For the aviation buffs

[Solus]

Great again.

In the first video, I noticed she was going through turns standing on the ground...

I wasn't sure if she was just memorizing the sequence of turns and stops she needed to make or if she was, somehow, working on timing or mental imaging or even feeling spin forces?

I understand about the instability...

I see aerobatic planes that seem to have the wings position more along the center line of the fuselage than towards the bottom and have little or no 'angle of attack' built in, rather being more parallel with the center line.  And they are symmetric rather than flat on the bottom.

I enjoy watching these videos...like I have the ones posted here on auto racing...nice to have only one place to go for all of this 

[billt]

I like to watch the competition videos a little better because they are forced to literally throw the plane around far more to stay within the confines of the "box". In the second video of her, you can see just how hard she pulls the nose up into the vertical to remain inside the "box". This can cause her to pull in excess of 10 G's. The Sukhoi 26 and 31 are stressed to 20 positive G's. While no pilot would remain conscious at that G rate, it can produce over 15 G's on the wings during an abrupt pull up like that, because of the tremendous air resistance caused by "Pancaking" the bottom of the wing flat against the direction of the airflow.

 Air racers at the Reno Air Races encounter similar forces rounding the pylons. In years past pilots have literally ripped the wings off aircraft doing this sort of thing. In the Red Bull Air Race Series pilots will be disqualified if they pull over 10.5 G's during their pass. The planes have accelerometers in them which are pilot tamper proof that record the G load during the entire flight.  Bill T.