Thursday, February 21, 2008

I Fly - for real

This was a cool team outing. Yesterday we went to ifly in Union City. Those guys operate a vertical wind tunnel. You get dressed up, and then ride on a air stream that's blowing bottom up at a speed of 65-80mph.





Click on the thumbnail image to see the video. I'm the guy in the orange suit flying about 12 minutes into the video.

It's quite an experience. It's not like being weightless, you very much feel the wind pushing you up. It's loud (they made us wear earplugs), too. You can control motion fairly well with slight adjustments of legs and arms. The flight instructor didn't have much to do while I was in the air... and it was FUN. I want to do this again, though this is a bit on the expensive side.

3 comments:

Leo said...

Dude - you were flying!
And you did much better than most of the other guys - is this due to your height and not being an American fatty?

Only thing is that I saw more of the instructor than of you =:)

Bernhard said...

Yeah, the camera angle is not made for people that actually figure out how this works. And the guy in the control room didn't bother moving the camera, or switch to another angle.

BTW, I flew twice, still working on getting a recording of the first flight.

Bernhard said...

oh, one more thing:
If you relax and trust that the air will carry you, it's much easier.
Just imagine you are a leaf in the wind, keep a steady, optimal shape and enjoy.

There are apparently no vertical wind tunnels in New Jersey, but next time you visit the Bay Area we should go :-)