Monday, September 12, 2011

Belcher Bench

We are in the middle of the first section of academics, Physiology. This section covers the human body and how it reacts in a flight environment. We've gone over subjects like altitude threats, pressurization, vision, G-forces and spatial disorientation. Some of the stuff we go over we get to demo. Friday we had a night vision demo. It mainly consisted of sitting in a dark room and telling the instructor (who you couldn't see), "No, I have no idea what the image on the screen is," because it looked like this:
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Or just guessing, "airplane," because that was usually it. Great fun and made everyone sleepy.

Today was much more interactive but had a much less calming affect. Today the instructor demonstrated spatial disorientation (basically motion sickness) by putting us through the barany chair demo.


This is not the actual chair we sat in but it looks just like it. We each took turns sitting in the chair and getting spun. The instructor had different people demonstrate different forms of spatial disorientation, usually by having us put our head somewhere other than erect. I got spun around for a good 20 seconds with my head erect and then was told to put my right ear on my right shoulder. A nanosecond after it felt like I was being thrown out of the chair and that my stomach was no longer anywhere near my body. The same sensation came when my head tilted left, up or down. Horrible, horrible, horrible. Worst thing ever. After the instructor stopped the chair I realized I was sweating almost profusely, felt too much like throwing up and didn't fully recover until two hours later when I was able to lie down in my room for 15 minutes. If one was on the verge of deciding whether to go fighters or cargo this demo would most def solidify the heavies. Everyone else who did that same demo had the same reaction as well and swore a lot so I don't have to feel like a weenie about this. It was reaaallly funny to watch other people do it until it was your turn. After that looking at the chair made your stomach upset.

So far the in-class demonstrations have not impressed me.

1 comment:

  1. You make me laugh out loud. I got sick just thinking about it and need to go have a 'lie-down' now.

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