Journal #8537

Fairly long journal incoming:
For the past three days I've been doing what is probably the most interesting part of my university course. We've been at the airport, and an instrumented aircraft from Cranfield University has been taking us up and performing various manoeuvres to demonstrate aircraft handling.The class was split into two groups, so one group would go up and fly for an hour, we'd change over and the second group would fly for an hour, then there would be an hour for us to make calculations using the values we recorded from the aircraft instruments. There would also be a lecture at the beginning and end of each flight type.
There were four types of flights, in order to demonstrate different things. Since the mass distribution of the aircraft was important for some of the calculations, we had our weights recorded and then our seating was assigned. Thanks to this I had the best seat on the plane for all of the flights:Not only could I see the readouts on the screens we had, but I could also read the pilot's instruments, which was very interesting.

The second flight was certainly the most interesting in terms of content. In the first part we had to take down numbers while the aircraft was turning. As it went on the turn got tighter and tighter, until by then end it was pulling around 2 Gs of acceleration, and it was banked by about 60 degrees.
As well as this, they demonstrated the plane's stall warning and avoidance systems. They went up to about 7000ft and then flew slower and slower, with the plane being pitched up so it wouldn't lose altitude. It was pretty scary to hear the warning systems in the cockpit going apeshit while the pilots ignored it and continued to pitch up. The stall warning system causes an alarm to sound in the cockpit, and the stick to shake, both of which were very audible from the cabin. The stall preventation system uses a hydraulic ram to push the stick forward. However it does so suddenly and very forcefully, so it feels like the plane has suddenly dropped by a huge amount. I tried looking it up on YouTube, but since none of the videos have the camera pointed out of the windows it just looks like everyone is freaking out for no reason.

The fourth flight was also interesting, as on that day they were apparently filming a documentary about the airport. Since they wanted some footage of what we were doing, I was given a camera to hold and film while the plane started spiralling. Basically I had to point the camera out the window, or out the front from behind the pilots, and the footage would have been similar enough to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWo-sryzQiQ
You can see the cameraman here filming students boarding the plane:Unfortunately since I was holding their camera I wasn't able to do any filming for myself, so I’ll have to wait until the documentary is broadcast before I can see the footage.
I did however get this photograph of the tip of the Cliffs of Moher: