busdriver

Another day at the office

Low aspect Sparrow kill...loving Stary's SARCASM

daddyairplanes...send TK your email address... (see his Memorial Day thread)

Buggsy opined Norman Franks & Alan Benett did a pretty fair analysis in their 1997 title The Red Baron's Last Flight : A Mystery Investigated

Stuntman posited Yes please...

Nice Blk 15

The Eagle truly is King Kong WRT having a powerful radar. They could lock my little F-16A before I could generally paint them on my little biddy radar. Advantage Eagle. However...I felt pretty darn confident I could get to the merge if I was at low altitude (due to the V sub C notch in their radar). At medium to high altitude...defeating a face shot was problematic (was ACMI in your favor or not that day) did you "worm" effectively that day. Clear advantage to the Eagle, Tomcat & Hornet. LOL...I never met another viper pilot that felt inferior to a guy in another jet. The F-18A gave me the biggest trouble...but they had shorter legs than us, so if they were hauling a CL tank that day, and I saw that at the merge...boy my fangs were out. If they were clean...I'd probably die in the phone booth, groveling in a nose high slow speed rolling scissors. BFM against the Hornet was like BFM against another Viper. But then they'd bingo out and go home. Regarding the F-16 vs F-14...the Tomcat is the world's largest airspeed indicator. Meaning you knew his energy state immediately. In the F-16 our BFM problem was defined by a simple flow chart. 1) Am I inside his turn circle? If Yes...go kill him. If No, get inside his turn circle and kill him. That's not hubris or ego, that is simply the way we trained. Once AIM-9Ls & Ms became more plentiful our options improved. Again I am speaking strictly as a former A model (Blk 10 & Blk 15) guy. You had good days and you had bad days, and some days you got luckier. The F-16 would still be my choice to go to war.

Those are some gorgeous RF-4Cs...you probably already know that our inboard pylons were the Navy's LAUs versus the standard USAF C/D/E/G LAU. But gorgeous models none the less!

Bullethead's (how shall I phrase this...) misunderstanding of Airbus FBW system and logic is often found amongst airline pilots, but only pilots that have not flown a Bus. Kudos to FC for trying to illuminate and educate. It has been my experience that most american pilots prefer Boeing products. I really liked the 757. But I prefer Fifi (319/320). It seems to me pilots that love it the most are former F-16 guys/gals like me. We "get" the FBW logic of Normal >> Alternate >> Direct Law. My employer recently included stall recovery training during recurrent simulator training (as a direct result of the Air France crash). It requires us to "fail" two computers to get into Alternate Law, and we no longer automatically go to TOGA (exacerbates the nose pitch up and possible secondary stall). I am firmly convinced that years of flying upside down and pulling Gs makes this training less stressful for me than say a pilot with ZERO military fixed wing experience. Direct Law is scary for some folks, but when you explain that it's sorta like flying a DC-9 you see the light bulb come on over their cranium. My employer considers a DIRECT Law approach and landing to be an emergency, most carriers do NOT. I do not consider it an emergency. WRT Boeing -vs- Airbus...recently had a mechanical delay leaving CVG for SEA due to a scheduled overnight engine change. While we waited, two Boeing employees cornered me and my FO (co-pilot) to get the "real" gouge on the delay. One guy said he didn't like Airbus, that his 737 was much better. He was in fact part of the 737-900 team that is selling them to my employer. He was rightfully proud. When I asked if Boeing was putting the same ole, cramped and NOISY cockpit on the front of their shiny new 900, he sheepishly (think averting his gaze and sorta mumbling) admitted it was pretty much correct. "Ahhh, we're ahhh making a couple changes, but yes it's the same." Give me my QUIET, roomy cockpit with its side sticks, tray tables, and being able to see my wingtip (great for taxiing on congested ramps).

Section 6 of the Dash 1 only has a small Note about the small tail Blk 10 being more prone to deep stalls/departures since it operated at a more aft CG and more prone to Yaw departures with external stores (especially assymetric stores). Since the SF2 flight model does NOT replicate the extreme ranges of the F-16's envelope, I would not bother with tweaking anything. Honestly, how would you know what to tweak? Cheers

From the fuzzy recesses of my brain, I don't recall any differences between flying the Blk 10 and the Blk 15. Without pulling out my Dash 1, I recall the significance of having a bigger elevators was primarily during out of control recoveries and using the MPO switch to rock the airplane out of its pitch hang up (the nose kinda bobbing up and down while spinning). I can't recall any noticable difference between the Blk 10s I flew in RTU and the Blk 15s I flew at Kunsan or Moody. Just looking at my Dash 1, there is NOTHING in it suggesting a significant difference in handling. One other place to look is my F-16 MCM 3-3 which is a collection of unclassified phase manuals rolled into one. Standby...

We also had Angle of Attack (AOA) indexer lights above the glareshield, when the donut in the middle was illuminated you were pulling optimum AOA, at the same time the aural tone in your ear was nice and soothing. During an approach to landing (around the final turn or on a straight in) the donut was your target AOA, it also happens to be optimum maneuvering AOA. As you exceeded optium AOA (19.2 units in the hard wing F-4) the V above the donut came on (both at same time meaning slightly slow) and if you continued to pull only the V illuminated...think of it as telling you to point the nose down ("Unload for Control" was the name of the film put out to all F-4 RTUs/RAGs). And by now the aural tone was a rapid fire (looking at a Dash 1 it says the "your AOA is too high, you're too slow" tone was 20 pulses per second with a frequency of 1600 Hz.). Above 22.3 units AOA the nosegunner would feel his left rudder pedal shake (think rapid fire chattering). The rule of thumb a new AF Phantom guy learned was, when you hear the beep, use your feet. When the AOA aural tone started (at 15 units) that's when you centered the stick laterally and used your rudder pedals to roll. So around the final turn in the overhead pattern you smoothly pushed on the rudder pedals to control the radius of the turn. During BFM...say during your gun defense when the Gomer was trapped about 1500 feet in the saddle, stomping on the rudder pedal (with the stick snuggly pulled full aft) would get your out of plane maneuver. The F-16 on the other hand...no aural tone, no pedal shaker. We (some guys) put our feet flat on the floor and hooked our toes under the rudder pedals during BFM. Otherwise you simply rested your feet on the pedals, but pedal pressure was always light. It was most definitely something different. But not unlike they way we flew the T-38. You had to be cautious with rudder inputs at high AOA in the T-38. Once a UPT grad got to Fighter Lead In, then he/she was taught to use their feet more.

It's always Top Gun Day when you fly with me. Especially when I get an ex USN First Officer (co-pilot). Invariably as our A320 intercepts the Localizer and starts down the Glide Slope (on autopilot) I'll look over and utter those immortal words, "Gutsiest move I ever saw Mav." Or if it is apparent to both of us that we're high (perhaps starting our descent late from cruise) then that calls for the obvious "do some of that pilot s**t..." Back to the books, I've got two days in the box "doin' some of that pilot s**t..." Talk me through that Loss of Pressurization + Emergency Descent procedure Goose.

When I first saw a picture of an RQ-170 I concluded, "Hey that's a low observable UAV designed to operate in high threat environments ." The Iranians first claimed they shotdown a drone. Now they claimed they hacked its control link. To my untrained eyeball, they've shown they have an RQ-170, one without a whole bunch of battle damage. I certainly don't know the cause of this loss. I'll go out on a limb and say none of us KNOW the cause. I would be surprised if an asset designed to operate in a high threat environment did not have an autonomous capability (autopilot, preprogrammed profiles) impervious to MIJI (meaconing, intrusion, jamming, interference). I can see where folks would make that assertion, but it's not at all clear to me that is the logical conclusion.

So what was your point? UAVs crash. The US Air Force UAVs using pilots that graduated from UPT have had more crashes than US Army UAVs that use an autoland feature. Indeed...unencrypted video feed was hacked. Personally, I would be reluctant to extrapolate passive interception with the ability to override control of a low observable, high-altitude UAV. If you linked to a report of insurgents taking command of a Predator or Reaper and employing their weapons against US forces, then I'd think you'd be on to something. Here's my point. For you to suggest that using UAVs in high threat environments is not smart, clearly IMO misses the entire rationale of having UAVs.

Ack! I think it's very smart.

My money is on some internal glitch, and perhaps some backup algorithm (perhaps after running out of gas sprial down and perform a soft field forced landing) was the cause. Hacking the datalink would be an amazing feat. Interesting none the less.

I question your air combat acumen. Iran may indeed have the latest and greatest counter-drone measures. Or perhaps some queertron in the drone's circuits caused it to go tits up and it simply crashed, with the Iranians surprised as sh*t at their good fortune. But to assert that drones are somehow ineffective in high threat environments based upon this loss is simply uniformed. If you are so inclined (to learn more on this topic) you might read William Wagner's suberb book about drones during the vietnam war titled Lightning Bugs and other Reconnaissance Drones. What would you be saying if Iran was parading a captured US pilot around for the media? Iran may have the talent to reverse engineer or exploit the captured technology, but they don't have a human being to try to exploit. Iran is seen as a budding nuclear threat, sending a UAV to gather imagery is vary smart IMO.

Nope.

LOL...too funny.

My apologies, honestly. I'll work on that. Did you noticed that I never use WVR? There's a reason for that. From my experience an engagement is either BVR or some form of either 1) at the merge or 2) a visual fight. I know...dubya-vee-ahr looks & sounds like the natural opposite to BVR to you. It looks and sounds extremely "not fighter pilot" to me. Whenever I see WVR I just think visual.

In early 1988 at Kunsan we were tasked to play bandits for the Eagles ORI. They deployed to Kwangju but had to fight their way into the ROK, land at Kwangju then relaunch a squadron's worth (or so) on sweeps and escorts of F-4s from Taegu. The other F-16 sqdn already had their Block 30 jets and they played Floggers (face shooters). We simulated Fishbeds. My sqdn CC lead 18 or 20 of us (think we had a couple ground aborts at EOR). The only guys on the UHF radios were Lead and his #2. Everybody else stayed silent on UHF, but we had seperate VHF freqs for each pair. We taxied silently to the runway in sequence. Tower cleared the formation for takeoff and the first four took the runway. As the first pair rolled, the following pair moved forward to allow the next pair on the runway. 20 seconds spacing, standard for a combat load with bombs. When we were all airborne Lead sent us over to GCI, only #2 answered. When Lead told GCI we were airborne, they asked how many in the flight. Lead answered...Two. GCI keyed his mike, "Ummmm, ermmmm...ahh Copy that." We would not have much in the way of GCI assistance. We spread out as two-ships all over the ROK, entered our CAPs and waited...and waited...and waited. My Lead and I were on the west coast south of Osan. At a nominal 420 KGS it's only 10 minutes from our CAP to the southern coast. It was a gorgeous, cold, clear day. We got a call in the blind from GCI..."30 plus Eagles inbound...40 Eagles inbound." Oh great! One more quick pump around the CAP, noses hot toward the south. Shortly there after I started seeing the four-abreast contrails as they dove through the contrail level. Off to the east and southeast pairs of contrails appeared...now some circular ones just like the BoB. It truly was awesome...all across the sky. Heading south I was on the west side of the formation, my Lead decided to pump again. GCI is calling in the blind..."Kill F-16 right hand turn at FL350...Kill F-16 left hand turn at 9000...(you get the picture, "All F-16s in the ROK are dead, Eagle 01, out."). I told Lead I had picked up a pair of contacts...20 miles...high aspect and closing fast..."Two's crickets" (my ALR-69 was lit up and tweedling). Too late, he didn't see them on his REO since he had started a left turn...oh f*ck...this was not going to end well for us. It didn't. Another in-place turn back south and Lead gets a contact to the SE and points that way...but my contacts were SW...hmmm oh there they are..."Two's engaged defensive Eagles...[s**t Lead]...Break right...he's closing to guns...Fox two...Fox two...(his wingman must have called his break cuz he puked out flares and broke down and away)" My Lead died, I died. It was painless, but extremely instructional. It was over extremely fast for us. One Lt brought back video tape of a gun tracking solution up above FL400, but he had already died I'd guess. We headed for the Tanker, topped off, went to a new CAP, loitered, used a piddle pack, had a sandwich and some water, then waited for the next round. Second round GCI braodcast, "Phantoms airborne, Eagles airborne." Lead picked up what turned out to be a pair of low altitude F-4s with F-15 trailers. He opted to roll in on the lead pair of the 2 + 2. Lead miscalculated the turn and got in a tail chase (they were doing .95mach or so) I was sampling the trailers up to the turn...and the Eagles killed us both. The gouge back then said if there is more than 8 NMs between target elements, go for the lead pair. Less than 8 NMs go for the trailers. We didn't match their speed coming around the corner, so the trailers quickly closed and killed us. We played pretty good NKAF bandits (poorly trained). Another Lt got into a tail chase with a high speed F-4, he was reviewing his tape with a dozen of us (Sqdn brass not in the room). I started hooting, "s**t yer gonna go supersonic at 500 feet over a populated area..." guys started laughing. The Lt stopped his tape, left the room for a bit. When he returned about 15-20 minutes later the CC asked for his tape (must have been tip off). Miraculously the tape became corrupt at .97 mach for a short period. When the picture cleared up he was slowing and climbing, pulling off from the F-4. We laughed. No sonic boom complaints were filed as far as we knew.

Quite true. And through trail and error (lots of error) they discovered maneuvers and chaff intervals that worked very effectively. (According to a couple notes I'm looking at from my attendance at ECP school).

I can't recall the source, but somewhere out there on the "internets" is a discussion of the weight gain to improvement ratio. ISTR it worked out to something like 1000 pounds per year. For a knife fight, horizontal or vertical the A would still have the better (relative) nose authority. A number you could rely upon if you glanced at your airspeed...250 KIAS; that slow and you could still go over the top (loop or Immelmann). We had a target arm teaching BFM academics during RTU. He distilled our BFM problem thusly: Ask yourself, "Am I inside the bandit's turn circle?" If yes, go kill him. If no, drive to his circle and kill him. The C most definitely has a superior radar. I never met an Eagle guy that didn't love his jet. Two motors, powerful radar, the ability to "reach out and touch some one" (obtuse reference to AT&T long distance commercial from the 80s), some really cool avionics features. Things like NCTR. Or let's say they're going to train/fight in a specific area (MOA for US folks, TRA for EU types). They can program the corner points of the area into their Nav computer, connect the dots so to speak on their radar screen, and have superior SA. And this was 30 years ago. The F-16A could only display one solitary Nav point on the REO (radar electro optical). Eagles liked to sweep or enter the MOA/TRA in their "Wall" formation above the contrail level, then at an appropriate distance BVR , descend/dive through the contrails. It made me smile every time I saw it. My first choice out of pilot training was the F-15, second was RF-4. The F-16 didn't interest me in the least. When I got to Germany and started seeing all kinds of airplanes, and having immensely enjoyable but totally unauthorized 1-v-1 or 1-v-2 or 1-v-4 dogfights while staying below Germany's PCA (Positive Control Airspace...radar controlled above 7000') I was most impressed with the F-16. Figuring there wouldn't be a whole lot of BVR fighting, I decided I wasn't interested in flying a HUGE airplane (bigger than my big RF-4).