On
the day before Thanksgiving 1999 I started F-15E FTU as part of the B-Course
(basic upgrade course), class 00-ABE, at Seymour Johnson AFB, NC.
There are 24 in my class -- 12 pilots and 12 WSOs (Weapons System
Officers) -- and we are part of the 333rd Fighter Squadron, the
Lancers (or Red Dogs as they like to be called).
FTU
has turned out to be patterned like a typical flying training course – in terms of
content it’s
like the T-38 and IFF syllabi put together.
The 7-month course starts out with 6 weeks of systems and avionics
academics with 3 or 4 simulator flights leading up to the first ride in the jet.
I used to think the T-38’s syllabus (which had students soloing on ride
number 12) was aggressive until I got here!
Flight four is designated as a crew solo flight (student pilot and
student WSO) and flight six is an instrument checkride!!
This means that the first few flights in the Strike Eagle are very
important. Simulator flights are crucial for cockpit and avionics
familiarization prior to actually flying the airplane.
Fortunately the Eagle seems to fly like a large T-38 (very similar speeds
and handling characteristics), so most of the learning has to do with using the
avionics and flying with a Heads-Up Display, or HUD. Another
challenge for me has been learning how to fly a jet as part of a team.
In UPT/IFF, the guy in the back seat was “the enemy” and I had to act
like I was alone in a single seat jet. I
was responsible for completing normal checklists and taking care of nearly
everything myself. In the E model
there is a more distinct division of labor outlined in the aircrew duties. As the pilot, my job is to fly the jet. The backseater is responsible for calling out checklists
during nearly all phases of flight as well as setting up the airplane’s
navigational equipment. I have been
so used to doing everything myself that it’s sort of tough to accept letting
the backseater take care of things like making radio calls or setting up the
navigation instruments.
On
5 January 2000, after about 15 hours in cockpit mockups and sims, I was ready to
fly the Strike Eagle for the first time. The
briefing started 2 and a half hours prior to my takeoff time of 1330.
My student WSO crewmate sat in the preflight briefing with me even though
he wasn’t flying that day. My IP
started off the briefing by quizzing me on some EPs and general airplane
knowledge. We then covered all
aspects of the day’s mission in agonizingly thorough detail, from strapping in
to the jet all the way through parking in the same spot after the flight.
Once the briefing was done, we moved to the Operations desk to check out
Data Transfer Modules (with our flight planning information on them) to download
information to the avionics in the jet. 55
minutes prior to takeoff time we walked across the street to the Squadron life
support shop to put on all our equipment. The
life support equipment I wear in the Strike Eagle is significantly more advanced
than in the T-38. Now, in
addition to the standard G-suit, I wear a COMBAT EDGE counterpressure vest,
survival vest, parachute harness (in leiu of the whole parachute), and LPU
horse-collar. I’m also wearing a new HGU-55/CE helmet (modified for
Combat Edge use) and the MBU-20/P oxygen mask.
All this equipment had me feeling like I was the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man
instead of a fighter pilot in training. After
testing my gear, I made sure I had my helmet, mask, checklists, instrument
approach plates, and DTM, and we stepped to our assigned jet (serial number
89-0477). As I walked up to
the jet, I couldn’t help feeling like I was a 12 year old at an airshow. The sight of this huge aircraft is one to behold…and even
better when you know you’re about to fly it!
The preflight walkaround on
the Strike Eagle is the same as any other aircraft with a few exceptions.
Now I also have to check a “captive” AIM-9 Sidewinder missile, which
I carry so I can practice shooting other aircraft with it.
After the walkaround I climbed the tall ladder and started to strap in.
The first thing I noticed was I could hardly even move inside the cockpit
with all that equipment on. I had a
difficult time seeing all the cockpit switches, some of which are visually
obscured by the canopy rail and hard to reach.
This, unfortunately, led to me making some switch errors on the pre-start
checklist that the IP caught immediately and corrected.
Starting the F-15’s engines is a very different process than the other
two jets I’ve flown previously. First
I cranked up the Jet Fuel Starter (JFS), a small jet engine which connects to
the engines through a gearbox and turns them for starting while providing
limited electrical power. I engaged
the connection to the engines (right engine first) via a fingerlift on each
corresponding throttle. As the JFS
spun the engine through 20% RPM, I simply pushed the throttle out of cutoff and
into idle and it started. After a
few other checks, I repeated the same process on engine #1.
The ground ops following engine start seemed to take forever – the
F-15E has 3 separate flight control checks, 3 radar and avionics
self-tests, plus all the normal ground checks.
While performing the flight control checks I noticed another difficulty
associated with all the equipment I had on. With my G-suit on and a
kneeboard strapped to my left leg, I didn’t have room to get full stick
movement. I pulled the hard
clipboard out, stowing it in the map case, and left the strap on my leg, hoping
that would be okay the rest of the flight.
I thought I’d taken too long to perform all my ground checks (only made
worse by my front cockpit switch-errors!), but as I had the crew chief pull the
chocks, I looked at my watch and we were right at taxi time.
I
had another important learning experience as I checked the brakes taxiing out of
the chocks. To check the brakes in
the T-38 you simply let the jet roll a second or two, then jammed on the
brakes. As I’ve now discovered,
that’s not the way you do it in the 60,000-pound Strike Eagle! I, of course, jammed on the brakes, causing the jet to bottom
out the nose gear strut, creating one hell of a sound, and making the crew chief
cringe! Taxiing the F-15E was
just like taxiing any other aircraft. The
big difference is that you sit very high and the cockpit is forward of the nose
gear, so the perspective is different. Overall it handles like a very heavy
Talon on the ground. We stopped in
the arming area at the end of the runway so the ground crew could arm up the
captive Sidewinder, perform their pre-flight checks (looking for malfunctions
and leaks), and do whatever else they do in EOR. Once they were complete I called tower let them know I was
ready for departure. Tower cleared
us for takeoff, so I taxied into position on runway 26 and ran up the engines.
In the Eagle we check the engines at 80% (instead of MIL power like in
the T-37 and T-38) because the brakes are not powerful enough to hold the jet
still at full power. Even at 80% I could really feel the thrusties coming
out the back, the jet straining against the wheel brakes. Once the engines checked, I slammed the throttles into blower
and released the brakes.
I
expected to feel quite a kick in the pants as the afterburners lit off.
The force did push me back in the seat harder than the T-38 did, but it
wasn’t any more severe than some takeoffs I’ve experienced on Southwest
Airlines 737s. That aside, this jet
accelerates like you would not believe. All
the takeoff check speeds came and went in a flash, and before I knew it I was
pulling the stick back, rotating to 10º nose high, and flying away from the
runway. Almost immediately I was
airborne and pulling the gear and flaps up.
A few seconds later I was pulling the throttles out of AB at 300 KCAS
(that’s Knots Calibrated Airspeed) and then back to midrange to
maintain departure speed of 350 KCAS. Like
the T-38, the Eagle has a waiver to the FAA’s speed limit of 250 KIAS below
10,000’. Passing 2500' I made a
sweeping left turn to head east out to the coast of North Carolina.
Seymour departure cleared me to climb to 10,000 feet, then handed me off
to Washington Center who cleared me up to FL230.
I wasn’t able to really
assess the climb performance, but I did have to really watch my throttle
placement to maintain 350 KCAS. Once
I was level at 23,000 feet, I had my first chance to take in the experience of
flying the Strike Eagle for the first time.
I put on the autopilot and looked around…the view out the huge canopy
is incredible. One of the complaints about the T-38 was the obstructed view
to the rear. The Eagle, on the
other hand, has great rearward visibility, though I couldn't really take
advantage of it because I was so tightly wedged in the seat.
My instructor ran me through a demonstration of the autopilot.
This is the first aircraft I’ve flown with an autopilot, and I can
already see that it’s going to be a great benefit.
Once it was on and set up correctly, it would maintain altitude and
follow steering to the navigational waypoints that had been pre-set into the
Inertial Navigation System (INS). It
definitely eases the pilot task load, freeing him to visually search the skies
for traffic or just taking in the breathtaking view from FL230!
Soon, we were approaching the
Atlantic coastline and Washington Center handed us off to "Giant Killer",
a NAS Oceana GCI controller who watches the international airspace out over the
Atlantic. Soon we were feet wet (over the ocean) and cleared "surface to unlimited" in the MOA,
meaning if I could make it to the Moon, I was cleared to fly that high!
My instructor told me I had 5 minutes to just play around and get a feel
for the jet, so I pushed the throttles into burner and pushed the nose over.
A few seconds later we'd already busted the Mach and were headed down to
15,000'. Immediately I noticed that the jet was very easy to fly.
In some ways, though, I was let down by how it flies.
I guess I was expecting that, because this is the world's premier
fighter, I'd be totally blown away how it performed.
Well, it IS awesome, but I wasn't caught off guard by it at all.
It doesn't roll as crisp as the T-38, but the pitch authority is A LOT
better. I only got about 6 or 6.5G
out there, but it had been a while since I'd pulled high Gs and even that much
felt a little uncomfortable for me. My
IP next talked me though a series of advanced handling maneuvers designed to
show how the jet flies in all sorts of speeds and attitudes.
This included pitchbacks, slicebacks, slowflight, an afterburner loop, a
“vertical maneuver” (which basically amounted to a tail slide/hammerhead
stall), and demonstrations of the jet’s flight control system.
The first flight control demo was to show how the jet flew without the
CAS, the jet’s fly-by-wire system where the computer dampens out the jet’s
naturally unstable flight characteristics.
I found the jet flew very well manually, if just slightly mushy and
unresponsive. The second demo was
of CAS-only flight. In academics we
were told “if the stick were welded into position, the jet could be flown
using only the stick-force sensor and the fly by wire inputs.”
Well, this is exactly what we did…the IP grabbed the base of the stick
and held it still while I applied force to the stick grip.
Sure enough, the jet was very responsive and pretty much flew as if there
were nothing wrong. We finished off
by demonstrating the incredible rudder authority the Eagle has at high angles of
attack. The jet rudder-rolls very
quickly at AOAs above 25…faster, even, than an unloaded aileron roll.
One of the most enjoyable
aspects of flying the Strike Eagle through these maneuvers was that it really
appealed to my sensory inputs. The
seat of the pants feeling was very definite, and the sounds the jet made
when maneuvering were just incredible! When
I would haul the stick into my lap in a hard turn or climb, the wind rushing
over the wing at high AOA created a giant WOOOOSH sound and I could feel the
entire airframe humming and buzzing. I
can tell that these attributes are going to be important when I start
dogfighting and I have to fly by feel while looking outside the cockpit at the
bandit.
After 30 minutes out in the
Warning Area, we'd burned nearly 12,000# of gas since takeoff (that's more than
the Viper's total fuel, isn't it?) and it was time to start heading home. My IP had me calculate a fix-to-fix heading to get us to the
IAF for the HI-TACAN approach at MCAS Cherry Point. After I'd decided my heading, he had me use the Inertial
Navigation System (INS) to generate a navigational steerpoint to get to the same
fix, which was a lot easier than doing the fix to fix on the HSI.
My first instrument approach went well, mainly because I’d already
flown four instrument simulator flights previously.
The approach techniques I’d learned for flying the T-38 still applied
and by this time I'd gotten a better feel for flying the jet, so I could control
my airspeed and altitude much better. The
added bonus for flying instruments in the F-15E is the HUD.
All the information needed for instrument flying (including
altitude, airspeed, vertical velocity, TACAN course, localizer course,
glideslope, and pitch/bank information) is displayed in the HUD, so there’s no
longer a need to scan the entire instrument panel on an approach.
I low approached runway 32 at
Cherry Point then climbed out and pointed the jet toward home.
On the way back we dropped into Kinston, a local civilian field, and I
flew the ILS to runway 5. After
another low approach, I climbed up to 2500’ turned left 180 and was set up on
a nearly perfect 30 mile initial to runway 26 at Seymour Johnson.
While flying up initial, I had the cold, hard realization that I was
flying an F-15E Strike Eagle, the world’s finest tactical fighter aircraft.
Though it couldn’t be seen under my oxygen mask, I had the world’s
largest ear-to-ear grin on my face. I
laughed to myself in joy, thinking, “I can’t believe they’re paying me to
do this!” The IP decided that,
since I wasn’t having too many problems flying the jet thus far, he’d let me
try the first landing on my own. I
flew up initial at 300 KCAS and 1800’. Since
I was now in a fighter, where the standard is to pitchout “over the
numbers,” I figured now was the time to start.
I’d never done it before – in the Talon and Tweet we had to wait
until we were 3000’ down to pitchout so there would be time to get the landing
gear and flaps down in time to perch. In
the Eagle there is no such problem, as I figured out.
I cranked the wings up to 80º and pulled it around 180º to downwind.
The jet had already decelerated to 230 KCAS, so I dropped the gear and
flaps and within 10 seconds had 4 green lights (the flap down indicator is a
green light). I flew the final turn
just like a T-38; 8 degrees nose low, 50 degrees of bank, and pulling around the
turn. The F-15 acts like a Talon in
the final turn, too, producing a very light wing buffet at the precise final
turn AOA.
The
strangest difference I’ve had to adjust to in the Strike Eagle is flying
utilizing AOA (angle of attack) as a measure of airspeed and performance.
Since AOA gives a constant measure of wing performance regardless of
overall weight, we can dispense with the T-38’s method of calculating final
turn and approach airspeeds. Instead you modulate power to maintain 20-22 “cockpit
units” (it doesn’t translate to an actual angle as far as anyone seems to
know) of AOA in the final turn and on final.
Once you’re lined up with the runway, you can again use the velocity
vector in the HUD to get a perfect, precise runway aimpoint.
You simply put the velocity vector over the threshold, then follow it all
the way to the runway. Since the
Eagle has much taller landing gear, the flare is higher than in the T-38, but
the final portion of the landing is much easier. The jet is just so easy to fly
and land that it takes virtually no skill to do. If you can safely land the T‑38, the Eagle is a breeze.
I
made 5 trips around the VFR pattern and I was becoming more comfortable with
every landing. By the end I was
really having fun and, like as is always the case, I wished I’d had more gas
to keep on flying. With 2,200
pounds of gas remaining, I made my full stop landing.
After touching down at 140 KCAS, I pulled the stick back into an
aerobrake. At just under 100 KCAS,
the nose came back down to the runway and I gently applied the brakes.
Stopping the Eagle after landing is enhanced by a real anti-skid braking
system, something I’ve never used before.
To get maximum stopping power, I simply jammed on the brakes as hard as I
could and the antiskid took care of stopping the jet.
At the end of the runway, I pulled off into the de-arm area so the ground
crew could safe the missile. There
were two F-15Es from the 336th Fighter Squadron parked in the arming
area next to me. As I completed my
after landing checklist, I could hardly believe what I was looking at.
Here I was, peering at two of the most advanced fighters in
existence…and I was sitting in one myself!
What an incredible realization. I
let out a deep sigh of relief. My
first two hours in a fighter were over.
A
few hours later, after debriefing with my instructor, the members of my class
and our instructors met in the squadron’s bar.
It’s tradition for Eagle students following their first flight to drink
a shot of Jeremiah Weed in honor of the experience. When it was my turn, I hoisted the shot glass at my
instructor.
“Here’s
to Major Santaniello for braving the skies of North Carolina with me in the
front of his $60 million fighter, here’s to the greatest fighter squadron –
the 333rd Red Dogs, and here’s to the world’s greatest fighter,
the Mighty F-15E Strike Eagle.”
It has been my dream since I was a little child to fly a fighter for the U.S. military. It has been a lot of work just getting to the spot I’m in, and I’ve often wondered whether it was worth it. This flight made it all worthwhile. It was every bit as exciting as I’d dreamed, and I can’t wait to go do it again!
Randy Haskin
Captain, USAF
F-15E FTU Class 00-ABE
Seymour Johnson AFB, NC