G it s a wild ride
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All teeth and swagger, Tom Cruise made flying in a high-performance aircraft look easy in the 1986 schlockbuster Top Gun. Well, it's not. It's like riding the world's nastiest roller-coaster in a straitjacket with a truck parked on your chest. As the blood rushes to your extremities, leaving your head giddy and fingers throbbing, waves of nausea rush from stomach to mouth. "It's OK to vomit," I am told repeatedly, "but if you do, turn off the microphone - the pilot doesn't want to hear it."
When SBS invited this deskbound journalist to take a jet flight to promote the reality series Real Top Guns, they didn't have to ask twice. A medical check and a security clearance later, I find myself at the RAAF's Williamtown base with three other journalists.
We are driven to the headquarters of the 76th "Panther" Squadron to be briefed by Wing Commander Ted Schneider, a lanky, laconic American who moved to Australia years ago. A fighter pilot from central casting, he makes it clear we are in for some serious flying. We are to go up in Hawk 127s, the RAAF's training jets, for an aerial combat exercise - two planes at a time, playing cat and mouse.
"We're going to pull some Gs," Schneider says, using little model planes on sticks to demonstrate some of the manoeuvres we'll be doing. "It's a hell of a lot of fun."
The next few hours are spent preparing for the flight. First stop is a small demountable amid the runways where we are fitted with our flying gear - overalls, boots, G-suit, vest, helmet, mask, each item a perfect fit. For the first of many times that day I am given way too much information to absorb. I nod blankly as they talk about survival whistles, knives to cut through the parachute after ejecting into the ocean, how to set off a flare, how to remove the mouthpiece if I need to throw up and where to store the "vombag" for easy access.
Next, a drive across the base for a medical check by an RAAF doctor. He suggests a useful exercise to avoid passing out when the pressure kicks in. It involves clenching your body then breathing out violently, forcing blood back to your brain.
Then he gives some unexpected advice: "When you're up there, burp and fart as much as you can. Don't worry, the pilot can't hear you or smell you." Now that's something you'll never hear in Top Gun.
I am still digesting this information when we are given our pre-flight briefing, during which we are told who our pilot will be (I get Schneider). We're also given an overview of the exercise. After this, we sit down to watch a 20-minute video, which provides another litany of important facts to forget, relayed in a grim voice with ominous music in the background. At one point we are told of "catastrophic results" if we touch some button, somewhere in the cockpit.
By now a little rattled, we swagger off to the hanger where the Hawks sit like large metal insects. With the words "catastrophic results" ringing in my ears, I step gingerly into the cockpit, my seat raised behind the pilot's. Someone starts buckling me in as I try to make sense of the baffling array of buttons, straps, screens and lights.
You can't move without bumping something and once the straps are tightened you can't move at all. The oxygen doesn't flow into the face mask until the engine starts, so for the first five or so minutes it is really hard to breathe.
Combined with the extremely claustrophobic conditions, the mountain of information being relayed to me and my general apprehension about the flight, I am starting to feel just a bit panicky.
We'd been warned about this in the initial briefing. They call it "fight or flight" syndrome and we'd been told that we'd likely break into a terrible sweat when first strapped in. Schneider's voice in my helmet is reassuring but it is pretty uncomfortable until the engine finally starts and the oxygen kicks in.
And so it begins. We taxi slowly to the runway, lining up beside the "enemy" jet, and with a great surge of acceleration we take off together over scrub, then fly over the beach and head out to sea.
The plan is for our jet to peel off and fly up the coast for a few minutes, turn back, fly directly at the other jet and engage in a mock dogfight. I am fine until the peeling off bit, which is exactly as it looks on TV - an abrupt sideways flip and then a drop into oblivion. These days I get queasy after a few moments on a playground swing, so I am dreading this moment. As it turns out, I am far more worried about vomiting into my very expensive helmet than I am about the jet crashing.
As we straighten out I mumble feebly that I found the turn a little hard to handle. "Uh oh," Schneider replies helpfully. Then he announces our first "priming turn" - a very sharp turn designed to generate some G-force and provide higher "G-tolerance" for about 20 minutes.
I don't know what G-force actually is except that it's got something to do with gravity. One G is what you experience under normal conditions, two G means your body weight is doubled, three G it's tripled, and so on.
The G-suit - a tight inflatable suit covering the torso and legs - inflates automatically at two G. It's designed to force blood away from the extremities and back to your head so you don't pass out.
As we go into the first turn the G-suit kicks in and the lower half of my body feels as though it is being crushed in a vice. At the same time I have a powerful urge to throw up but try to concentrate on the clenching and breathing routine. After a few violent twists and turns we straighten out and I take stock. I feel sick and exhausted and we haven't even begun the dogfight. I ask Schneider where I should fix my eyes to stop from vomiting and he says the horizon. The problem is finding it.
We are now flying towards the enemy plane. From the corner of my eye I see something small and black shoot by against the dazzling blue sky and then the fight is on. We are up, we are down, we are upside down. I am clenching and breathing violently, trying not to throw up and feel as though I am being crushed like an ant. I later discover we reached 5.5 G. It hurt.
At one point Schneider says the other jet is at nine o'clock but when you're upside down, that doesn't mean much. Finally we are right on its tail, flying straight up and I can see what is going on. As our jet turns tighter and tighter, it slows so much it begins to shudder. Just as it seems to become stationary, it pulls out of the turn and the fight is over. I suspect we never did get a clear shot but don't think it polite to ask. I figure a happy pilot is a good pilot.
For the next 15 minutes or so we fly back to Williamtown, low over the coast, and for the first time the flight is something to enjoy rather than endure. Once back on the ground I am completely drained, drenched in sweat and still quite nauseous. But I didn't throw up - a personal victory and, I imagine, a source of great relief to the pilot and the hard-working ground crew.
Model potato oil interplanting promote increasing grains output and income - County rice crop of potato interplanting significant benefits Rape
In the county to take practical and effective measures to expand the model rice crop of potato cultivation techniques interplanting rape, and rape was a bumper potato, the benefits are clear. At the same time the promotion of potato production in the county Xiaochun, Xiaochun potato area reached 5.26 million mu compared with the previous year by 1.27 million mu.
First, improve the efficiency of planting
Jiang is in the major grain-producing counties, but also the advantages of double-low rape producing areas, coupled with fewer people and more, farmers per capita cultivated land is only 0.83 mu, grains, economic crops and contradictions is very conspicuous. In the limited arable land how to ensure that food production and increase the income of the farmers is in agriculture s a major issue facing. County Agricultural Bureau and relevant scientific research institutes, targeted at the system s actual planting, grain and oil to ease the struggle between land, the rice crop of potato interplanting rape, achieved increasing grains output and income.
Rape per-mu yield 196 kilograms, than the menu for oil per-mu yield 178 kg, an increase of 18 kg. Potato, rapeseed price 1.00 yuan per kg, respectively, and 2.50 yuan terms, rice crop of potato sets of rape per-mu yield value reached 1133.30 yuan, the menu for oil than 445 yuan per-mu yield value, increasing 688.30 yuan, increasing 1.55 times the seed potato production deduction, fertilizer, straw and other material input 170 yuan and 518.30 yuan may increase acres.
Second, standardize techniques
20
Specific approach: before and after harvesting rice in a timely manner Baishi ditch arguments in the no-tillage crop of rice cultivation on the basis of 2.4 m wide by ditching done hand, hand groove 20 cm wide, 20 cm deep and effective hand Miankuan 220 cm; early September, from the car Goubian 60 cm and 80 cm, to put a potato plant, to pitch 20 cm, 4 per car trip from Waterloo 20-23 cm;
26-30
By potassium, urea interplanting potato Mushi 15 kg, 35 kg of SSP, 10 kilograms of potassium chloride, will visit Waterloo potato species by placing a good distance specifications, the top seed in each one covered slag heap kind of fat cover. Straw coverage, broadcast to plant potatoes rear cover straw 6-8 cm thick insulation preserving soil moisture. Other measures with the same production area.
Third, promote the use of the potential
Rape rice crop of potato interplanting technique is not only effective use of the South Region of late autumn light, and heat resources, an increase of paddy
And can be opened up a lot to digest crop stalks, new ways of soil fertility. The technical areas in the Yangtze River basin have good promotion prospects.
Rape in the County perennial area of about 27 hectares, 10 hectares of rice stubble promote potato sets of rape, rape in the area does not decrease under the conditions of an increase of 10 million mu potato area, an increase of 12,000 tons of food, income 51.83 million yuan, farmers 42 yuan per capita incomes. To that end, county, the county government decided to expand the project in recent years as the sowing of grain planted area, raising total grain production stability major initiatives.
(Source: Office of the Sichuan Provincial Agriculture s extended stay in the group)
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From canberra.yourguide.com.au:
In a similar manner we are able to make predictions of foraging behavior under. Thus, to simulate grasshopper behavior and adequately.
Often, the gamma distribution is also suitable to model digestion rates. that contributions of other pools do not make a significant.
Help pupils to set up a model gut containing saliva and starch. of terms related to food and digestion and ask them to use these to make a concept.
Pancreatic and intestinal enzymes then complete the digestion of proteins. and her chiropractor was able to make certain spinal adjustments.
Predictions from the optimal digestion model have now been tested in a variety of. when forced to acknowledge assumptions and make explicit.
The gas produced after the anaerobic digestion of the wastes is burned in a. make it easier to collect the modelling tools to replicate.
Because of the rich pure food source a shorter digestion period can be expected with the lab model. Also the by products should.
Is to implement and validate anaerobic digestion models as tools to pursue the. effect of hydrodynamics on the solids retention and to make the modelling.
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