Well, we may have just been the first Americans and Argentinians to visit the new G Force Trainer in Germany! When doing a spiral dive in paragliding, it is possible to pull a lot of Gs and potentially that could cause problems with G force. So on a rainy day in Austria when we couldn't fly, we drove up to the G-force trainer to see what we were capable of. Most of our group participated, with varying results. Some folks felt a little sick after just a few spins, understandably as just watching the machine spin around from my chair was a little urpy. A few that had never even done a spiral turn before found an amazing capacity to withstand Gs, taking the trainer all the way up to 7 Gs without feeling any ill effects. Including 69 year old Josefina from Argentina!
I was expecting to have no problems with Gs (why I don't know), but instead found myself seeing fuzzy at 5.5 Gs, and totally losing my vision at 6.5 Gs. The term is "blacking out" meaning I couldn't see a thing, but I wasn't unconscious. They are clearly two different reactions, and even with no vision I was able to fly the machine and do everything I needed to (except see). Vision returned quickly after I slowed down, and those kind of forces were more than anything I could do in a paraglider, luckily!
The instructor was interested to know that I was a long distance runner, and said that might explain why I couldn't withstand the pressure, as my blood pressure was probably lower than normal. To pull the high Gs it is better to be a pumped up weight lifter! We all had fun anyway...even if we all felt by the end that we had been riding rollarcoasters all day!
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