X-43A successful flight

"Doug "Woody" and Erin Beal" wrote in message
...
On 4/4/04 9:47 AM, in article , "Tarver
Engineering" wrote:


"Doug "Woody" and Erin Beal" wrote in message
...
On 4/4/04 5:16 AM, in article
, "monkey"
wrote:

SNIP

err...read the post...like I said, I'm not an F/A-18 pilot, I'm a
CF-18 pilot...BITCH.
p.s. flew a great 2v2 today, what did you do, clown show?

Yep, this guy's a Hornet pilot. He certainly talks like one! Where
are
you
stationed, Monkey? If Cold Lake, is Pat Peters still up there?

I don't know about the boy. If his story is true the Canadian
Government
has dropped out of the rest of the community and stopped even mentioning
the
mechanical stick backup. It is a safety of flight issue.

Missed the front part of the conversation, John. What exactly did he say?

I made a claim WRT the break out force of the F/A-18 stick and monkey came
by to correct me.

The Mech flight control function isn't easily "eliminated" from the legacy
Hornet. It is still part of the FCF checklist, however and is checked on
A
and C FCF's. (I fly so few B's that I haven't a clue if it's on that
list.)
I don't personally find it very useful (my opinion only) which is, I
think,
why it WAS eliminated from the Super Hornet.

The Super Hornet exists in a much different electric airplane reliability
reality. Can you imagine the skew the F/A-18E's pilot reported defect rate
is doing to the entire system? The numbers are actual war operations, so
their is no time to play chinese fire drill to hide defects. The numbers
are nearly as unbelievable as FAA turning in two zero killed years since
1997. Applying the RPL Model really paid off for the Navy.

In fact, I can only recall hearing of one Mech-Off-Off incident (i.e. down
to the stabs only for controlling the jet) in the F/A-18A-D, and the guy
flying it (USMC?) shelled out shortly after because of the resulting
oscillations.

It is a simple thing to just break the stick out and use the backup.