F-16 glider

On Jan 18, 5:45*am, Gavin Short wrote:
At 20:00 17 January 2009, wrote:



Apparently the glide ratio of an F-16 with the engine out is 1:1 so the
pilot's rate of breathing in the video clip is impressively calm!


Well, it's a little better than that. When practicing SFOs (simulated
flame out) approaches, the rule of thumb (and this is from memory so
any F-16 drivers out there please jump in!) was 250 knots clean and
6:1 to the field; i.e. you needed 1000' for every nautical mile from
your intended touchdown point. Tried it several times in F-16
simulators at Luke AFB and it worked fine (lots of fun, too -
sometimes the hardest part was getting it stopped!). So the L/D is at
least 6:1, probably as high as 10:1 clean at L/D max speed.

OTOH, the F-4E flight manual (that I just happen to have handy) is
very explicit on what to do with both engines out:

"If neither engine can be started - EJECT"

Kirk
66

On Sun, 18 Jan 2009 07:07:17 -0800, kirk.stant wrote:

Well, it's a little better than that. When practicing SFOs (simulated
flame out) approaches, the rule of thumb (and this is from memory so any
F-16 drivers out there please jump in!) was 250 knots clean and 6:1 to
the field; i.e. you needed 1000' for every nautical mile from your
intended touchdown point.

I noticed that the film showed the airspeed pretty much nailed at 220 kts
until he started to flare. Couldn't get anything from the altimeter
display - hard to read off low-rez viseo!

I thought the glide ratio had to be better than 1:1 because even the
Shuttle manages 3:1 and an F-16 looks as it it should do rather better
than that.


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
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