Phantom flight

wrote:

Well, okay, I rise to the challenge. I have a little over 700 hours in
the 104A (including some time in the Dash 19 version) and just over
2000 in the F4D/E/E-LES. I was fortunate in that the IP who checked me
out in the F4 respected my 3000 hours fighter time and together we
explored the envelope. I found the F4 to be an honest airplane (as was
the 104) and once you learned what it was trying to tell you you could
fly it to its real envelope, not the Dash One or NATOPS figures, but
what it was really capable of. The one aerodynamic thing I didn't like
was the G-dig decelerating through M 1.0 while loaded up - it came on
really sudden and if you happened to be looking outside (as is usual
while chasing someone) you were looking at a probable over-G. As for
fighting the birds, once in knife-range the old engined 104 vs F4 it
was the pilots - with the Dash 19 it could run the F4 out of fuel,
keeping the speed up and the G on, working the vertical a lot better,
and then assassinate it. With a missile fight - if the Sparrows worked
the 104 was going to be in trouble. Muscles per G? I guess I'm a bad
example because at 6-2 and 225 I never had any problem getting the
stick wa-a-a-y back. Landing - on a wet slippery runway at DaNang my
routine was on-speed plus a slow chevron, aim for the numbers at the
end of the runway and about eight feet up (eyeball guess) have the back
seater pull the throttles back while I popped the chute. PS I did not
like the loss of speed in the LES version for a dubious gain in turn
rate for a measly 180 degrees. I'd been through that in the F102 - turn
like hell and then dive for airspeed after having lost 250 knots in 180
degrees. Never got out of control when I was flying it but had a stud
try to pick up a wing with aileron down around first nose-rise in an
approach to a stall. This guy had been previously current in F4s and
had tons of Hun time so I was complacent. (Bad Walter! Bad boy! No
donut!) Anyway my lightning reactions responded and my white knuckles
now firmly gripping the rear stick hit the radar scope and the bird
unloaded to zero alpha in a microsecond and we were back flying again.
(Said reactions honed by 104's propensity to pitch up when working it
slow and hard) Used to spiral up in the F4 turning toward the sun just
out of a being-tracked position and at the appropriate time and 200
KIAs or slower go zero alpha, full rudder, inboard engine idle and
outboard full AB and sort of do a lateral pivot on a dime and blast
past the other guy going straight down accelerating in both ABs while
he was still going up and getting even slower. This also worked in the
Dash 19 104 with the advantage of much faster accel due to 1+:1 T/W.
Damn. I miss that kind of flying! Walt BJ

Damned interesting too Walt!...give us more!...
--

-Gord.
(use gordon in email)

Cockpit Colin wrote:
One way to think of it (not too scientific) is that adding power just
adds more "juice" to the spin. The power vector rotates around, just
making the plane do whatever it's doing with that much more vigor.


I understand what you're trying to say, but I just can't get a handle on the
physics of it ...

OK, stream of consciousness here. Ignore any violations of the law(s of
physics).

A plane in a spin is yawing and rolling simultaneously. It is also at a
stalled angle of attack. What happens is that, as the AOA of a wing
increases, its drag always increases, but at a certain point its lift
decreases (near and past stall speed). So in a spin (to the left) the
left wing has a higher angle of attack, due to adding the downward
motion of the plane and the relative motion of the spin (steal kid's F-4
model, experiment), than the right. It has higher drag and less lift,
and so the plane rolls left and yaws left. You get spin.

To break the spin ususally you must break the yaw, which puts both wings
back into an equal amount of AOA condition. To break the yaw you need to
create a moment. The moment is created typically with rudder, and
sometimes helped by tricks with ailerons. The thrust would not help with
creating a moment.

So what would it do with more thrust? Well, if the nose was pointing
down, it'd make the plane fly "heavier" due to a downward component to
the thrust. That'd give you more spin.

As for the thought of having the thrust fly you away, if you watch how
fast planes spin, versus how fast they accelerate on takeoff with full
blower, you'd see that before it'd have chance to accelerate in one
direction it'd be pointing another, so to speak. Mathematically
speaking, say you wanted the plane to fly away to the east. Integrate
the component of thrust that points east over a half-rotation of spin
(less than a second?) and divide that by the mass of the plane to get a
delta velocity eastward over the half-rotation. Or something like that.
Small number which is immediately cancelled by other half-rotation. A
plane in a spin carves a slightly spiral trajectory. It'd make the
spiral a wee bit bigger. Not enough to matter.

That's my story (based on 200+ inverted spins in a Buckeye...thought
processes cloudy now), and I'm sticking to it.

"Bob" wrote in message
oups.com...
............. My theory, and I never tried it, was if all else failed in a
flat spin, have the back seater eject and maybe the reaction to the
seat firing would lower the nose a hair. You just never told the RIO
what your plan was. In Navy planes, he could eject me but I couldn't
eject him. A serious design fault IMHO. Actually there was a way to
eject the rear seat from the front but it wasn't widely advertised.


Bad form to return to the ship without your backseater. How would you ever
get someone else to fly with you?

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 18:30:52 GMT, "Diamond Jim"
wrote:


"Bob" wrote in message
roups.com...
............ My theory, and I never tried it, was if all else failed in a
flat spin, have the back seater eject and maybe the reaction to the
seat firing would lower the nose a hair. You just never told the RIO
what your plan was. In Navy planes, he could eject me but I couldn't
eject him. A serious design fault IMHO. Actually there was a way to
eject the rear seat from the front but it wasn't widely advertised.


Bad form to return to the ship without your backseater. How would you ever
get someone else to fly with you?

Strange policy those Navy guys got! The USAF Phantom was set up so
that the back seater could eject himself only, and if the front seater
initiated ejection it would be a dual sequenced ejection. After around
1970, they installed a "command-selector valve" in the R/C/P that
allowed the backseater to choose single or dual ejection.

Default position was single back seat ejection. Crew coordination
briefing during preflight required briefing the WSO on what the A/C
wanted done with the rotating handle.

My guidance was always to leave the handle alone unless I
specifically, in a very rare situation tell you to rotate it. If the
back-seater lost confidence he was free to leave whenever he wanted,
but I damn sure didn't want to suddenly find myself hanging from a
parachute when I was about to recover the jet.

Corollary was that if I ever found out that he rotated the selector
valve without my instruction I would kill him.


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
www.thunderchief.org
www.thundertales.blogspot.com

Command ejection depended, for me, on who was in the back seat. If he'd
been around, I said select 'command' and if you see anything really
hairy and pull the handle I won't complain. I flew a few missions with
an ex-ADC RIO ( Len Trottier) who had more fighter time than I did. he
was very cool and crafty and skilled. When he racked up a hard landing
(back seat landing at Da Nang) the WingCo damn near had apoplexy. "What
the hell was he doing landing the airplane?" the only thing Len didn't
have was pilot's wings - he could do every thing. BTW for the Navy guy
- if you land a USAF F4 like you did USN ones you just might find the
bird sitting on its belly - the USAF gear isn't stressed for routine
carrier alndings, let along 'energetic' ones. Back in the 60's a navy
exchange pilot forgot and landed a 460 FIS 102 like he would a Navy
bird. result - splayed gear and bird on its belly. Limit touchdown
speed for a 102 at min fuel was about 540 FPM, well below GCA/ILS
normal approach descent rates. . Which reminds me - I saw a Navy F4J (I
think that's the model) get into Da Nang sucking fumes - the touchdown
was with brio and he must have bounced thirty feet in the air. Only
time I ever saw a fighter do that. F4s do look funny with the oleos
fully extended. Most impressive - I guess he 'spotted' the non-moving
deck. That was about the end of 1971, I think. Walt BJ

Bad form to return to the ship without your backseater. How would you ever
get someone else to fly with you?

Strange policy those Navy guys got! The USAF Phantom was set up so
that the back seater could eject himself only, and if the front seater
initiated ejection it would be a dual sequenced ejection. After around
1970, they installed a "command-selector valve" in the R/C/P that
allowed the backseater to choose single or dual ejection.

Default position was single back seat ejection. Crew coordination
briefing during preflight required briefing the WSO on what the A/C
wanted done with the rotating handle.

My guidance was always to leave the handle alone unless I
specifically, in a very rare situation tell you to rotate it. If the
back-seater lost confidence he was free to leave whenever he wanted,
but I damn sure didn't want to suddenly find myself hanging from a
parachute when I was about to recover the jet.

Corollary was that if I ever found out that he rotated the selector
valve without my instruction I would kill him.

Can't speak for early aircraft, but by the time I transitioned to the F-4,
all Navy jets had a command selector valve. Either the rear seat would go
alone with the pilot commanding both (rear first for obvious reasons), or
either seat could initiate dual ejection. Generally, we flew dual command
to either seat with a qualified RO in the back. Sadly there were a couple
"qualified" RO's I flew with that I'd rather not have entrusted with the
decision. Fortunately, I never had to jettison an aircraft command or no.

R / John

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 14:34:47 -0600, "John Carrier"
wrote:

Can't speak for early aircraft, but by the time I transitioned to the F-4,
all Navy jets had a command selector valve. Either the rear seat would go
alone with the pilot commanding both (rear first for obvious reasons), or
either seat could initiate dual ejection. Generally, we flew dual command
to either seat with a qualified RO in the back. Sadly there were a couple
"qualified" RO's I flew with that I'd rather not have entrusted with the
decision. Fortunately, I never had to jettison an aircraft command or no.

R / John


And, I always brought the equipment home for reuse as well.


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
www.thunderchief.org
www.thundertales.blogspot.com

Hey, Ed, I tried, but when both engines quit at 1500 AGL right over the
runway at 300 KIAs - well, I thought about a 4-lane road half a mile
away at about 50 degrees left but then I thought about running into
cars and killing civilians trying to save an eleven year old F4 so -
when it got to glide speed and we still didn't have a light out we
went. Phil Burbages' first recheckout ride after 5 years pounding a
desk, too. Felt bad - it was a good bird until then and I'd been flying
jets since 1954 - this was 1978. Number of landings = number of
takeoffs minus 1. (engines quit because some AMC mech left a wad of
typhoon tape in #2 fuel cell 15 months earlier and it finally wandered
around and plugged the transfer port to #1 fuel cell. The low-level
float and quantity probe are in cell 2 - and it stayed full as #1 went
dry. Just wasn't our day. I did get a tie and a pin from Martin-Baker
but it cost Uncle Sam 2,236,000 bucks . . .Walt BJ

I've heard of most ejections being described as "pretty violent" - what was
your experience of it?

Painful per sec, or is it over too damn quick to feel much?

CC

Thanks for that. I was thinking mostly about flat / falling leaf spins, but
there are some definate "food for thought" in this regard in what you wrote.


"nafod40" wrote in message
...
Cockpit Colin wrote:
One way to think of it (not too scientific) is that adding power just
adds more "juice" to the spin. The power vector rotates around, just
making the plane do whatever it's doing with that much more vigor.


I understand what you're trying to say, but I just can't get a handle on
the
physics of it ...

OK, stream of consciousness here. Ignore any violations of the law(s of
physics).

A plane in a spin is yawing and rolling simultaneously. It is also at a
stalled angle of attack. What happens is that, as the AOA of a wing
increases, its drag always increases, but at a certain point its lift
decreases (near and past stall speed). So in a spin (to the left) the
left wing has a higher angle of attack, due to adding the downward
motion of the plane and the relative motion of the spin (steal kid's F-4
model, experiment), than the right. It has higher drag and less lift,
and so the plane rolls left and yaws left. You get spin.

To break the spin ususally you must break the yaw, which puts both wings
back into an equal amount of AOA condition. To break the yaw you need to
create a moment. The moment is created typically with rudder, and
sometimes helped by tricks with ailerons. The thrust would not help with
creating a moment.

So what would it do with more thrust? Well, if the nose was pointing
down, it'd make the plane fly "heavier" due to a downward component to
the thrust. That'd give you more spin.

As for the thought of having the thrust fly you away, if you watch how
fast planes spin, versus how fast they accelerate on takeoff with full
blower, you'd see that before it'd have chance to accelerate in one
direction it'd be pointing another, so to speak. Mathematically
speaking, say you wanted the plane to fly away to the east. Integrate
the component of thrust that points east over a half-rotation of spin
(less than a second?) and divide that by the mass of the plane to get a
delta velocity eastward over the half-rotation. Or something like that.
Small number which is immediately cancelled by other half-rotation. A
plane in a spin carves a slightly spiral trajectory. It'd make the
spiral a wee bit bigger. Not enough to matter.

That's my story (based on 200+ inverted spins in a Buckeye...thought
processes cloudy now), and I'm sticking to it.