Air Zero-G flight 2019

Air Zero-G flight August 2019

After so many science flights I wanted to do a flight only for me. Since this should pay off, I also stayed at the ocean front for a few days. After all, you can do much more than fly parabolas in the area around Bordeaux...

Arrival

The travel to Bordeaux was with the TGV high speed train via Paris, and then at first continued to Arcachon. Here are some impressions:

In the TGV to Bordeaux

Flowers and architecture (the casino of Arcachon)

Sunset at the pier

Train station Arcachon

My hotel in Arcachon

Boat trip to the Dune du Pilat

From Arcachon, one can go on a boat trip through the bay of Arcachon and sail all the way to the dune:

The catamaran "Côte d'Argent", one of the biggest
passenger sailing catamarans

Traditional fisherman's boat

On the way to the dune under sail

The only place to view the dune from the front in full width

Back in Arcachon: The town beach with the landmark, the whale fin (painted new each year by the artist)

"Les Tchanques", bird watching houses of the bird island in the bay of Arcachon

View to the coast near Cap Ferret

Cap Ferret

Traditional sailboat in front of the dune

Ascent on the Dune du Pilat

Of course the dune itself could not be missed, here are a few impressions from the biggest sand hill in Europe:

You can get this as a souvenir (maybe next time...)

On the summit of the dune!

Actually, one should consider some precautions when climbing the dune...

And then you could do it all over again...

The ascent

View towards the ocean

Another view from the top

The descent normally is next to the stairs (running down), because this is more fun!

The zero-g flight

The highlight of the trip comes last...

The A310 with a new livery!

A few preparation exercises with our instructors Neil Melville (left, in blue) and Gwenn Lemoine (right, in orange)

Astride jump at Moon gravity with Jean-Francois Clervoy as helper...

Hanging out in zero-g

Human chain, first nice and sorted...

...then more messed up...

...last drifting into chaos

Letting balls float

The following video shows the best scenes from the flight. 16 parabolas were flown altogether: 1 times Moon gravity, 2 times Mars gravity and 13 times zero-g.

The flight video

As you can see in the video, I could try out several acrobatic things that came to my mind, among them:
- several kinds of spins, started with the legs or the arms
- somersaults
- somersault forward with a half spin (Barani)
In a later flight I want to try to put this into some kind of choreography and something like a "dance" in weightlessness. My big hope is that this some day turns into a real project.

Last day, at the ocean again with big waves