It is summer 1995 in Barkston Heath around 30 miles east of Nottingham, Lincolnshire, England,  when I am getting ready for a solo flight. Briefing is done, weather is forecasted to be sunny with a few clouds above 8000 ft, so perfect for what I was going to do. Indeed summer 1995 was one of my hottest summers so far. Anyways, I am about to get on that flight exercising my solo program for a checkflight which is scheduled for this week and this is going to be the final ride on my own. 

Back then I was flying fixed wing aircraft as part of my training - the Slingsby Firefly, a prop-aircraft to train future pilots and the new standard aircraft for Royal Navy pilot training back then. Fully certified for aerobatics and it could pull + 6g and - 3g (for all none-aviators present, 6g is six times earth gravity pull on you which makes you weigh 6 times as much as normal, which is worse than it sounds because it makes your blood leave your brain for lower parts of your body - most of the time this is your feet where the blood is needed least in these situations). What is really bad about this is that no blood in your brain = no thinking, no vision, no nothing. We call it blackout. There are several things you can and need to do to prevent yourself from blacking out and I´ll get to that in a minute.

So off I went into the training area slightly west of Barkston heath to exercise my solo program of aerobatics. Each of us students had to create an individual aerobatics program which would be practiced and evaluated during the training course. This week it was my turn to pass the check flight. 

The program was a number of different maneuvers pushing the aircraft and myself to the limits (reminder +6g and -3g) with wingovers, pedalturns, loops, hard turns etc..everything you see nowadays at a display on an airshow. Fun!

It was half way into the flight when I was rather satisfied with my program and how it went so far and decided to relax a little in a straight and level flight. 

Now pilots tend to get bored easily and this is when things become dangerous because for some reason we tend to create crazy ideas out of boredom. 

So it happened that I “discovered” that I never pulled thru a loop from an inverted flight. Well…..you get my drift. Still at level flight upright in my I decided to go ahead with this little “trial” and went inverted (now you are hanging in the straps and the blood - following gravity - is rushing into your head letting your brain swell). It is -1g at this time and the most unpleasant feeling is your brain touching the inner forehead. Time to end this and start the pull thru.  Now, a few things you learn during flight academics. One is that G-force increases with the speed of the turn/loop. So with the maneuver I was initiating - pulling thru a loop from an inverted flight - the golden rule is to pull back on engine power to reduce the speed when going thru the loop. If you miss that part, the descent sums up with the engine still at power cruise thereby increasing the speed of the aircraft, which in turn leads to a high rate of descent and to counteract you need to pull hard on the stick to tighten the loop. Otherwise you end up crashing into the far ends of the British landscape in Lincolnshire. Second is that in order to sustain high G-force you need to apply Anti-G-Measures to keep the blood in your head rather than letting it flood your feet. Rapid breathing exhales/inhales cycles of less than a second as well as muscles flexion which keeps pressure on the blood vessels in your legs keeping blood in the upper part of the body. With that and a little practice you can withstand a considerable G-load for some seconds.

And so I didn't notice my “error” of misjudging the consequences of my actions or simply being completely overconfident. 

Altitude 5000ft I pulled on the stick. 

The events of course took place in seconds. I realized what I had just done and what this would lead to. But already too far into the pull-thru I had no choice but to keep pulling and hope for the best. Stopping the maneuver and converting back to straight and level flight would have cost me more altitude then I had left. Besides the fact that I was losing the ability to think as - remember what we said above, G-forces make your blood leave your brain - my blood was in fact leaving my brain for my feet. Unfortunately, like many other humans I am not able to think with my feet. Hence I was left in the cockpit like a sitting duck slowly losing my vision - gray-out - and hearing before everything turned black and I lost consciousness - black-out. 

“That is it” I remember my last thought before it all turned black. 

The next thing I remember is my hearing returning and a blue color in my eyes. Strange I thought but then I realized, it was the blue sky and I pointed straight up. Still alive, that at least was good news, I seemed to have pulled back on the stick all the way thru, blacking myself out but not releasing the stick and hence completed the pull-thru with the aircraft ending straight up in the sky. For some unknown reason I came back when the aircraft was at that position and stopped the loop….I came back to my senses and did what everyone would have done….nothing….I let the aircraft do what it was built to do. Airspeed was bleeding off, the nose dropped and the aircraft recovered itself so I was sort of back to “normal” flight. 

“Well”….I thougth….”I almost managed to kill myself”…..my knees were shaking. Luckely I did not kill myself nor anyone else for that matter. With the aircraft recovered I flew straight and level for some more minutes to recover my brain and nerves wondering what the heck I just did?!

The rest of the flight was uneventful as I creeped back to the airfield saying a prayer after shutting down. 

What happened?

Basically I did everything wrong that I could have done wrong. And the funny thing is, none of this I learned during my training. So for some reason everything I learned went down the drain when I did this stunt. 

So in a nutshell

• I was an idiot!
• I was overconfident 
• I took an unnecessary and uncalculated risk 
• I did not prepare mentally for the maneuver 
• I did not think it thru and missed crucial parts hence missing to apply anti-g measures like muscles flexion and breathing rapidly
• I did not apply what I learned and missed to pull back the throttle
• I did not think about the consequences of my action

Error management at its worst. Well, it almost killed me. Just a little bit lower on altitude or a bit more G´s leaving me unconscious a bit longer…..you get the picture.

Lesson learned from it?

• It wasn't my time to leave mother earth
• Never rush into things without giving it a thought
• Consider the risk
• Stick to what you have learned 
• Be confident but stay away from overconfidence
• Apply your skills
• Think of the consequences and be conscious about your decisions

Error do occur and this example shows that some can be fatal. I was lucky to get away with it….this time, but I learned a significant lesson for the rest of my life. Which does not mean I never made a mistake again…..at least I never blacked myself out ever again…..

Oh by the way, the G-Meter read out showed +6Gs. Maybe because it just couldn't read more than 6 Gs…..we´ll never know.

to be continued……..

.