Real Pilots?

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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.

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I am putting up a few renders of models I have made in 3D digital just to familiarize folks with what appeared after WW-II in the cold war era. Pointy noses with swept wings is the rule. The bigger and rounder noses of airliners came later to give a better view forward to weather radars. The first is a Douglas B-66 "Destroyer". The second is a McDonnell RF-101 "Voodoo" to represent a saner view of gross weight than the F-88 they put up to compete with the Lockheed F-90 and one other competitor's escort fighter. These would have been the B-25 and P-51 follow-ons. It is important to note that the B-66 is strictly subsonic and the RF-101 was supersonic in short bursts. Here in EAA I have to be careful to distinguish the BE-10 from the RV-10.85938594

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Opportunity and coincidence need a lot to fill out the thread. May of 1965 found me heading West after graduating from the University of Michigan. I had a book from the Student Affairs Office that listed major employers in the US by location. As I began down route 66 and was passing St. Louis I glanced to my right and saw an exotic automobile I recognized from magazine articles. It was a Chrysler turbine car. I had read all about the rotating heat exchangers that were thought to be needed to provide a reasonable fuel consumption. We ran along for perhaps 200 miles and maybe I saw two turbine cars. They had Ghia bodies made in Italy and were red.
In front of my desk were two older men arguing about small turbine shrouds and seals, George Zewsky and Sam Williams. It must have been in 1981. George Zewsky was the engineer with cognizance of competitive engines and worked with Russian designs as well as GE. We were in the former RCA computer facility in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. The cooling system was for production equipment. With only people in it the roar and divergences of temperature were distracting.

Sam Williams had his own company after working for Chrysler. When I later was in Michigan people would get on the roof of Williams International to protest the tie to the cruise missile. I drove past it one day where it was located in Walled Lake. No one was on the roof or at the gate.

Automotive technology's influence on me was stronger from the Whizz kids and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara formerly of Ford Motor Company. Microminiaturization was available for radar made with solid state. There could be a joint design that worked for the Navy and the Air Force. Cost Effectiveness and Supportability were the benefits. There was another technology that was even bigger, the swing wing. Just before I left Pratt & Whitney a flight manual for the F-111-E was placed on my desk along with a computer printout that followed Keenan and Keynes steam tables, "Properties of Products of Combustion" it was called.

I had been the liaison with Navy Top Gun when I was at Douglas, Long Beach to maintain what was lost by Mr. Mac's anger at being rushed to propose for the replacement of the F-111B when it was cancelled. I had made a comparison of the F-14 "Tom cat" and the MIG-21J that needed data on the swing wing. Flight Systems Incorporated located on John Wayne Airport provided the data. Jointness would have to wait for the F-35 and a few generations of stealth.85958596

[Dana]

Two words: "paragraph breaks."

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Done, I also have a briefing the chairman mode of writing that puts everything on a single page. This format here is don't just tell me, show me.

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Deanna Jaeger and Dick Rutan showed the way for recips and propellers around the world as carbon fiber fuselage technology matured. After my first posts on this thread I looked for the latest in Williams powered aircraft and found the Cessna Citation and the Steve Fossett aircraft also by Bert Rutan but fanjet powered.

A Cessna Citation (Williams powered?) had landed at Troy executive airport so as I pursued my study of a new A/C when I was in Florida I looked to Tampa Executive Airport and not the main commercial International. Trying to fly a Piper Cub in real winds in FSX gave me what looked like a major glitch until I checked the level of the crosswind and found 45 knots. Ouch! now I know what ground loop is! Not a real problem for SLCM's from a submarine but maybe for a GLCM in the Netherlands. Nice to be away from such necessity to launch no matter what that trapped the Challenger.

I really don't have a high aspect ratio motor glider design to show, only the date 1960 that puzzles until a name is added, Francis Gary Powers. I do have a Wild Weasel. WW 320 was famous. In a strong crosswind it's narrow gear like an F-18 land based gave roll with heavy external stores. No propeller torque effects here but still a need for accurate representation. 85978598

[Drake Firebreed]

Good read! Looking forward to more.

[souza13alex]

Thank you, very practical and interesting information! Just recently I was watching the film Spy Bridge - I was very interested in the time of the Cold War.

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In order to get out the post draft law and the All-volunteer-Force that chanted "Warrior mode" and/or "boots-on-the ground" mode I need to first set the environment up. I am not someone who would have first hand exposure to the immediate impact of Hiroshima or Nagasaki footage no matter how it appeared. What I met was Republic Pictures News of the world or Movietone footage as a short subject at the Bad Axe Theater owned by my neighbor Albert Mayhew. The images of Bikini Atoll and later Eniwietok seized my emotional space in a way no later events could erase. The ships in the lagoon posed by Joint Task force I that were inspected after the blasts chilled the hot flash followed by the migrating shock wave that was the immediate image animation. For those who wonder how this propagated into Europe as a limit on immediate response one has to see the access to Berlin being cutoff and then the C-54's under GCA landing and taking of bringing supplies for weeks. No trains and no trucks as airplanes delivered food and coal. I have no F-89 "Scorpion" pictures as they replaced the F-86 Sabrejet" with 2.75 in. wingtip rocket pods instead of nose mounted .50 cal. machine guns while flying over my house to intercept Soviet bombers coming over the pole while being controlled by a radar site about 15 miles North of me on the Lake Huron Shore. I did in the late 60's and 70's befriend retired Col. Russ Schleeh, the pilot who set the speed record from Boeing field to Andrews AFB in suburban Maryland in a B-47 "8664."

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My source memory was not spot on this 1946/07/08 - First Pictures Atomic Blast! (1) "The dramatic film history of the atom bomb test at Bikini! Pictures of the actual bomb drop! Blasted ships and the terrible destructive force of the world's fourth atom bomb! Universal Newsreel, in cooperation with the Army and Navy, presents the motion picture drama, 'Operation Crossroads.' This film record of the historical event shows in dramatic detail the various phases of the epochal experiment, from takeoff to the awful blast that destroyed or damaged more than half the ships in Bikini Lagoon." scenes of Admiral William H. Blandy commanding Operation Crossroads at Bikini Lagoon, test animals put on ships, sheep is sheared, Secretary of Navy Forrestal speaks on deck of ship (sound distorted), crews leave, Bikini fleet ready, A-bomb loaded on B-29 Dave's Dream, plane takes off, bomb doors open, men put on protective goggles; (2) "The bomb's away! It's falling . . . " then explosion, "motion picture spectacle of all time" and another view of the explosion. (complete newsreel) SOURCE: 200 Universal 19-518 National Archives, College Park MD is from http://www.sunnycv.com/steve/newsreels/58.html this site. And this is the first hydrogen fusion version https://adst.org/2013/10/bikini-bombshell-the-first-h-bomb-test-on-the-eniwetok-atoll/ In between these events was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade#:~:text=The%20Western%20Allies%20o rganised%20the%20Berlin%20airlift%20%2826,joint%20 operation%20in%20support%20of%20the%20entire%20cit y.

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Before Nuclear non-proliferation had it's own office and South Africa and Israel were rumored to have homemade nuclear weapons I put on a brand new Bonanza Airlines DC-9-10 and flown to McCarren Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada. This was my first jet flight ever and I was impressed how the pilot just sort of looked down among the mountains, sighted the airfield and descended to land smoothly like, in my mind, a carrier pilot. With me was Wing Commander Stanley Hubbard of the RAF (retired) a member of the American Helicopter Society, the Society of Experimental Test Pilots and undaunted I found out later by deep soup in the Carolina mountains. As we sought out the house of his contact, the Commander of the USAF Fighter Weapons School, we could look up and see the blinking beacons and after burner flames of Thunderchiefs taking off and headed West. The next day we checked in at the gate as visitors and soon were in the ward room with a bevy of F-100 and F-105 Wild Weasel pilots with one or two 100 mission patches on their shoulders. No Misteys here. 8714

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I have to face the reality that I'm not a real pilot after first trying to fly the Beech King Air 350 in the Japan Exhibition flight where I did not really want to spend over 4 hours of stick time and then yesterday found the AI just goes straight and in a jump to FINAL descends slowly and then crashes into trees without sight of the runway at Haneda. Fortunately, for my opinion of the MS-FS 2020 I had already flown from Osan Korea and SFO to Haneda previously with the A320neo and a BOEING 787. I have seen Yoko ONO's box car at the DIA in Detroit and need no special inner warmth for Nagasaki.

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I recently saw in a news letter from the McDonnell-Douglas-Boeing retirees Association that Robert (Bob) Watzke had passed away. He worked in the Stability Control Section of Aerodynamics and in my era was the keeper of design flight derivatives on the A-4 "Skyhawk." With second moment inertial data from Ted Trugood in the Weights department I was able to mockup a 6-degree of freedom module for the ABS-III computer model I had modified from the McDonnell ABS-II they had built for the USAF FX competition and given to the USAF royalty free.

Terry Moore a new hire from the McDonnell Houston co-operative program when he was in College brought the Euler and eventually Runge-Kutta solutions structure to Douglas Long Beach. I have never flown an airplane so do not have the mental and small muscular coordination references that use the semicircular inner ear and it's canals. My references are from riding a desert Hare and Hound motorcycle with Russ Schleeh and at first John Correz.

You can expect me to have the ballistics down from leaning and sliding and even rather spectacular jumps both from the rolling terrain and from unexpected soaring after hitting a berm crosswise. Even Jack Simmons a TT rider at Ascot and my dealer was impressed!

The 6-DOF module was built on the new TSO terminals with online access to the IBM-370-75 in VM and later VS using FORTRAN-II and JCL with a job card all by now on IMS disc and no more handfuls of cards. The module was tested and the output plotted on a Gerber plotter with Terry Moore having had formal training on the CALCOM plotters of that era.

While in 1974 Francois Reider from Computer Graphics had created a display mode for the basic flight and tactics with skeleton graphics on a IBM 2250 Vector tube and then the SC-4260 and later SD-4460 at Missiles & Space for hard copy print by 1977 his wife had gone back to Washington state and he returned to Boeing and the actual mating up of ABS-III and 6-DOF got blocked at the Editor/Assembly debugging level, the imitation paper tape flight parameter and atmospherics and dynamics traces allowed a Navy tactical trainer with either two or one engine to allow the choice of the Hawker-Siddeley "HAWK" to become the McDonnell-Douglas "Goshawk."

It's right over there on my art cabinet now in diecast white metal at 1/100th like all the USAF airplanes I worked on that are still in inventory. I had hoped it was in 1/72nd scale to include with the USMC/NAVY airplanes I worked on that are up on one of my bookcases and in the real world still in inventory.

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In dealing with the F-4 forum where many members are family or maintainers I had a key date for when the back seater in the Air Force had to be a pilot. Because this date was not comprehensive for all Phantom crew members in all services it seems confusing because the Airforce Phantoms remained beyond 1968 when the ground forces began to leave Viet Nam and remained in Thailand and operated in nearby countries also. US. Navy Phantoms remained on aircraft carrier ships off shore until the peace treaty was signed in 1973. Exactly, when USMC Phantoms or crews ceased to operate off carriers I don't know. Why is my information so sketchy? Get a copy of the Pentagon Papers. Look up government agreements about what sort of aircraft were allowed to operate in Southeast Asia after Dien Bien Phu. Learn about the origins of the OV-10. Ponder how the AD and T-28 got into the inventories of local countries in SEA. Research, the use of the F-8F "Bearcat" as a troop transport. Then look really hard at 1968 and how the role of navigators and the other roles they played were going to be taken over by avionics and how simulators were going to replace all the procedures trainers built by training commands. Then examine the collapse of the total scheme as celestial navigation was dismissed by INS and the controlled temperature INS was taken over by strapdown first for missiles and later by laser ring gyro and then radio took over to get out of the airplane as GPS. Amuse yourself as LABS toss bombing for nuclear and SHRIKE delivery was first replaced by CCRP and CCIP as computers and stable platforms made possible accuracies of 10 mills all to be taken over by PAVEWAY and PAVE TACK laser guided bomb delivery in clear day and occluded conditions with IR using pods. 3mils accuracy?