From his office at M5, Adam tells us what it’s like to fly in an F/A-18 with the Blue Angels. We talk about everything from launch to the _very_ special exercises you need to remain conscious under high-G forces. Trust us, you don’t want to miss this episode of Still Untitled.
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Obviously, you need to compare the experience of flying in a real jet to flying a sim of that jet.
Man, I love these adam podcasts
i think it’s a play on adams constant building of stuff… maybe? Although I think “work in progress” seems more suiting to his character.
Man, if you guys get to sit in the back of a F/A 18, I will be very jealous. VERY jealous.
But great podcast! I love Adam’s stories
FYI All active Navy/Air Force pilots wear gsuits (as far as I know anyway). It’s only the blue angels who avoid them because they have to be in constant formation a couple of feets away from other plane where the slightest movement could be fatal. That kind of flying requires far more precision than normal flight operations.
And fun fact, they only use super old planes for the Blue Angels (aka no Super Hornet). The logic behind that is that you don’t take the best planes off the front line for a demonstration unit.
I remember that Mythbusters episode, Adam did indeed look completely insane.
Adam has it completely wrong at 4:00 on. A G-suit does nothing more than restrict the ability of your blood to pool in your lower extremities. It doesn’t do anything more or less. The funny noise he was making is taught to pilots to force their blood up from the abdomen where it has been stopped by the G-suit and pushes it back into the upper body, and eventually your head. It’s usually referred to as “The Hook maneuver” because it basically sounds like someone grunting out the word “hook” very forcefully. That’s why if you do it at home you get really redfaced. You are forcing the blood back into your head, the G-Suit doesn’t do that for you.
The G-Suit doesn’t inflate until you hit a certain G limit (usually about 1.5-2G), and only while you are under that stress. At no other time is it inflated, and has zero effect on their ability to control the aircraft during a trap on a boat. They aren’t pulling any G while doing that, and the suit isn’t inflated. The Blue Angels don’t wear them because of vanity reasons more than anything. They don’t want to walk in formation down a flight line look all smart and having their shit together while having the hoses from a G-Suit are flapping around looking bad. The Hook maneuver is more important and vital for them because they don’t have the added support of a G-Suit to stop their blood pooling. If they couldn’t wear them while landing on a boat, there’s no way in hell they could wear them while dogfighting. The forces they endure during a dogfight are much higher and more frequent than an airshow will ever produce so that’s either a misconception on his part, or the squids were screwing with him. New designs are out, and I say new to the military meaning they are probably about 30 years old, that use water instead of air. Less prone to failure and completely self contained.
Just figured I’d clear that up being an ejection seat mechanic, an F/A-18 mechanic that worked on the G-Suit system, and very familiar with pilot gear because my sister shop literally built them from scratch. I’ve worked on quite a few of their birds as well. Good story though. I only got to go about 150 mph in the back seat of one while taxiing, and they accelerate much quicker than it looks from far away. There’s also some serious embellishing going on in the story he’s telling, but I won’t ruin the fun.
A ride in a supersonic fighter jet sounds like an incredible experience but I don’t think I could manage to stay aware and not preoccupied with nausea enough to get as much out of the experience as I would like. My older brother flies turbo prop planes and has taken me up for rides on a few occasions. Even the mild positive and negative g maneuvers he would pull in those planes to mess with me were more than sufficient for me to feel awful for the rest of the day. I held the pencil on my knee and watched it float as we went in to a dive. That was cool. My stomach pulling the same maneuver inside my body wasn’t quite so cool. :/
The best part was seeing Will and Norm’s face light up at the fact that Adam was willing to just call up the Angels and get them a ride. The joy and wonder at the prospect that this is their job now, that they are in, has to be amazing.
Man, imagine the Will Smith face we could get if he flew with the Blue Angels. His lockpicking face would be nothing in comparison.
My idea for a title: Savage Explanation.
First, HKZ is absolutely correct about G-suits not interfering with the pilot during a carrier landing approach. Please clarify for your listeners that are uninformed.
Second, please also retract the statement that Yuma is the only place you can go Supersonic over land in the US. That is definitely not correct. There are a few places you can fly supersonic in the United States. They are not large areas, but a couple of them are accessible from Yuma. There is another area farther north than that. Otherwise, it is over the ocean we go.
Third, Megasoum is also correct. The Blue Angels are the “only” F/A-18 pilots that do not wear G-Suits. When they return to the Operational Navy after the tour, they resume wearing them on every flight. There is a reason the BA’s do not. They started wearing very slim ones under their clothes a few years ago following a suspected Blue Angel G-Loc accident. That event and subsequent policy change may have happened after Adam’s flight. I don’t know if they have rescinded that policy or not. He is also correct, those planes are VERY old. Their airframes usually have only a couple years left of flying when they get them. No, I have not finished the episode, but Adam could probably confirm, a large percentage of their weapon systems are removed from the aircraft.
No, I have never flown in a F/A-18, but I have personally worked with over 200 pilots on and off in that community on various projects I have done in my 16 year carrier aviation flying career.
The airplanes are pretty old, all of them are old Alpha models, and anything that isn’t used solely to keep the airplane flying is removed. Literally. They are as bare bones as an flying fighter aircraft can be. He’s either embellishing almost all of the things the aircrew told him, or they were really screwing with him because about 80% of what he’s saying isn’t true. It makes for a good tale, but it’s strictly false. (I worked on about a dozen of their aircraft in my short career, but I wasn’t in the Blue Angels)
The episode Adam is talking about first aired June 10th 2009. I believe he has said that it takes about 6 months for one of their stories to make it on air, so his flights likely took place in late 2008 or early 2009. Maybe that would be before the slim g-suits?
This was amazing to listen to.
Really enjoy these short podcasts with Adam alongside the regular length podcast.
i do love this podcast! so funny
This was an awesome episode of mythbusters!
This was an awesome episode of mythbusters!
Has Tested.com taken a look at getting Norm or Will into an F/A-18?