfection
We taxi in, owner of the plane says, âhow much you weigh?â I reply â5 stoneâ absolutely dripping sweat and soaked
He replys, âthats what i thought you said in your preflight, you good?â
I reply, âIâm gonna buy a calculator, Iâm good. No dramaâ
Next customer was a (tidy) girl about the same size as me, felt like i was flying a tomcat after the big guy! We were at 600 ft by the turbines and climbing like hell. Iâve never felt so free 
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OK. If you mean by funny, absolutely sphincter tightening & terrifying.
I might have one or two 
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OK then, I have posted this before. It was on exercise at Shoalwater Bay, one of our bigger training areas, for the annual Brigade level ex.
I was no longer a tankie, had transferred to Intelligence Corps and was a CPL, surveillance detachment commander (very similar role to the US Army LRS). We were deploying by Blackhawk to set up an OP and as the Det commander, I got to sit between the loadies with a headset so I could see out front and communicate with the pilot/s. The other four guys in my âcrewâ were sitting fat, dumb and happy at the back with hearing protection.
Anyway⊠There we are, nap of the earth and as we raced over the saddle in a ridgeline instead of a valley there was a sizable hill directly ahead. Something like this but without the cloud:
That was when I heard what no passenger ever wants to hear a pilot say - "Oh, F@ckâ
The next sequence of events only took seconds but it seemed an eternity. The pilot reefed the aircraft around, approaching a 90 degree bank and as I looked over at the starboard loadmaster, he was as white as I probably was and mouthed the word âsorryâ. Behind him I could see the rotor chopping through the top of the trees⊠Looked back at my guys and they all had â â â â eating grins on their faces, my 2IC even gave a thumbs up. They thought we were getting a âjoy rideâ. Ignorance definitely is bliss!
Put down in the nearest clearing. Waited about an hour for another Blackhawk to show up, mechanics got off, we got on and continued the mission.
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I mean tanks can fly, canât they? Well, maybe turrets. 
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JFC
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Thatâs a good one HB. Damn close shave it sounds like.
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Iâve only puked in the back seat of a Viper. Does that count 
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Of course it counts. Even though Iâm not using them, I would give my left nut for a ride in a fast jet.
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With fast jets, i always imagine the actual experience to be hellish. You imagine the suave smile, the acceleration and the fighter pilot swagger
But Iâm sure in actual fact its absolutely bloody awful when you leave the ground. Like being beaten up.
Iâd still do it though if got the chance
My stepdad went up in an RAF phantom. His exact description of the flight âyeah, it was pretty good!â
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Same. Old friend of mine (he was an Eagle driver; I never flew with him sadly) told me I was doing it the âhard wayâ by only going up every few years - to get my arse kicked. Not a good way to acclimate to the physical experience.
There were two types of âridesâ:
-
Incentive Ride: Itâs about you, ie; you won an award or a PR thing (like when you see news people or celebrities)
-
You just jump into the back seat (F-16 or T-38 in my case) on a training mission: low-level LANTIRN training with a popup attack at the end (the one I puked on); BFM, etc.
Number one ainât so bad; you can sayâŠâmake it [the pain] go awayâ and it becomes a 1-G sight-seeing tour.
Number two, tuff luck buddy. The mission takes priority. At my current age and physical status Iâd probably spend most of my time asleep (ie; BFM) on Number 2. Not sure i would do a number 2 againâŠso to speak.
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It can beâŠat least at first.
Your parachute harness and G-suit, if properly fit, should be so tight that you canât stand
up straight.
Same, same once you strap in. On my first T-2 flight, I dropped a glove and had to have the 5ft nothing female plane captain stick her head down between my legs to get it. I couldnât bend over to reach it myself!
Itâs also fair to say that Iâve never had a job where I spent so much time carefully adjusting my âpackageââŠâcause, wherever they wind up when you tighten those straps is where they are going to stay for the next couple of hours!
The Oxygen mask is also a skill based event. A bit like speaking with a modest garden hose to the face, shoving O2 rather than water down your throat. This also needs to be tight as an Alien facehuggerâŠunless you want your chin to get all the Oxygen when you pull Gs.
Which, of course is why you are there in the first place!
Itâs an interesting experience and @smokinhole could probably tell you more about it as I assume that he doesnât wear a G suit.
A couple of Gs is fun as your parts get heavy. Higher G (Iâve never pulled more than 8) is fine, if a little less pleasant.
I remember feeling a little beat up after any day of 3 BFM flightsâŠa little like heavy weightliftingâŠwhich I guess it was. After awhile, you would start to feel the âmeatâ of your body pressing down on your bones, like a little Arthritis advance preview.
It was also pretty usual to get a little bruised up or get âG measlesâ from flying a lot, as you ruptured capillaries here and there.
I also distinctly recall hearing the liquid being squeezed from the discs in my neck, especially when your 80lb head was pinned against the canopy while looking across the circle at the other guy.
It was nothing to get too teary about, certainly not compared to busting down doors in Bagdad, but an odd amount of abuse from what essentially constitutes sitting in a recliner!
Still, if you tried it once, youâd sell your soul to do it again. And the more you did it, the less you noticed all the little âinconveniencesâ.
Plus, when it was you at the controls, it always felt much better.
Which made being an instructor something of an adjustmentâŠespecially if the student was a littleâŠenthusiastic.
CrapâŠnow I miss it.
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Iâve often wondered about this: when I took charters out, and the sea got âlumpyâ, if someone was turning green Iâd let them drive the boat. Always worked. Almost always. On my first Low-level (and HOT, with a helmet that didnât fit, etc) I was topping off my SECOND airsick bag when the the driver says, âyou wanna fly it?â. The moment I grabbed the stick I felt fine. Very little maneuvering on my part, just a few 'G". Was shocking how quick the ugliness in my gut went away none the less.
I paid for not doing this enough on my first BFM (F-16) ride. Long story Iâve probably already regurgitated here somewhere
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Yeah, you think your straps are tight until you find yourself wondering how you wound up with your face smushed against the canopy!
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A friend of mine had an aerobatics rating and his club had a Victa Airtourer, the civvy version of the RAAF CT-4 primary trainer.
He took me up once and we threw it around the sky for about 30 minutes (to do aeros it had to be light on fuel). It was rated for +6 G and we saw a bit over 4 pulling out of the loop and 2 during some tight turns.
At 2 G I was really feeling it, but 4 didnât seem twice as bad as 2
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What a beautiful aircraft!
Yeah, I wouldnât say that one G feels measurably worse than another⊠it just requires a little more squeezing and I think your Anti G Straining Maneuver needs to be better.
In other words, 8G doesnât feel tremendously different than, say, 6 or 4. You just feel the effects of not counteracting them more.
IIRC, most people can do about 4G with no AGSM and no G suit.
Higher G requires a better strain obviously, though some are just better at tolerating it.
Another nice thing about being the guy pulling on the stick is that you can modulate your pull with your AGSM. So you can keep from GLOCing yourselfâŠunless you yank on the pole too suddenly, or without preparation, at which point you might be going to sleep!
But if youâre the one along for the ride, then you are at the tender mercies of the guy at the controlsâŠwho should be nice and not do the old, âBreak Left!ââŠ
âŠand then turn right!
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I donât recall anyone ever telling me what to do (youâd think they would) on any of these flights. Somehow I just had an idea. Maybe from a book or TV show.
The BFM rides we would max out at 7.5 (the most allowed by the configuration) several times. I
distinctly recall getting tunnel vision (with everything turning gray) and being somewhat mesmerized by watching the tunnel, that was now my FOV go iiiiinnnnnn, ouuuutttttt base on how hard he was pulling.
Hole got pretty small once or twice. Freaking wore me out. I was 40-ish on my last one and in pretty good shape. Or so I thought.
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