Timeline for Why are fighter pilots seated and not reclined?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 5, 2019 at 18:45 | comment | added | Criggie | @freeman excellent point - I ride a recumbent bike, and that puts my feet just below my heart level. When on a long ascent my feet are at shoulder level or higher, and go numb after an hour or so. And there's exactly 1G involved here, it would be far worse under jet acceleration. | |
| Jun 10, 2017 at 5:59 | comment | added | jamesqf | @FreeMan: In my experience, the C-172 climb angle isn't all that much different than e.g. climbing mountain roads in a Miata (or my previous British sports cars). The thing is to look along the axis of acceleration: in a upright seated position, there's about a 4 ft distance between head & feet, in a semi-reclined one, less than half that, so less pooling. | |
| Jun 8, 2017 at 19:55 | comment | added | FreeMan | @jamesqf - I wasn't referring to the G-force, but the actual angle of climb. If a C-172 was climbing at a leisurely rate, but the pilot were reclined, his feet would be at or above his head with the F1 seating position. This would lead to the blood pooling in the head and the resulting discomfort, etc. This is the exact opposite of what fighter pilots experience with the current seating position when doing high positive G maneuvers and the blood pools in the lower extremities (hence the use of a G-suit). Probably easier to have a g-suit acting on the legs than the head. ;) | |
| Jun 8, 2017 at 19:35 | comment | added | jamesqf | @FreeMan: I don't think climbing ability is the right way to think about this. Instead, it's acceleration and the axis along which the acceleration acts. Per Google, an F1 car can accelerate at about 2g (but brake at 5g and pull 4-6g in cornering). I can't find actual figures for jet fighters, but AFAIK few can manage to accelerate in a vertical climb, so straight-line acceleration would be a bit over 1g. (Carrier catapult launches around 4g.) The high g forces come in turns, so would act parallel to the body axis for seated, perpendicular for prone. | |
| Jun 8, 2017 at 14:21 | comment | added | FreeMan | I'm 100% with you, @jamesqf, however, no sports car and probably no glider can climb the way a fighter can, so it's probably not quite a fair comparison. Nor is the comparison to the F1 driver's positioning in the OP. | |
| Jun 6, 2017 at 18:42 | comment | added | jamesqf | Re "It feels natural to move forward while seated upright." I don't think so. At least there are many individual differences. I feel much more comfortable in the semi-reclined posture of sports cars or gliders than in the bolt-upright posture of SUVs or my Cherokee. | |
| Jun 6, 2017 at 15:02 | comment | added | Trevor_G | "But people are not accustomed to being dragged skyward by the feet." If you are going up it would not feel that way... you would definitely be pressed into the seat back... and would feel like you were accelerating. | |
| Jun 6, 2017 at 10:01 | comment | added | roel | "A very critical device in a F1 car that allows for that extremely reclined position is the HANS head and neck restraint system." Not true. The HANS system is to prevent injury. It didn't existed before 2003. But pilot seating has been very low for a long time. | |
| Jun 5, 2017 at 23:27 | comment | added | Jörg W Mittag | Probably, he created a named account, but either didn't know how to convert the existing account or something went wrong. @slomobile, you can ask a moderator (or maybe a Stack Exchange employee) to merge the two accounts if you care about your existing rep points. | |
| Jun 5, 2017 at 21:33 | comment | added | Peter M. - stands for Monica | is slomobile a sock puppet of user22253? Looks like they have same avatar. BTW interesting answer | |
| S Jun 5, 2017 at 17:39 | history | suggested | slomobile | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Added info about HANS device
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| Jun 5, 2017 at 17:16 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jun 5, 2017 at 17:39 | |||||
| Jun 5, 2017 at 16:29 | review | First posts | |||
| Jun 5, 2017 at 16:52 | |||||
| Jun 5, 2017 at 16:27 | history | answered | user22253 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |