Real Pilots?

[2ndsegment]

As a boy I had several plastic models of aeronautical vehicles that were not airplanes. The key one here is the SNARK guided missile. I worked with the former SNARK System Program Manager (SPO) when he was put on the Advanced Tactical Electronic Warfare Systems (ATEWS) program as manager at Aeronautical Systems Division (ASD) of Air Force Systems Command (AFSC).

This led to a new role for the RB-66 which was also a pointy nosed swept wing vehicle of intermediate range. My role was mostly on configuring the hardware in the pods in the EA-6B USMC electronic warfare aircraft to fit and sprout antennas on first a C-9A made out of a Douglas DC-9 and then picking from the boneyard at Davis Monthan AFB eventually EB-66B's to become the ATEWS.

A configuration and electronic total theory led me to my second favorite plastic model from my childhood, the Lockheed F-90 ne "Blackhawk" comics twin engine over 90,000 lb. fighter/interceptor. The common element in these two airplanes is the gross weight.

Which brings us to the focus of this thread and my arrival at EAA. The SNARK was tested headed South and with it's navigation and communications hardware of it's era tended to wander off. STOP!

In 1969 I was given access to a computer program that "flew" fighter aircraft in close-in combat. I caused several IBM card decks to be made for this program and also cleaned up and debugged the dynamics and tactics. Later I caused a display for demonstration purposes to be made and in the final effort a 6-dgree-of-freedom module using differentials for controls to be created though it was never brought into the display version which ran in 1/3 real time unless analytically slowed.

After the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) was awarded to Boeing I was asked to analyze a large number of missile configurations to define the error possible envelope in a test environment to be used in choosing a test monitoring aircraft. To say I pretty much had in my mind a pointy nosed swept wing body as my candidate with an L/D like the slab tail of a Piper cub my doctor had owned and offered me a ride in would describe how I drew a blank until I was asked to meet with Jack McDonnell on a Engineering computer which had just been purchased (Digital VAX). I had been forbidden to use a computer and to only use closed form mathematics.

Then I was allowed to look in the library for a guidance model and found one by someone at Air Force Weapons Laboratory Kirkland AFB which allowed me to clear out the clutter of GIGAs and PIGAs which were in the proceedings of the Inertial Guidance and Test Symposiums I had taken over from someone who was retiring. Soon, I had a viable way to model errors up to TERCOM.

My own work had been more forward looking at TCAS simply avoiding trajectories that hit the ground even in rolling and pulling projections. This is how I came to build a digital aircraft in BASIC first in DOS and then in WINDOWS, but it didn't allow me to create a payload range or long range cruise profile so after I had studied Von Mises book I sought out a program I saw advertised in KITPLANES magazine called GaCAD by a corporation billing itself as DAR with ties to Delft University in the Netherlands and sponsored by NASA. Random events led to my being on a SAAB 340 airliner with a supercritical wing designed by the principal of DAR and Delft University.

So What?!! So I'm here and I have flown the Microsoft 2004 Learjet around the world using only autopilot and trim. After FSX and news of a new version now being reviewed here in this forum I was hoping to be toe-to-toe with real pilots at Air Venture.