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Mad Dog
路Lol, there has to be a few more good Tomcat stories....
Calling all Pilots...
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corn18
路Time for another story.
I was lucky enough to be a test pilot on the new F/A-18E Super Hornet as part of the development team back in 1996. My primary role was weapons testing and one of our weapons was the M61 Vulcan cannon mounted in the nose. 6,000 rounds per minute of 20mm depleted uranium badness. One of the test points we needed to verify was at Mach 1.3 at -3G's (negative 3 G's) and 35,000 ft. For the life of me, I could not understand why we had to test at negative G's because everyone knows that fighter pilots hate negative G's. They hurt. But that's what the spec said, so that's what we were going to do.
The interesting part of all this is not the flight but the brief. We sit down to brief the hop and the test engineer is going through the setup for the test point and it all makes good sense. Then he briefs me that after I finish my 1 sec burst at the test condition, that I immediately needed to do a 6G breakaway turn. Say What? Why the heck would I do that? He calmly replied that I would need to do this in order to avoid shooting myself down. That's nuts! Then he walked me through the math and trajectories of my Super Hornet doing 1.3M, my bullets doing 3.0M but since I was "releasing" them at negative 3 G's, I was actually launching them through the air and if I continued straight ahead, the math says we would meet back up again in about 30 seconds. I'll be darned. I did the breakaway. Which sucked because pushing negative 3G's immediately followed by positive 6 G's nearly killed me. Those silly engineers.
Carry on.
Corn
I was lucky enough to be a test pilot on the new F/A-18E Super Hornet as part of the development team back in 1996. My primary role was weapons testing and one of our weapons was the M61 Vulcan cannon mounted in the nose. 6,000 rounds per minute of 20mm depleted uranium badness. One of the test points we needed to verify was at Mach 1.3 at -3G's (negative 3 G's) and 35,000 ft. For the life of me, I could not understand why we had to test at negative G's because everyone knows that fighter pilots hate negative G's. They hurt. But that's what the spec said, so that's what we were going to do.
The interesting part of all this is not the flight but the brief. We sit down to brief the hop and the test engineer is going through the setup for the test point and it all makes good sense. Then he briefs me that after I finish my 1 sec burst at the test condition, that I immediately needed to do a 6G breakaway turn. Say What? Why the heck would I do that? He calmly replied that I would need to do this in order to avoid shooting myself down. That's nuts! Then he walked me through the math and trajectories of my Super Hornet doing 1.3M, my bullets doing 3.0M but since I was "releasing" them at negative 3 G's, I was actually launching them through the air and if I continued straight ahead, the math says we would meet back up again in about 30 seconds. I'll be darned. I did the breakaway. Which sucked because pushing negative 3G's immediately followed by positive 6 G's nearly killed me. Those silly engineers.
Carry on.
Corn
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RCAFBuster
路For our CF-18 low level strafe we'd pull up and left at a minimum of 3.5g as the bullets were spinning up and right.
Corn, do you know Ricardo??
Cheers,
Buster
Corn, do you know Ricardo??
Cheers,
Buster
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SpeedBird 1982
路I'll go first.
First time I flew any aircraft was my first flight in a T-34C Mentor with VT-6 in Pensacola, FL (Whiting Field) in Aug 1988. Scared to death. Front seat. Great instructor in the back (not a screamer). Clear day. He did the takeoff, climb out and initial up and away demo. We were flying straight and level at 5,000 ft, maybe 120 kts CAS. He asked if I was ready to take the controls. I meekly replied "affirmative". As soon as I took over, I was doing great. For about 30 seconds. Then the plane kept climbing and descending and accelerating and decelerating. And it was clearly bent because I could not maintain my heading no matter how hard I tried. No matter what I did, the plane was out of control. There must be some malfunction.
After letting me suffer for a couple of minutes, the instructor took the airplane back and got things under control. The plane had clearly self repaired itself and was now ready for me to try again. It was then that I learned how to fly: the instructor told me to look in my mirrors at him in the backseat. Both his hands were in the air. Apparently, planes fly just fine without any human input at all. He gave me control of the plane again and I held my hands in the air. He gave me an above average for air work for that.
That's my first memory as a pilot.
Corn
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SpeedBird 1982
路Hmmm.... Definitely not a Viper driver, because we both had short legs. Eagle drivers never cared about range and there were never enough Echo drivers to matter. F-14 guys ignored the A part until around 1992, so maybe a Tomcat F/A wannabe. Now, an Intruder guy would say that. Everyone else is largely irrelevant. 馃槑
https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=kPqqKE0Y9Lk
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Mad Dog
路Man... @corn18 and @RCAFBuster...you dudes and your gun stories...blah, blah, blah...馃槈
Well, I've got a sad gun story...
There we were...on deployment (somewhere in the Pacific)...sometime around 1990-1991 flying the SH-60B helo off the USS Rodney M. Davis (a frigate). We had launched from the ship to conduct M60 door gunner quals for our air crewmen. I was the HAC (helicopter aircraft commander) so I was in charge...or so I thought. After the air crewmen shot up the killer tomato (basically a humongous red balloon that floats on the water and functions as a gunnery target), I announce over the ICS that I'm coming back through the tunnel...because I want to shoot the M60...
Senior air crewman: "Ummm...sir...have you been to M60 school?"
Mad Dog: "No."
Senior air crewman: "Well...sir...I can't allow you to shoot the M60."
Mad Dog: "But I'm the HAC! I'm in charge! I wanna shoot the gun!"
Senior air crewman: "No, sir...you can't shoot the gun unless you went to M60 school and are signed off."
Mad Dog: "Are you sure about this?"
Senior air crewman: "Yes, sir!"
Mad Dog: "Whatever!!! We're going back to the ship...and when we get there, I'll kick your ass at Tetris...AGAIN!!!"
That's my sad gun story. 馃檨
Well, I've got a sad gun story...
There we were...on deployment (somewhere in the Pacific)...sometime around 1990-1991 flying the SH-60B helo off the USS Rodney M. Davis (a frigate). We had launched from the ship to conduct M60 door gunner quals for our air crewmen. I was the HAC (helicopter aircraft commander) so I was in charge...or so I thought. After the air crewmen shot up the killer tomato (basically a humongous red balloon that floats on the water and functions as a gunnery target), I announce over the ICS that I'm coming back through the tunnel...because I want to shoot the M60...
Senior air crewman: "Ummm...sir...have you been to M60 school?"
Mad Dog: "No."
Senior air crewman: "Well...sir...I can't allow you to shoot the M60."
Mad Dog: "But I'm the HAC! I'm in charge! I wanna shoot the gun!"
Senior air crewman: "No, sir...you can't shoot the gun unless you went to M60 school and are signed off."
Mad Dog: "Are you sure about this?"
Senior air crewman: "Yes, sir!"
Mad Dog: "Whatever!!! We're going back to the ship...and when we get there, I'll kick your ass at Tetris...AGAIN!!!"
That's my sad gun story. 馃檨
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corn18
路For our CF-18 low level strafe we'd pull up and left at a minimum of 3.5g as the bullets were spinning up and right.
Corn, do you know Ricardo??
Cheers,
Buster
@RCAFBuster I know Ricardo very well. Doesn't everyone know Ricardo? My first official test flight after I graduated from Test Pilot School was with Ricardo at VX-23. Small world.
Corn
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padders
路路Oooo subtitles!Man... @corn18 and @RCAFBuster...you dudes and your gun stories...blah, blah, blah...馃槈
Well, I've got a sad gun story...
There we were...on deployment (somewhere in the Pacific)...sometime around 1990-1991 flying the SH-60B helo off the USS Rodney M. Davis (a frigate). We had launched from the ship to conduct M60 door gunner quals for our air crewmen. I was the HAC (helicopter aircraft commander) so I was in charge...or so I thought. After the air crewmen shot up the killer tomato (basically a humongous red balloon that floats on the water and functions as a gunnery target), I announce over the ICS that I'm coming back through the tunnel...because I want to shoot the M60...
Senior air crewman: "Ummm...sir...have you been to M60 school?"
Mad Dog: "No."
Senior air crewman: "Well...sir...I can't allow you to shoot the M60."
Mad Dog: "But I'm the HAC! I'm in charge! I wanna shoot the gun!"
Senior air crewman: "No, sir...you can't shoot the gun unless you went to M60 school and are signed off."
Mad Dog: "Are you sure about this?"
Senior air crewman: "Yes, sir!"
Mad Dog: "Whatever!!! We're going back to the ship...and when we get there, I'll kick your ass at Tetris...AGAIN!!!"
That's my sad gun story. 馃檨
Seen the bit in Memphis Belle where the Nav or radio guy or whatever he was tries out the tail Brownings, bags a ME109 which then cartwheels into the next B-17 in the formation? That may be why they are nervous about letting pilots etc do Rambo impressions!
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JimInOz
路路Melbourne AustraliaFor our CF-18 low level strafe we'd pull up and left at a minimum of 3.5g as the bullets were spinning up and right.
Corn, do you know Ricardo??
Cheers,
Buster
I remember seeing a small number of Mirages return from A/G gunnery practice with blue skid marks on the underside of the aircraft, mostly the ones flown by the trainees doing fast jet conversion.
And there was the time when Truckie Carr dropped a MK82 high drag that went slick, ricocheted off the range and whacked his aircraft on climb out forcing him to bang out. He came out OK and I think he went on to a less nerve wracking career, flying for Cathay Pacific.
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