by Jim Harler

  Six of us left for Pax River on Monday afternoon. We took a mix of marketing, artists, programmers and producers. Wild Bill arrived there late Monday night. We checked in with the McDonald-Boeing rep, Frank Monterelli, early Tuesday morning and he got us signed in and passes issued. We got a quick tour of the base and went to the Manned Flight Simulator Facility.

Since Pax is a test and evaluation base, this facility is designed to test various a/c flight control systems and other advanced systems. The 'stations' are interchangable meaning that they can pull out a Hornet cockpit, roll a Tomcat cockpit into the same station and inside of 30 minutes have it up and flying as a Tomcat. These stations are used for testing and evaluation and not training.

We looked at the various stations and saw set-ups for Hornet, Super Hornet, Tomcat and V-22 Osprey. (undergoing flight testing there now.) We also saw a couple of new visual systems they are working with, one of which is a helmet mounted system where the world is contained in the helmet displays. Fancy I-O glasses. VERY fancy. Several of us got to try it out in a static stand and it was something.

They had a F/A-18E Super Hornet cockpit in one of the stations for us with a 120 deg visual system. Like others here, the cockpit was used as a systems/flight dynamics evaluation station rather than a trainer meaning it was more up to date than most training simulators. The flight dynamics were updated 3 days earlier based on actual flight test data derived within the two weeks preceding and the fidelity of the flight controls was excellent and true to life. All displays were active and the people there were very helpful answering questions.

I flew it first and was greeted with a 'small bug'. Seems only one engine was on line. I thought the takeoff roll was slower than it should be but it was still faster than an A6. I laid it off on the non-AB takeoff and a heavy payload since they hadn't briefed me on the Gross Weight. I very quickly discovered it on rotation when the obvious force generated by the split yawed me right about 20 degrees. I thought that was "odd" (stating the obvious) but applied rudder, raised the gear and the plane climbed out, though slowly.

It was then that I punched up some of the engine instruments (which hadn't be displayed) and discovered the problem. It ended up being an impressive display of the a/c's abilities with me being able to get it airborne and climbing single engine, no AB. Even better, I was able to land the plane single engine. It handled very nicely and the flight control system took care of much of the assymetric thrust problems.

We reset the sim and I did a 'standard' (ie. twin engine ) takeoff. I concentrated on the flying qualities of the airplane during my time to get an idea of the handling and performance of the airplane. I first did some zoom climbs to get an idea of ROC then some stalls and departures. Slow speed stalls were very benign with very little rudder needed.

There is no AOA limiter on the a/c (only g limiter) so I was able to explore the high AOA flight regime at the same time. It's supposed to be improved on the E/F and from what I remember from the D model sim in Beaufort, it seemed much less prone to wing walk. Stalls were basically mushy flight with a high AOA and high rate of descent.

I also induced departures from zero airspeed and accelerated modes. Departures were pretty snappy, very much as I remember from the D model. Post stall gyrations were sometimes very rapid and sometimes very docile. The plane recovers very rapidly from PSG's with no control inputs. HUD arrows indicated what I needed to do to recover to level flight in the least time possible.

I tried a couple times to induce a spin but couldn't. The test personnel said it's very difficult to get into a spin and conversations with the test pilots later confirmed this. As a matter of fact, the Navy is using the Hornet to teach spins (because of the excellent recoverability) and had to have the flight software modified to allow easier spin entry on those a/c.

After we completed the simulator phase, we went over to the hangar and looked at several of the E's and F's in the hangar, their engines and others on the flight line. We watched a launch of one of the E's on a test flight and recorded engine sounds for inclusion into the game.

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We then went up to the main briefing room and met with the two lead test pilots, Commander Bob Wirt (Government Flight Test Director, F-18 E & F Test program) and Commander Rob Niewoehner (Lead Navy Pilot, F-18 E & F Test program). They each spent about 30-45 minutes with us and were _very_ open to questions concerning details on the a/c. They also gave us a great feel for the handling of the a/c and how it would affect missions in the future. Cmdr Niewoehner has done all the high AOA and spin testing and showed some cockpit videos of those tests as he discussed them. Very interesting stuff to be sure.

Following this, we met with Mike Tribino, the F-18 E/F Integrated Test Team, Senior Engineer. Mike answered any of our technical questions and we gathered quite a bit of information about the a/c's specs.

Mike took us out to the Atlantic Test Range Facility at Pax River where test flights are monitored. All test flights out of Pax are monitored during testing. There are teams that are formed for each test consisting of engineers, directors, maintenance and support personnel and pilots. Each flight is pre-scripted down to the nth degree to optimize the testing time and get the most bang for the buck. The E/F's are instrumented for nearly 2000 items for each flight. About 500 critical items are data linked real time with the remainder downloaded upon landing.

Under a Test Director a Team will gather in one of several test rooms where routine, day-to-day testing is done. There's also a very large NASA Control type room where anytest can be monitored by larger groups and where the airspace coordination with Giant Killer takes place. Pax is only about 50 miles SE of Washington and, needless to say, is dead in the middle of a very high traffic area. Giant Killer, based at NAS Oceana, controls all the restricted airspace along the East Coast.

While there we observed flight dynamics testing going on with one of the E's. Actually, it was testing on the 'wing drop' problem that I'm sure a lot of you have heard about. It was very interesting to listen to the testing communitcations and watch the console displays of flight controls, flight surfaces and flight dynamics change as the pilot was describing his inputs and observations.

After leaving here we returned to the E/F hangar where we met with Cmdr Wirt again for a walk around the a/c, more questions and some pictures. Once again, he was very helpful and answered nearly all of our questions very directly. This was our last stop of the visit.

That night, Paul Potera and I drove to Virginia Beach and went out to NAS Oceana early the next morning. Going to the Navy's LSO School we met with LtCmdr Chris Bolt, the OIC and Lt. Chris Blaschum, one of the instructors. We spent all morning going over the role of the LSO, calls, carrier specs, etc. They bent over backwards to help us including giving us the same reference manual the give to new LSO's and some video (with comm) of various approaches that they use in classes to demonstrate how to/not to wave an a/c.

After lunch we went into their sim and got to watch them wave some. The sim is a 360 degree dome with you standing in the center on the LSO platform of a carrier and a/c making passes. Their passes are controlled by an instructor and the students are instructed on the proper calls. Weather and time of day as well as sea state (we were ready to 'display' our lunch again ) can be selected.

We finished up with a visit to Carrier Air Wing Seven where we met with LCDR Pat Hagerty, the CAG LSO, met with us and we got some info at that level. We will be using CVW-7 in the sim and he helped us with background there. As a note, he also waved the first Super Hornet landings so if you see/hear those, you'll recognize him.

We got back here late Wed night tired but happy. We got a TON of information and it's all going into the sim. From a realism standpoint, there won't be anything out there to match this. All the people we talked with were excited about the sim and willing to help out in any way they can to include flight testing the sim. We're going to take them up on it.

Later,

Weasel

Jim Harler
Game Designer
Interactive Magic