Jest co poczytać.On Earth or In Space, Andrew Allen Has the Right StuffNovember 22, 2024
(...) As a child, Allen was as at home in the air as on the ground. His father, a World War II torpedo bomber who became a civilian flight instructor, let Allen tag along with him from the age of 5 or 6. Allen learned to fly almost by osmosis. In 1969, he watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon on the family’s black and white TV, and his mother asked him if he might want to go to space one day. (...)
“When you are the first to do something in an airplane, you have to transition from knowing how to fly an airplane to knowing how an airplane flies,” Allen says. “That’s engineering.”
Armed with his degree, he entered the Marine Corps and started flight school, where eagle-eyed instructors keep a keen eye on how trainees cope with stress.
“They make it hard on purpose. They draw a stress performance curve for us on the first day of flight school, which shows the higher your stress goes, the higher your performance goes,” Allen says. “They say, ‘we’re going to stress you up to this level, and we hope that’s near your peak. If you peak before that, we’re going to be real quick about getting rid of you.’”
Training starts on propeller planes, and about half don’t make it through. Of the remaining trainees, the majority gravitate to helicopters. Those who want to be “a fast mover,” Allen says, have to be in the top 30%, and the top 10-15% of that group got to fly the supersonic jets: F-4 Phantoms and the then-new F-18s.
Out of the fighter squadrons, only the top 25% go to what Allen calls post-graduate school: Top Gun. Best of the BestTop Gun in real life differs from “Top Gun” the movie. Top Gun pilots are competitive, yes, survivors of an extreme winnowing process that has made them the best of the best. But arrogance isn’t well tolerated; the pilots have to be team players.
“You want to be at the top of your class,” Allen says, “but it’s real easy to get humbled in that world.”
Allen was at happy hour at the officer’s club when actor Tom Cruise was filming the first “Top Gun” movie. He thought the guy getting all the attention was a colonel’s son until someone filled him in. He enjoyed both movies but says the second, “Top Gun: Maverick,” had the most realistic flying sequences.
“I could tell they were actually pulling G’s,” Allen says. “Maybe just 3 G’s, not 9 G’s, but you could tell.” (...)
But Top Gun was not his ultimate goal; there was one more step. He applied to test pilot school, where only 4% of applicants are chosen, and got in. That stress curve? Straight up. (...)
https://www-archive.uff.ufl.edu/gatornation/on-earth-or-in-space-andrew-allen-has-the-right-stuff/
Wątek: AM 'Andy' Allen - 04.08.1955 (Przeczytany 879 razy)