Where Dancing Meets Engineering

Honestly, I was not looking forward to it as dancing competitions are boring: you travel for a long time to sit in a room most of a very long day (competitions usually start in the morning like 9 am and finish only around midnight). You might get to dance for a total of 30 minutes if you compete but that is it. I asked our coach if I needed to come. He said it would be good for me, unless I had good reasons why I should not come. It seemed that saying ‘too boring’ is not a good reason so I decided to go.

There was over 30 dancers coming to Blackpool from Cambridge. Our trainer coaches two formation teams, each consisting of 8 couples and many reserves. There was an email asking about accommodation and preferences for travel. I learned that one member of the team has got a pilot licence so he had a 3 seats in his aircraft. I put down flying as my first preference. I was pleasantly surprised a week later when I was told that I would be flying to Blackpool. I immediately emailed the pilot about the plane so that I could look up its parameters(2).  

Having done a module about aircraft stability, I was super excited about flying in this plane. As a coursework part of the module, all the students took part in a flight exercise(3). This was by far the best coursework I have experienced. A part experimental flight was experiencing stall (sudden loss of lift, your hands just fly up in the air as the aircraft begins to plummet), dutch roll(4) and spiral. The best thing about the spiral is that you have no idea that you are spiralling towards the ground, your feelings do not correspond where ‘down’ is. I was curious about what sort of stuff pilots are taught regarding the aircraft stability.

I knew that my mother will not like me flying in a small plane, because she will think it is dangerous. I looked at some statistics about safety of small planes. According to one, the small planes are safer when it comes to per-mile criterion. According to another, cars are safer when it comes to the time spent in the vehicle. This example shows that one just cannot say “small planes are safer” as the criterion of safety matters. Given that one usually needs to cover a certain distance so the time spent travelling is indirectly proportional to the speed of the vehicle, small planes are safer than cars(5).  

At the day of the flight, I was woken up by a call. Thunderstorms were forecasted for the afternoon, so the flight had been moved from 4pm to morning. I quickly packed my things. It was easy as I prepacked the day before. Yet I left my toothbrush and my deodorant in my room.  I don’t understand how that happened as I do use these two items regularly. Anyway, I was picked up by a friend and we drove me to the airport(6). The weather was really bad. It was raining heavily.  Fortunately, one member of the staff at the airfield (it was one half of all the staff I saw) did some of the pre-flight checks so we did not need to be doing it in the rain. We got on the plane and took off immediately. The clouds were very low so we were surrounded by whiteness only a couple of seconds after take-off. The visibility was 50 meters perhaps.

Fig. 1: Visibility right after take-off

The whole plane was shaking, plunging, turning, slipping…it was partly scary as the ground was quite close. Also, you might not be able to tell where the ground is due to the forces acting on the aircraft so one should not be that surprised if ground suddenly appeared in front of the plane. That is why the pilot was flying according to the instruments. it was so great, I love turbulences and shaking, it is like a roller-coaster! The weather got better after 45 minutes of the flight as we had escaped it. The rest of the flight was calmer. The landing was slightly challenging due to strong side winds but we landed safely.

Fig. 2: The plane with the pilot at Blackpool airport. This plane was rented out as the pilot’s plane was being serviced.

The competition went well. XS Latin A placed the best among the UK teams. The team I am a part of, XS Latin B, got to finals, which it never did before. However, from my perspective, the whole competition was overshadowed by the means of transport of the competition.

Fig. 3: XS A team

Fig. 4: View from the plane. We would be flying at 1000 or 3000 feet.

On Thursday, we flew back from Blackpool to Cambridge. All of us were very happy. Firstly, the pilot, who did not feel well enough to fly in the morning felt better and decided to fly. Secondly, the XS teams did very well in the competition. As we were flying, we were listening to our dancing music. As we were listening to ‘defying gravity’, the pilot decided to do a 360 degrees horizontal turn. That was simply the best.

I was thinking what is the best feeling to convey my feelings of such flight. Given that all this shaking is caused by acceleration of the vehicle, I just turned on accelerometer app on my smartphone, placed it on the floor of the aircraft and started recording. In this way, you should see exactly how I felt.

Fig. 6: Comparison of g-force from the flight to Blackpool (left) and a standard flight with Ryanair.

The blue line shows the total g-force experienced by the person on the plane. The usual g-force is 1g, which corresponds to the weight always feel on the ground. Both recordings were clipped 200 s before landing. The graphs show that a flight in a small plane is more wild as the g-force has a greater spread, it often exceeds values 1.2g and 0.8g. Regarding the g-force, do you remember the feeling that you have a couple of seconds after take-off? Once the plane lifts off the ground the pilot angles upwards for a steep climb. There is this short feeling of heaviness. Do you remember? Well, that corresponds to 1.2g, based on my measurements. Similarly, the feeling of lightness that you can feel before landing corresponds to perhaps 0.8g. Hence flight in a small plane is more enjoyable.

To sum up, the best means of transport to a dance competition is a plane.
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(1) http://xslatin.org/wp/
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_PA-28_Cherokee
(3) It was Jetstream 31 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Aerospace_Jetstream
(4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqeGjSl9RJc&list=PL720F1BCAB018A2D8&index=1
(5) http://www.livescience.com/49701-private-planes-safety.html
(6) https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Modern+Air+Self+Fly+Rental/@52.0788822,0.0477252,3593m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xc96a4e0a1b058441!8m2!3d52.0843491!4d0.063213