I MADE IT!

 NASTAR Training is complete.  Last night I flew home from Philadelphia after our last morning of flights and tests.  The three in my group were doing really well, myself Mark and Luis had been getting through the flight programs exposing our selves to various levels of G Forces on the X and Z and using our training to combat passing out also known as "G LOC" (G-Force induced Los Of Consciousness) and nice steady breathing under high pressure.

Tuesday we were performing the longer flights with X and Y G forces combined.  A bit tricky now we were to also combine the techniques for countering the effects.  So far I had not had one hint of nausea, you would thing with all of the high speed twisting and turning it would have happened early on.  Actually there a couple minor moments in the program that brought it on, small moves where there was nothing on my viewing screen except blue sky, but my brain could still feel movement.

They had these tiny little barf bags in the cabin of the gondola.  I fell in love with the little elf graphic!  He's not so happy to be bringing the bag, but then ecstatic when he has his bag full of gark.
The NASTAR engineers actually gave me one to take home.  Happy to report that Lil' Sic Sac did not have to come to my rescue.  The people at the center believe these might be original from the 50's.

 

There's a waiting area with monitors so we can watch each other get fuged.  I'll be uploading video from the cockpit of the more intense rides. I'm smiling in this one but not all.

Up in the right corner of the split screen you can see the GZ and GX readouts 6.0 G's definitely felt my face flattening out along with my lungs.  It does tickle in a strange way.

 

Afterwards we took a couple group pics, from left: Greg, Johnene, Luis, Me, Mark, Amer, and Tarah.

An amazing crew that gave us every confidence we could do it.

Sitting on the stairs of the gondola. The stairs close and become the rear bulkhead of the cockpit.  You can see the back of the chair with the 5 point harness and some of the control screen.

And of course I got the patch.  Someday I'll get a jacket to sew it on.