Fitness Levels ?

[Fonsini]

I have seen so many "celebrity in an F/A-18" type videos where a few high G maneuvers cause the recipient to literally collapse on landing, even some sports stars who were in good shape. Of course disorientation and nausea all play a part, but flying FJs has always required high levels of physical stamina, an old family friend who flew display Meteors confessed to me once that he rolled inverted and then lacked the strength to roll right-side-up for what seemd like an eternity as he roared down the display line. These days fighter pilots are expected to put in some serious gym time to maintain fitness and also keep the weight off with a reasonably healthy diet, but was it always this way - or were young pilots simply that much fitter back in the 1950s ?

[jayteeto]

Around 1990, my car didn't have power steering. Anyone who had a go driving it would moan about how hard it was. Many older jets had manual controls that were also more difficult to handle. Modern jets are so much assisted, that designers can choose the feedback forces.
G tolerance isn't all about fitness, some fat knackers are incredibly resistant to G. Practice and experience help a lot as well. If these super fit sports stars had a few goes, they would get it sorted pretty quickly.
My last aeroplane sortie in the RAF was back seat in the Reds Synchro Pair display. When they all dismounted together in front of the crowd, I stayed in the seat, trying to realign my gyros. The ground crew released me 5 mins later, I was a broken man.




Smiling from ear to ear

[Al R]

Interesting stuff about waistlines and effectiveness.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/10/20/health-director-no-evidence-troop-obesity-hurts-readiness.html

[Pontius Navigator]

Al R, vindicated. V-Force veterans always swore it was better to carry plenty of survival rations and thermal blanket than to be a racing snake. E&E of the time advocated digging a trench, 7 feet long, stripping off outer clothing, burying at one end, get it, lie down a bury oneself for 14 days.

True, racing snakes didn't need big trenches

[charliegolf]

PN, was 7' the length or the width!

[Pontius Navigator]

CG, RTFA, lol, know yr joking.

[2Planks]

One Doc told us that short fat people had better G tolerance (distance from heart and higher base heart rate), also smoking increased the number of red blood cells and therefore helped in decompression situations (more oxygen stored in blood).


Then again, they only needed us to last to 55th birthday plus one day!!


That said I'm 6 foot and still weigh the 67 kilos when I marched (shambolically) across the parade square at Sleaford Tec.

[Sandy Parts]

Read the title and thought they'd finally raised the beep test levels from the 'introductory' easy pass ones they bought in when it replaced the 1.5 mile run. Guess the likelihood of that ever happening is diminishing as fast as waistlines and burger outfits are expanding...

[Tankertrashnav]

As one of the fat knackers referred to by jayteeto I am very glad I served in the years before the modern fitness fetish took over. Flying on tankers, G forces weren't an issue, but I remember flying a JP sortie with the Linton Gin team aerobatics leader where we pulled 6G (no G suit of course) and I suffered no ill affects.

[Onceapilot]

What are you on Sandy Parts? The Fitness test levels have been raised hugely since the days of the 1.5 mile run. I never agreed with the way that the levels were raised for everyone, as though it was easy to change the performance of older people and, the standards required for female personel were/are a joke. However, I support the basic move to raise the bar of fitness standards in the RAF but, I do not think it was done correctly and, it became a promotion tool for certain people!:eek:

OAP

[Wrathmonk]

In a survival situation when the fat get thin, the thin die! Well that's the line I tried at my pre-med for the CSRO course!!

[Sandy Parts]

onceapilot - agree they have been raised (always seemed to be raised just as I got to the next bracket ;)) However, I was one of the lucky 'candidates' used to test the levels prior to beep-test introduction at Finningley in 92/93. The PTIs then took our max effort scores plus sustainable 'just less than max effort' and fed them back to HQ MirrorTechs. We were then told that the levels subsequently chosen were an 'introductory' measure and would be rapidly increased to levels near those we were hitting in the trials. Having then carried out the test every year for the following 20 years, I kept an eye on the levels being required. The levels used at the end of my service were still lower than those the PTIs had told us would eventually be used (and yes, I was comparing levels for my age back then with the matching age range today). As we were all racing whippets at the time (AAITC PT - sometimes twice a day), I'm not surprised our levels weren't adopted as the benchmark - it was just that we were told that levels would rise to that point rapidly and PTIs would ensure staff were fit enough to pass them. (I think they then got distracted by the 'operational fitness test; post GW1). I no longer have to worry about such triv but thought it worth pointing out that when introduced, planned future levels were going to need serious effort to pass. Don't think that was the case in the end...

[charliegolf]

Why did they drop the mile and a half run in x mins as a standard? I

I once went to the muscle mechanics shop at Gutersloh, to get signed off for the run, which was an apparent prerequisite for the winter survival course at Bad K. I expected them to watch me and sign a chit or something. The PEdO said, "No! You're a Sergeant in the Royal Air Force. YOU go and make sure you're fit for the course yourself!" So I doubled home (in the car) and watched BFBS with a beer."

CG

[Pontius Navigator]

CG, about 1976 I think the CMO wrote in Air Clues about 'Fit to Survive' and in a moment of madness Charles Maugham, of Paris Air Race fame, and now SASO, decreed that aircrew would do the 1.5 mile run every quarter and so it was decreed. To improve morale, and take up, leave was withheld until you took the test.

With no practise and in blues, i did the run in the requisite time (OK it creased me). If I could do it cold I saw no point in doing it every three months. Some knockers on the crew exceeded the target time by a factor of two and never would have passed in a month of Sundays. To point up the idiocy, no time was programmed for remedial training and our irregular hours militated against regular training.

Now it so happened that we bolt hold to Machrihanish, to Gibraltar, and trips to Kef. I decided these were ideal places for the crew to do its quarterly run and duly submitted names and times to PEd Flt who then submitted them up the CoC. I didn't cheat; those who passed improved thgtheir times by a few seconds each time and those who failed continued to fail handsomely. Honour was maintained, Charles retired, and sanity prevailed for as long as could catch submarines who cared how fast we coiukd run.

[Herod]

Funny how things change. I remember the 1,5 mile run being introduced, and the worry it gave some people. Since I was part of the mass redundancy at the time, I was exempt, although I doubt I could have done it; being part of "Eating Command". Now, some forty years later I regularly run half-marathons. Perhaps because I don't HAVE to.

[Willard Whyte]

Whilst now happily weed free, I took great pleasure in slipping out of the fitness test at half time for a crafty Marlboro. Used to do the beep test with a half full packet in my T-shirt pocket.

Always got annoyed that there were no ashtrays outside the front doors to the gymnasium. Or even in the gymnasium for that matter.

[Pontius Navigator]

Sandy Parts, regarding standards being raised as you approached the bar, I was lucky the other way, they kept raising the age limit behind me :)

I ended my career as fut as ever as for the first time I could cycle to work, just 6 miles and more convenient than driving and trying to park

[binbrook]

Signed off for a run? The HQBC requirement was a 3 mile walk every 3 months - fortunately just the distance from the eponymous airfield to the Blacksmith's at Rothwell. Quite enough for Kinder and Bad K.