Forum: General F-16 forum

G-LOC is only like a roller coaster if you completely lose consicousness on a roller coaster. I've known some folks who have freaked out, barfed, and even lost control of their "bodily functions", if you will, but I've never heard of anyone going completely lights out on a ride at Six Flags or Disney World.

Let me put it this way. Remember Mike Tyson when he was a rookie? Remember how none of his fights back then lasted any more than about a round or two? Remember what his opponents looked like afterward...staring blankly at the ceiling, with their eyes rolling around their nugget kinda stupid-like? THAT is what G-LOC is! G-induced LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS!!! There is no "Am I awake or am I not?" feeling, because once you hit it, you are in La La Land, just like if Mike Tyson slugged you in the chin...only LESS painful!

Gums is right. I don't believe in this "A-LOC" or "D-LOC" or "Q-LOC"...that's all a bunch of horse flop to me. There's "Conscious", "Gray Out", "Black Out" (lights out, but still retaining sensory perception), and then G-LOC (completely unconscious). Make sense?

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So, if you never experienced it or heard of it then it must be horse flop?

ALOC is a flight physiology documented term. Gray out and black out can be symptoms of ALOC, but ALOC describes much more than just visual acuity. Unsurprisingly, ALOC can be quite similar to hypoxia - confusion, loss of visual acuity, numbness, and a variety of other shared symptoms that come with insufficient oxygen flow to the brain. I shared my friend's experience to show to those who have not experienced or heard of being able to see, process what you see, telling your body to do something, but not having the body respond. It is a unique feeling and not very well documented. It doesn't generate a safety report and there are huge limits to determine in CFITs what the pilot was experiencing.

If you're too old to learn, you're too old to fly.

I read the biography of a Navy pilot (who later made Admiral). He flew everything from F6Fs to F-14s.

He described gunnery practice while flying an F6F. He was to shoot at a towed target, but got out of position, too acute. He banked and pulled hard. The next thing he knew, he heard voices on the radio. He could hear the voices, and make out what they were saying, but that's about it. He couldn't see, couldn't move, couldn't even really think. Luckily he finally understood what his instructor and classmates were saying on the radio "Pull up Gilchrist, pull up". As all his senses returned, he pulled his F6F out of the dive it was in at less than 500 feet.

For a very interesting perspective on Naval aviation (almost all of it 1st hand account), look up Adm Gilchrist's book "Feet Wet". It also talked about an F8 Crusader pilot who pulled over 18 G's due to some kind of malfunction. But that incident didn't end so fortunately.

I just got back from the centrifuge. During the academic portion they did mention "A-LOC" and "N-LOC", n meaning near. They said they are terms used by researchers to describe that state before a total black out when you still might be conscious but incapacitated and had some videos to cite examples. However, they said the AF officially doesn't use the term, and is more black or white when it comes to fully awake or G-LOC'd. We actually had a guy in my class "A-LOC." He never lost consciousness but he was incapacitated to the point he couldn't complete the profile and they chalked it up as a G-LOC.

I think more often pilots get themselves in trouble DOING something that their brain is telling them NOT to do.

OL

Any one remember the GIANT HAND accident in USAFE ~ 1978? An F-5 driver flying in weather got his gyros tumbled and couldn't keep his jet level. He felt as if a giant hand were pushing his stick over. He went out of control and bailed (great decision). I've never heard of any subsequent safety boards coming up with a similar finding. Fully conscious, just couldn't fly anymore.

I never heard of ALOC during my flying life either. Doesn't mean they can get a better understanding. My only contribution to the thread in that respect would be my experience at Brooks during the 1982 Shaw Flight Surgeon science experiment. At the end of my 9G run I didn't hear/push the buzzer for about 5 seconds - a full up GLOC would normally be about 15 seconds of out and another 15 of flopping around confused. They just wrote it off as an outlier or not a real GLOC. My thought was the snap roll that stupid short arm Brooks centrifuge performed when you released the stick gave me the ultimate Barany chair experience - at least I didn't hurl like the guy who followed me, but it was a close run thing.

Buffalo wrote:

My thought was the snap roll that stupid short arm Brooks centrifuge performed when you released the stick gave me the ultimate Barany chair experience - at least I didn't hurl like the guy who followed me, but it was a close run thing.

My class was the first in recent years to go thru Brooks (now they all do). Some of the guys that had gone through Holloman said Brooks is worse because of that short arm. It's ridiculous how much it tumbles your gyros. And to go along with what I said earlier about the AF not officially using the term A-LOC, they did say that the term itself is pretty new to the aero-phys community in general.

Hi guys.
I'm not a flyer, but have over 20 years of unarmed fighting experience behind me and actually experienced a lot of various kinds of "LOC" you describe. The "LOC" induced by choking rather than by getting hit hard on the head pretty much resembles gravity induced effects. I mean the choking techniques that block the blood flow into the brain, not the ones that squeeze the windpipe. With a proper execution loss of consciousness is pretty much instantenous. Sometimes the effect happens so fast, that the guy doesn't even manage to tap out, before he goes completely out cold. Is it the same with G-LOC?
As for the A-LOC I am pretty familiar with the effects. Sometimes the choked guy gets completely dazed, although he seems fully conscious. The may look around, try to do what they were doing before the lights went out, sometimes they even try to talk, but it is obvious they are somewhere very far away. My own experience is that it is pretty much like falling deeply asleep and having very vivd dreams that seem to last for minutes, even though in relality mere seconds pass. When released before he completely passes out, the guy needs about 5 seconds before he stops staring at the blanklyat the ceiling, another 5-10 seconds to realise who is he, where is he and what has happened and then he's compeltely fine, although week at the knees for a few minutes. With complete pass-out it is much more serious and takes longer to come back. Strange thing is that some people in the "A-LOC effects" stage seem to be able to somehow realise what is happening and kind of force themselves back into the real world.
How does that compare to your experience with gravity effects? Is it similar?

That's what the Boston Strangler said.

Very Happy

OL

Forum: General F-16 forum

A-lock vs g-lock