SEATTLE -- In a hard bank in an F/A-18 Hornet, gravity does its best to suck you through your shoes.
Every cell obeys gravity's summons, plummeting downward as if it were six times their normal weight. Blood that normally flows
through your head takes a sudden trip south to your lower extremities, every muscle of which you've clenched to keep from passing out.
Sometimes, it doesn't work. Sometimes, people black out for a moment, until the precious blood is allowed back inside the cranium.
At least that's what happened to me during a flight yesterday aboard one of the Navy's Blue Angel jets.
"It's different for different people," says Lt. Scott "Yogi" Beare, who flies with the Blue Angels. "Some people black out at 2 or 3."
That's 2 or 3 G-forces, when gravity angrily sucks you earthward at a rate two or three times its normal pull.
For pilots like Beare, who gave media flights yesterday in advance of the weekend's Seafair air show over Elliott Bay, 2 G's -
or even 6 - is no sweat. The typical show includes maneuvers that pull up to 7.5 G's.
The Angels are returning to Seattle after a two-year absence. Once a 21-year staple between heats of hydroplane racing during the
annual festival, the high-speed acrobatic flight team was denied Federal Aviation Administration permission to fly over crowded Lake
Washington.
In bringing them back, Seafair launched a new event, SummerFest, a week after the hydroplanes competed for the Texaco Cup. And instead of flying over Lake Washington, which the FAA said posed problems because of the proximity of boats and spectators, the team will fly over Elliott Bay off Myrtle Edwards Park.
An area 3.2 miles long and 3,000 feet wide over the bay will be cleared of all vessels during the Angels' practices and performances Saturday and Sunday.
Crowds lined the tarmac at Seattle's Boeing Field and the road along Airport Way South yesterday for the team's 1:25 p.m. arrival. The six demonstration planes flew from the Blue Angels' home base in Pensacola, Fla.
"All right, guys. Good to have you back," one woman screamed as the last pilot stepped off his plane parked south of Boeing's Museum of Flight.
Beare, a graduate of the Navy Fighter Weapons School, conducts all of the Blue Angels' media flights - about 135 per year - and narrates the show. He's scheduled to become a member of the Blue Angels' demonstration team next year.
Yesterday, he piloted three journalists in 30-to-45 minute loops over Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains. Reaching speeds of up to 600 mph, Beare showed off some of what the team does on its 330-day travel schedule and even let the journalists take control of the $28 million jet. I managed an awkward loop over Puget Sound.
Strapping into a supersonic jet means more than simply going along for the ride.
"It's hard work," warned aviation-electronics technician Ronnie Harper, Beare's crew chief, before the flight. "You won't believe how hard it is."
Indeed, the experience is exhausting and athletic for the untrained passenger. Even flying with the wings level to the horizon means fighting the 35 pounds of pressure on the stick, which would lean forward and send the nose earthward if left unattended.
And to ward off those nasty G-forces that can cause you to black out and miss the scenery, fliers of jet aircraft are taught the "hook maneuver."
The premise is simple: keep as much blood as possible in your head when it really wants to rush to your feet by clenching every muscle in the lower extremities. Then grunt out the word "hook" (or another like it), holding out the last sound so that the stomach tightens.
In short, flying an F/A-18 Hornet is as hard as it looks. Pilots must be confident, fit and quick-witted to get the best performance out of the aircraft.
"It's not like flying Delta," Harper says.