I was leaning that way in interpreting the
facial expression, Al. {:>)
I flew over 2500 hours in the Military, mostly
in B-52 Bombers and EB-66 escorts, I was not infrequently asked whether I had
ever bailed out (Nope!) or whether I had any desire for the experience (Nope!).
Of course, in our case, Bail-out involved,
jettison the ejection hatch during some dire emergency exposing you to the near
vacuum and cold of 30,000- 40,000 + Feet, followed by a 20mm shell exploding
under your butt, which compressed you down to 2/3 you normal sitting height as
it blew you out of the aircraft into 400+Kt windsteam. This exciting
ejection event (even more exciting if you forgot to retract your limbs inside
the safe ejection profile) was followed by being hit in the face by
a barely sub-mach air stream which could (and did) break limbs, air blast your
face, etc. If you remembered to lower your face shield – most of
that could be avoided and your oxygen mask provided some projection against
your lungs being over inflated by this airstream
Then if everything went right and you had
remember to activate you 2000 psi emergency oxygen bottle (which forced oxygen
into your lungs at such a pressure and rate – you would swear you were
going to blow up like a balloon because of the effort it took to exhale against
this flow), you fell for 20,000-30,000 ft hoping your parachute was packed
by the best in the parachute shop until it forcible opened. Then if you
were lucky and avoided landing in mountain crags, tops or trees (or heaven
forbid – water) safely, you could wait hours or perhaps days to be
picked up.
Fortunately, I missed that exciting event,
but tales of those who had not, sort of colored my viewpoint about leaving a
perfectly good aircraft.
So NO, never really interested {:>)
Ed
From: Rotary motors in aircraft
[mailto:flyrotary@lancaironline.net] On
Behalf Of Al Gietzen
Sent: Monday, May 31, 2010 2:33 AM
To: Rotary
motors in aircraft
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: Sky dive
[off subject]
I generally glide WITH my
airplane {:>) – Looks like you are either having the time of your life
or scared sh…..s, can’t quite tell from the expression on your face
{:>)
That is ‘wind augmentation’ of a smile. Pictures snapped during the first couple seconds out of the plane look more like the ‘scared sh…..s’ variety. I don’t recall feeling scared – just feeling a hell of an adrenalin rush – or is that the same thingJ?
Al