I'm going to push this to the point
where nobody will want to attempt it.
I always wanted to fly, from the time I was a kid.
I took this emergency maneuver training program.
Well, the first time the instructor
demonstrated a full roll in the airplane,
it was a completely new and different experience.
When you go into an inverted flat spin,
you're upside down.
You slow the airplane down.
You let it stall inverted.
You put the power in and that airplane is spinning flat.
Most people spend their whole careers
trying to stay out of spins,
especially inverted flat spins.
It is not flying.
The airplane is spinning and falling.
Something inside my brain said, "Dude, do more of that."
I like to ride my bike a lot.
Leg muscles are pretty important
for the inverted flat spin.
Not only do you have to hold the stick in place,
stand on the rudder pedal, keep the throttle forward,
you have to scan everything all while
maintaining you're composure under negative 1.57 G's.
It's a very physical toll on your body.
He has to control his blood flow.
By controlling the blood flow, that's basically
relaxed breathing.
It's just a little disorienting.
You're body's not used to your blood
moving around in that manner.
He's also got to use his gauges to see where he's at,
what's happening, keep an eye on
altitude speeds, everything.
Panic is the enemy, the deadly enemy of a pilot.
When I'm in doing these maneuvers,
my mental condition is high focus, high discipline.
When you're sitting there going through
five, six times the force of gravity, all that blood
that's in your head is going down towards your feet.
In a negative G scenario, like the inverted flat spin,
you're creating blood pressure.
Your eyeballs feel like they want to blow out of your head
and you're hoping you don't an aneurism.
The other danger is if I had to recover
and something's wrong, it's still descending.
I have a few seconds to either try to recover again
or get out of the airplane.
Again, this is something people don't normally do.
I had a terrible childhood.
My parents were divorced at an early age.
You know, I raised myself essentially
and the only way I knew how to become successful
was to take everything I did to an extreme,
so that I could do it better than anybody else.
Is this an attention seeking thing?
I would say yes.
So the very first time I tried to break this record,
that was an epic failure.
I came so far short.
I didn't know why I failed.
I had to figure it out for myself
and that started a multi-year research project.
Spencer comes up with a plan.
I prepared spreadsheets.
I tracked data.
I made videos, created algorithms for predicting
spin performance based on a number of factors.
There's a lot of cameras on the airplane.
It's very common for me to fly
and think something didn't go right that I couldn't see
because I was looking in a different direction.
I look at the video later
and I'm able to figure out,
"Aha, that's what I was doing wrong."
My brain works in math and algorithms and
putting information together in a way that
creates knowledge and, ultimately, wisdom.
I have data that Spencer's sent me where
it's literally broken down into half-seconds.
Some would look at this and say
this is the sign of a madman,
but by tracking all the aircraft performance,
how high it went, how many turns per thousand feet,
engine performance,
I'm able to predict what altitude I need to achieve
to do that number of spins.
Three additional terms,
well, that's kind of a weak effort, wasn't it?
[RADIO]
Clear for takeoff, make the right turn out eastbound.
I found a very unique airplane
that had the same engine as my two-seater,
but smaller, lighter, could climb higher
and spin faster and I easily smashed my own record.
What'd you do?
Spin complete.
All the way down?
All the way down.
All the way down!
[BLEEP] gnarly.
Not only do I want to break 100 because to me that's
the goal, but I need to smash that record.
So, now the goal is 120 turns from 30,000 feet.
Now we're talking about taking this plane that
very few people take over 10,000 feet
and we're going to take it closer to 30,000 feet.
If he lost his oxygen up there,
it could be catastrophic within 15, 20 seconds.
I think there's a common personality
that pursues competition flying.
Let's face it,
breaking world records is about one-upsmanship.
Aerobatic guys are...it's kind of a rare breed.
Most pilots don't want to get into a spin.
It's just a very unnatural thing to do.
A good pilot is not
a daredevil who pushes limits beyond.
A good pilot is someone who understands his limits
and respects them.
I didn't just go out and break this record on the first try.
I failed twice.
What failure taught me
was that I needed to understand this maneuver
more than anybody else understands it.
The ultimate goal is to do something
that people believe can't be done,
to show people
that if you set your mind to something and you apply
a methodical, intelligent approach,
you can do anything you want.
One thing that scares me is that we have a new
goal of 120.
If it comes in 118, I can't tell you what's going to happen.