Centrifuge Training

Our Centrifuge profile:

4 G (640 pounds) for 45 seconds (0.1 G per second)
5 G (800 pounds) for 30 seconds (1 G per second)
6 G (960 pounds) for 30 seconds (6 G per second)
7.5 G (1200 pounds) for 15 seconds (6 G per second)
6 G (960 pounds) for 10 seconds "check 6" (6 G per second)


Wow. The centrifuge really did a beating on all of us this past Friday! The Air Force flew all of us over to Holloman AFB, New Mexico for the training, right in the middle of nowhere! If you aren't sure what the centrifuge training is, it's where you sit in a cockpit style chair inside a capsule that spins around a room. As the pod spins, it rotates to where you are "sitting" on the wall sideways instead of upright. The faster they make it spin, the more G load you experience. The above numbers are of the profile we all had to fly, with what the specific G load converts to for my body weight, along with the duration and the onset rate. As you can see, it's pretty intense!

Here is the inside of the capsule, with many many previous class stickers.

Here is the room that is spins around, and as it spins faster, the blue box where we sit rotates 90 degrees so you are "sitting" on the wall as it spins.

Overall I, along with the rest of the class who passed, scored average. Basically that means you are able to perform the Anti-G Straining Maneuver (AGSM) properly and stay conscious throughout each profile. The AGSM is where you take a 70-80% breathe, close your glottis (throat muscle) to block the air, squeeze your lower body muscles like your legs and abs, and perform an air exchange every 3 seconds briefly. It keeps the blood up in your head and not down in your legs, resulting in an increased G-tolerance. We got to wear our G-suit during the training which helps a bit, but only provides about 1.5G of resistance. If you don't know what I'm talking about, think about a rollercoaster going through a loop, except it doesnt stop and just keeps accelerating. The force that you would feel pushing you into the seat is what we are training to protect ourselves from because you can G-LOC yourself (G induced loss of consciousness) pretty fast in these aircraft.

This is me getting strapped in and the Airman about the close the door. She is showing me what I am supposed to look at during the profiles.

Surprisingly, the worst one for me was the very first profile, the gradual 4G pull with no AGSM. It is to figure out what your resting G tolerance is, give or take. I started to grey out towards the end, and I really thought I was in trouble. They see that alot in people with low blood pressure (runners especially, not that I've run much recently) and people who are dehydrated. I blame running, cause I was clear and copius for two days during this trip!

The next pull was 5G with a faster onset rate of 1G per second. This is where we got to "play" with our straining techniques and breathing, as well as see the effects of what one thing does over another, like squeezing your abs, and then your legs, and then neither or both, etc. It was pretty cool to see what works the best, and the lower body squeeze was definately the most important part for me.

The most difficult profile of them all was the third one, the rapid onset 6G for 30 seconds. Holy cow, I've never felt anything like this. It wasn't so much that it was a large number of Gs, it was the fact that we had to hold it for that long. They are constantly reminding you to breath, squeeze your butt, squeeze your legs, breath, etc. It doesnt sound that hard now, but when you are actually doing it, you really can forget to breath or squeeze. Gladly, I didn't experience any greying out during this one.

The 7.5G for 15 seconds was a bittersweet mix. I didn't mind it actually, because even though it was more intense, it was for half the time as the previous. Although, I did lose about 25% of my periphial vision, but some extra squeezing of the buttocks got that right back. In my debrief, they actually told me that is what they are looking for more than never losing any sight at all, because they want to see that we recognize and react to the loss, not that we just dont lose any sight at all.

The "check 6" was not too bad either. They have you slowly (and I mean slowly) turn your head to the right until you can see a red LED "8" about 130 degrees behind you, and then put you through the rapid 6G onset for 10 seconds. They also make you breath without the reminders, which like I said, sounds easy now, but you'd be surprised! The reason I say turn your head slowly is because (and I tested this earlier in the ride) if you turn fast, your equilibrium is all messed up and you really REALLY feel like you are tumbling all over the place! It is quite the ride!

Once you complete your profiles, you get out and are just wiped. You get to just sit on the couch and catch your breath and regain some strength, but it only gets worse. Everyone got "G-sles" which are little red dots where the capillaries near your skin surface have burst, and it looks like mini measles from the Gs. It also makes you feel like you just worked out every muscle in your body, mainly the butt and legs. Everyone was walking funny the rest of the trip to say the least.

It was nice to get the experience, although we wont be pulling 6 G turns for 30 seconds anytime soon in our jets, but we will have to go back to the centrifuge once we find out what aircraft we will fly in order to complete that specific profile, and some of them get up to 9Gs for 30 seconds. Wow.

The rest of the time there we went out to eat at Chilis and then went back and experienced Holloman's O-Club. It wasnt the greatest, but we ended up leaving and going to the bowling alley, which was a blast. I'm not going to lie, there were breverages being served and some pretty good bets going for the gutter balls, and at the end of the night the bumpers were definately up. Mike took the pictures while we were at the centrifuge, so all I have at the moment to share are of bowling.



Look at that form!

I wasn't too happy about missing that last pin, but at least it wasn't a gutter ball. If you threw a gutterball, you owed a dollar to the pot for more.......soda. haha!