Welcome to the closest I’ll ever come to being Red Bull F1 guns Max Verstappen or Sergio Perez.* My Friday morning started in a radio studio and ended with a fast and furious Red Bull joy flight that momentarily turned my 75 kilo frame into something heavy enough to take the world of sumo on with.
And mother of god, did I love every single high speed and upside down second of it.
*Or even Liam Lawson if they finally let the young gun race for the main Red Bull team.
A Red Bull joy flight was not on the to do list this year
But when opportunity knocks, what kind of idiot would I be to say no? Especially when it’s been such a long time between high speed thrills done for the sake of radio. I’ve punted around in a monster truck, I’ve wedged myself in the back of a two seater F1 car (sadly because it was on public roads which meant speed was capped at 60kph. Guess what a F1 car doesn’t like to do? Stay at 60 obviously..) but some ridiculous fun in the air that didn’t involve me jumping out at great heights out the door of an aircraft? That joy flight chance hasn’t presented itself…until now.
Earlier in the week we interviewed both Matt Hall and Emma McDonald from Matt Hall Racing about what their planes could do and their involvement in the Yarrawonga Powerboat Spectacular and Fair. Have a listen to how fast these things can get, especially Matt’s competition plane that I found out later he manoeuvres around in pulling 11gs. (Yes for a few seconds, he’s working against 11 x gravity..
And after it I was even more excited than before because I’d been invited to try one of these joy flights myself, film the experience and share the tale on social media. A blast through the air? How crazy could it get? Well here’s a tiny taste..
‘My job is to make sure you have the best time up there’
Naturally I didn’t sleep much the night before. Yes part of it was thinking of what the joy flight might entail but worse than that was my brain deciding that across the night was a great time to start building a mental checklist on the things we needed to do before racing out to Yarrawonga as soon as the show was over. Yes who needs sleep when your hyperactive imagination is there to keep you company?
But suddenly it was go time, in the company car and off we raced to the Yarrawonga aerodrome where Matt, Emma and team we doing their thing – namely thrilling the pants off anyone in the joy flight seat in front of them and getting ready for a big day of stunt action as part of the fair.
And as much as I tried to hide it, it was pretty obvious the nerves were showing.
‘You’ll be fine, you’ll love it’ smiled the girl who flew before me, now looking over her own onboard footage caught by a pair of go pros. And that was slightly reassuring until Matt explained what was going to happen in the 10 minutes we were going to be up there. I’ll be honest, I lost track of all the moves and manoeuvres but he did remind me that his job was to make sure I had the best time to be up there, not jump about to the point where I lost my breakfast or g forces caused me to tap out.
Excellent. Al, don’t pass out here or you’re going to be really annoyed with yourself. (Although they do teach you a quick trick to help you not do that which is really handy.) They refuelled the plane, towed it over and suddenly it was go time. I tried my best Jeremy Clarkson impersonation (and managed to do a piece to camera in one take that impressed Matt, he pointed out that nerves usually wreck shop at that point when recording anything) and then it was time to get strapped in and a quick lesson on safety.
Canopy down, engines on, green light..
(Unfortunately I can’t seem to embed the Facebook video the great Brad Chapple put together for me, but the link for the joy flight experience above certainly works.) I can however try to make you jealous of my experience with a few stills.
Like being strapped in and wondering exactly what I was in for..
Racing up to 270 kph across the runway and blasting off into the sky in roughly five seconds where I found myself giggling uncontrollably at the sudden lift.
And then came the times where I found myself on the side.
And then upside down.
And then came the ramping of the g-forces. The face I’m pulling here? The trick to help you not pass out and ruin the experience.
And then back on solid ground where the legs were shaky but the smile was not coming off!
A quick note on g forces
It’s not speed that’s the problem, but acceleration or deceleration. That’s what kills in a collision, for instance. Changes in speed are expressed in multiples of gravitational acceleration, or ‘G’. Most of us can withstand up to 4-6G. Fighter pilots can manage up to about 9G for a second or two.
ScienceFocus, what’s the maximum speed a human can withstand?
Now going into this, I had been told that people usually tap out at around 5g. Meaning the pressure is so great, it pushes the blood down from your head and causes you to black out momentarily. So when Matt explained that we could get up to 8g’s if I was keen in this joy flight, my mind was really racing wondering if I’d get anywhere close to that.
Slowly but surely we worked our way up the scale, managing to endure a couple of seconds at 6G’s even though my face felt like a sumo was on it and was melting off at the same time. ‘Want to give 8g’s a go then?’
When else was I going to get a shot at something like this? So I agreed and suddenly the sumo was bench pressing another sumo…on my face as I was locked in and going nowhere. ‘Have I still got you there?’ Matt radio’d but couldn’t hear my reply. So he continued to check if I was awake and still conscious and even though I was reassuring him that somehow I was still fully functional, he couldn’t hear it.
Looking back at the footage of the joy flight once the plane had stopped spinning we discovered the headset microphone had dropped down from the turn which meant two things a) it explained why he couldn’t hear me until he said the words ‘move your microphone back up’ and even better b) I’d just joined the ‘stayed conscious until 8g’s club!’ (at 8 times gravity, my body was weighing around 600kgs..) Go me! It seems the on going workouts and getting my health back on track this year has seemingly made me a lot more resilient than I expected. Woooooo!
Post flight
Unsurprisingly I was a little shaky getting out of the plane although that faded after roughly half an hour. I also held off from food (even though I love my food) for a couple of hours just in case. I even relived a couple of the turns in my mind when I was trying to sleep later. But as experiences go? This one was mind blowing. From the speed to the sights and going one on one with gravitational forces, I am so glad I said yes to this. The machine was superb, the team was so welcoming and friendly and Yarrawonga (which I’d never been to) looked so pretty from up there, especially upside down.
Right then, what’s next? (Maybe give me a month to catch my breath first though..)
Find out more about Matt and his team as well as the joy flights you can book right here.