Analytical, Imaginary and Real
In the analytical world I have flown F-4 Phantoms, a FX that fit a proposal, and the various Adversaries in tactical situations up to and including launch and flyout of AIM-9, AIM-7 and a hypothetical AGILE with opposing adversary IR and Radar air-to-air missiles. This world was located at MACAIR, DAC and MDAC-WEST. The computer code had been supplied to AFSC in the winning FX prototype proposal. Some of the decks were Classified. When used by USAF and MACAIR most of the work was to support selection of an inboard gun. There were manned simulator spheres at MACAIR St. Louis where the same software and data decks were used as adversaries against actual pilots.
I began my effort to support the QUICKTURN project at MDAC-WEST where presentation to the Navy resulted in a request to obtain an advisor to avoid criticism which was standing in the way of use for evaluation at Navy facilities. I was asked to travel regularly between Long Beach DAC and McDonnell-Douglas-WEST to work with the consultant to settle things. I was also invited to attend an early Top-Gun class at the newly constituted Navy Fighter Weapons School, class 70-1 starting in December 1969. "Zeke" Cormier a former Blue Angels Commander and Navy "Ace" drove me down and introduced me to the commander of the school, who was an F-4 back seater Radar Intercept Officer. I had been taken off a project to develop a Navigator Trainer version of our successful C-9A Aeromedical Transport because the learning curves I developed from Undergraduate Navigator Training courses were different from a recently complete Navy Pilot training study done by a different contractor. The Air Force took all the navigator rated airmen out of their F-4's and other similarly staffed aircraft at that time and replaced them with a second pilot as their F-4's had pilot controls in both seats.
As the years progressed I began to get a lot of negative over hears from what I later determined to be related to the M-16 inventor's last name being the same as mine. He is now in the Hall of Fame at the Ordnance Museum in Aberdeen, Maryland. I dropped by there when I lived in Washington, DC for a time. I did not look in at the nearby FAA in Atlantic City.
Reading the most recent AOPA magazine, I saw I needed to disclose any enforcement actions that resulted in Felony or Misdemeanor convictions and the punishments imposed as well as any investigations related to any temporary hospitalizations or schools, such as for alcohol treatment to apply for pilot training with or without medical exemption.
Is my potential application out of the extreme for an EAA member to receive in person instruction to make the feel of the airplane real to correspond with my work with analytical flight.
I'll exclude experiences I have had with digitally simulated flight using video screens and physical pilot controls while standing or sitting in a chair.
My world once was on an IBM-360-85 and was submitted as a group of 80 card data decks about 3-1/2 per run and came back as late as three days later.
Gathering Necessary Resources
The first official data I held in my hands in 1965 was printouts on fan fold 124 character wide computer print outs. It was the trajectories of the proposed Apollo capsule for various orbits to make the lunar transfer ellipse align at a time with the moon's orbit at parametric values of the moon's declination as seen from earth. This was not science fiction. Nor was it full of mathematical imaginary values as was once the way airfoils were developed in the 1930's by transformations of a circle. The connection to NASA was made by Arvil Gentry of Douglas Aerodynamic Research. He developed sailboat sail profiles in his outside life. I had an almost whole former production line building with abandoned drafting boards end to end long enough for a full size cargo aircraft wing or fuselage. I needed, to avoid interpretation. I needed an area at least 21,600 n-mi divided by pi = 6875 n-mi as earth's diameter to be my paper size until I needed one 239,000 miles in size for the lunar transfer ellipse to the moon. Maybe I would just accept that is what was in the computer memory I held in the print out. It was later with simulation as a topic that Apollo was highlighting and was leaking over from Missiles & Space, the manager of Human Factors said to me, "do not feature only the face valid."