Originally Posted by ben_10
Hey guys,
New to the forum here. Just wanted to say thanks to everyone that’s posted on here I’ve found it really helpful in preparing for each stage of the process. Hope everyone goes well regarding medical concerns. I’m right on the border for height so I’m crossing my fingers that I don’t grow any more before flight screening! Just wondering how many of you guys did flying before you went up to flight screening? I have a few hours in a glider and two hours in a powered aircraft, just wondering if there is any benefit in me doing some more? Would hate to generate bad habits before going up there but I’ve heard there could be some benefit in doing aerobatics.
Cheers,
Ben
G'day Ben,
I'd have to say there is definitely benefit to getting some hours before going up, and if you can cram them into a small period relatively close to when you're going up even better (so it sticks). It can be quite a steep learning curve at FSP for someone with little experience, so giving yourself the best opportunity to decrease that by learning some fundamentals can never be a bad idea. I think it's fairly safe to say you're not going to develop any bad habits after 10 or so hours that you wont be able to easily change up there.
My personal recommendation is that you go for a couple of aerobatic flights to see how you like it and determine how your body will react to it (you're going to be doing a lot of them). The reason I say this is that I only found out when I was up there that it is quite common for the body to go through a transitional phase of getting used to the 3 dimensional aerial environment, which lead to me getting pretty bad air sickness for the first half of my flights at FSP.
This isn't to be confused with motion sickness; I've never had a problem with high-g rides, flying or any other activity that could induce motion sickness before, but I can tell you that it wasn't a pleasant experience for those first few flights while I got used to it. It also made it increasingly difficult to pick up what the instructor was telling me when the only thing I could think about ways to mitigate the sickness. Don't get me wrong, this doesn't happen to everybody but it isn't uncommon from what I'm told and I'd hate for it to happen to you as well!
Cheers,
VS