Students Get a Test Flight of Interests

With the roar of F-16 engines providing the perfect accompaniment, the Madison Middle School students stuck their heads into the cockpit of a fighter jet Wednesday as part of a hands-on educational experience at the famed Air Force Flight Test Center in the Mojave Desert.

Neither tales of G-forces flattening a pilot’s body nor the minutes they spent in a hot altitude chamber dampened the enthusiasm of the Medical Magnet and military Cadet Corps students, who journeyed to Edwards to learn about the physiological effects of flight on the human body.

“This has been the coolest field trip,” said seventh-grader Nikolai Novak. “It’s funny to see how they eat and go to the bathroom and maneuver the planes in those puffed-up pressure suits.”

That wasn’t the only surprise for the 57 wide-eyed visitors from North Hollywood. Sitting in front of a panel of switches in the submarine-shaped hypobaric, or altitude, chamber, the students saw firsthand how pilots train to avoid high-altitude mishaps: by practicing in the chamber how to deal with oxygen deprivation.

“It’s amazing to learn how people can regulate their own oxygen in flight,” said 13-year-old Medical Magnet student Amy Navarro. “I’m planning to be a pediatric surgeon, and this trip just makes me want to do it more.”

Paul Daniele, Madison’s Medical Magnet coordinator, and Harry Talbot, a school administrator, said they arranged the daylong sessions of science demonstrations by test pilots and medical technicians so the students’ school studies could be brought to life and so they could learn about career opportunities in technically advanced fields.

“The whole reason we’re here is to let the kids see science in action,” said Talbot, who also serves as a reserve colonel at the base. “We need to excite kids about their futures. I want to make education real.”

The day began realistically enough, with a visit to a gigantic F-16 hangar, where the students heard from Capt. Matt Skeen, a flight test engineer, how he felt on his first flight in fighter jet.

“You’re pressed into the seat, you’re cramped, and when the plane turns, the G-forces make you feel like there are nine of you sitting on your chest,” Skeen said. “It can be quite unpleasant.”

After climbing to the cockpit to check out the cramped quarters, the students boarded their bus and headed over to the physiological support division, site of the base’s three altitude chambers.

Next, Staff Sgt. Chris Laue inflated a full-pressure pilot’s suit, used at altitudes above 60,000 feet, and then demonstrated how helmeted pilots, who are barely able to move their arms in the stiff suits, manage to eat a meal.

Lunching at Edwards’ NASA Complex, the students talked with a NASA education director about physiology and space flight.

They ended the day by walking around a retired Bell X-1E jet, the sister plane to Chuck Yeager’s Bell X-1, the plane that first broke the sound barrier.

“After this trip, I want to be in the Air Force even more than I thought before,” said Cadet Corps member Shayna Doster, 12. “The whole experience was great.”