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By Randy Haskin It's completely unlike civilian flying, in which you can go fly an aircraft simply for the joy of flying. Every flying minute as an F-15E student is oriented toward a goal -- there's always a mission to accomplish or prepare for. On this particular day, however, I got the opportunity (for the first time in my military career), to simply go fly -- no pressure, no specific mission, just flying for the sake of flying. When the opportunity presents itself, it is really a treat. On this particular day I was scheduled to be #2 in a 4-ship of Strike Eagles headed out over the Atlantic to practice 2 V. 2 tactical intercepts and 1 v. 1 BFM. The mission started out on a bad note for me, as before we even taxied I was dealing with a flight control malfunction (damn digital fly by wire!). It really sucks to be on the radio at check in time (knowing all the six other ears in the flight are listening) and hear your flight lead say "Deadly 11, check!" and instead of a crisp "two!", I reply with "two needs two minutes". Anyhow, after the flight control maintenance specialist had me pulling circuit breakers, cycling the flight controls, turning the autopilot and TF on and off, and doing flight control BITs (built-in tests), the thing never really cleared up. The fault had something to do with the link between the TF radar and the autopilot, which is used for hands-off terrain following flight. Since I was planning to be up at 20-30 thousand feet today, I wasn't too worried about that malfunction, so I just said screw it, cleared off the crew chief, and took the jet (my 2,000-hour instructor WSO in the backseat was applauding me, saying "yeehaa, you're actually making decisions like a PILOT now!"). We taxied as a 4-ship and as we trodded down the taxiway, we passed the radar warning checkpoint, where they irradiate your airplane and see if your Radar Warning Receiver is working. Next we pulled up in the end of runway arming area and the ground crew made one last quick check of all 4 jets and armed up the captive AIM-9M-9 Sidewinder missiles on our left wing pylons. When the EOR crew was done, we taxied up to the hold short line and tower cleared us to taxi into position and hold. A 4-ship runway lineup is a thing of beauty when done correctly. The flight lead lined up on the far left side of the runway and I lined up my left missile rail on the runway centerline with my helmet abeam the right intake. #3 lined up on my right side with his right wingtip on the runway edge and his melon abeam my right intake. #4 took up his position in "the slot" between #1 and #2, just aft of #3. With us in position, we passed a skull-nod up the line from 4 to 3, 3 to me, and me to lead indicating we were in position, our instruments checked good, we were ready for takeoff. Lead passed me the visual signal for "run 'em up, switch to channel 5" which I passed to #3 on my right. I pushed the throttles up to 80% and made sure the numbers checked good (80%, 600 degrees FTIT, 4000 PPH fuel flow, 20% nozzles, and 40 psi oil pressure), then looked to my right to get another skull-nod from #3 indicating his engines checked good. I passed the signal to lead, who followed it up with checking us in on channel 5, the departure frequency. "Deadly 11 check" "Two" "Three" "Four" And with that, he released brakes and stroked afterburner. I hacked the clock, as this was going to be a 20 second interval takeoff. The sight of lead's burners cooking as he accelerated was absolutely awesome. The noise vibrated my chest and the cockpit. When the clock hit 20 seconds, I dropped my heels to the floor and jammed the throttles into afterburner. As we began to move I noted the takeoff time and looked to see the engine nozzle indicators swing open, indicating a good burner light. The kick in the pants let me know that all 5 stages of burner were lit and now accelerating me with a total of 48,000 pounds of thrust. The 100-knot tire check speed came and went, and soon I was pulling the stick back to rotate the nosewheel off the ground at 135 knots. Once I was airborne at 170 KCAS, I flipped the gear handle and flap switch up. A few moments later from the backseat I heard "Gear's up, lights out, flaps up below 250." With the gear safely in the well, I began locking up the lead aircraft on the radar (this takeoff was supposed to be a 2-mile radar trail departure). I thumbed forward on the auto-acq switch on the stick and the radar went into the supersearch auto acquisition mode. Within a second, it picks out the F-15E against the blue sky and a TD container appears in the HUD around the jet. "Deadly 12, tied," I say, indicating my radar lock. With the airspeed now at 280, I'm preparing the pull the throttles out of blower at 300 when I hear lead say "Departure, Deadly 11's got a gear problem, we're slowing to 250." Uh, oh. The Eagle's "Landing Gear Fails To Retract" checklist allows for two attempted retractions before you have to just leave the gear down and come home. In the preflight briefing, lead briefed me that in the event of any emergency, training was off and I was to be a built-in chase ship. Knowing lead had one more chance to cycle the gear, there was still a possibility that the mission could press on normally. I stay level with lead in 2 mile trail and hear #3 and #4 come aboard with "Deadly 13, tied," and "Deadly 14, tied." Lead made a turn to the south of the field and I could see the gear come back down, then only two gear go back up. As all the gear get back down and locked, lead calls departure and tells them that he's not declaring an emergency, but needs to go to a VFR holding fix to take care of the gear problem, but that Deadly 13 and 14 are cleared off to proceed with the flight plan. I hear Deadly 13 acknowledge the radio call and see the two Eagles peel off the formation and head toward the Atlantic. I push up the throttles slightly and start rejoining on my flight lead, anticipating that he's going to want me to visually check over his landing gear to make sure there's no damage or other abnormalities. "Deadly 12, you're cleared to rejoin." With his gear and flaps down, it's easy for me to quickly rejoin into a loose formation 75 feet off his left wing. He gives me the visual signal for battle damage check, so I swing under his jet, looking up at the gear to see if anything's wrong. The gear all look fine to me, but I know there's a malfunction, so I look extra hard, nothing the position of all the struts, over center locks, scissors, etc. I pop up level on his left side, pass to him a thumbs-up and say, "It all looks good to me, lead. Three down and locked," on the auxiliary radio. Since he's going to have to land soon, lead needs to lower his landing weight by dumping fuel. The Strike Eagle takes off at about 60,000 pounds gross weight which includes about 23,000 pounds of fuel. Our normal landing weight is closer to 40,000 pounds and the more fuel you land with, the harder it is to stop and the more wear it puts on the gear. A radio call alerts Seymour Johnson Approach that he's dumping fuel and I see a big white stream come out the dump mast in the right wingtip. Since we're flying at 230 KCAS, the nose is at 7 or 8 degrees of angle of attack and the tip vortices are immense. They swirl the streaming fuel into a corkscrew behind the jet. I begin to wonder what is in store for me on the rest of this flight. Usually the "backup mission" for a single ship is practice instrument approaches, and since I was all fired up to go turn 'n burn, I wasn't all excited about flying instruments for the next hour. As I watch lead continue holding, I rifle around in my map case and pull out the instrument approach plates for the S.E. United States. I assume that I'll be getting an hour's worth of instrument flying, so I briefly think that maybe I'd like to go shoot some approaches at Langley AFB or NAS Oceana out to the northeast. My contemplation about what the rest of the flight will hold is shattered when I hear, "Deadly 12, you're cleared off to press on out to the area," over the aux radio. Yes! The news I'd been waiting for! The best part was that lead wanted me to fly out to the Warning Area and catch up with the two other members of the flight. Perhaps this would turn into some fun after all! I turn away from lead and call Departure to get my own clearance out to the Warning Area we were scheduled to fly in. Soon I'm at FL230 cruising at .8 Mach watching the Atlantic coastline of North Carolina approach my nose. It was a beautiful day with only a few wispy clouds anywhere in the sky. Once I'm "feet wet" I check in with Deadly 13 and 14 to see if I can join up with them for some 2 V. 1 intercepts. They indicate that they're done with intercepts and going to do some BFM, so we're cleared off to stay in the south of the area and away from them. Here's where it gets fun! Imagine...there I am at 23,000 feet in an F-15E with NOTHING TO DO!!! I chat with my WSO for a moment and we consider all the "official" things we can do as a single ship in the MOA (practice aircraft handling, etc). Instead I hear "Hey, Randy, what's the highest you've ever flown in a jet?" I respond with "Well, I flew the T-38 up at FL410 during my cross country." "What's the highest we're legally allowed to fly?" I can tell he's quizzing me versus asking me. "No higher than FL500 without a pressure suit, sir." "Well, then, let's go to 49,999." I need no more encouragement than that, so I light the burners and accelerate to supersonic. At 550 KCAS I point the nose 60 degrees skyward and watch the standby altimeter wrap up. As the altitude increases, the pitch I can hold with constant airspeed decreases, and soon I'm in full AB with the nose barely 5 degrees above the horizon holding 275 KCAS at 46,000 feet. I carefully fly the jet up to 49,000 and note that we're flying at 260 KCAS, but about 1.5 Mach. Once I level off, the speed starts to increase, but the gas is pouring out the afterburner at an awesome rate! It took me only a few minutes to get to altitude, but I'd burned nearly 10,000 pounds of fuel doing it! I push the nose over to get some more airspeed, and satisfied the engines won't flame out, I unplug from burner. The mach meter continues to tick up as I descend, and finally I pull the throttles back to idle to prevent getting too far into the "thumbprint" -- the area where the air load forces are so high at speed that the aircraft is limited in the amount of Gs it can pull. I end up at about 25,000 feet and 450 KCAS. With only 3,000 more pounds to Bingo fuel (when we have to head home), there's not much we can do, but I can tell my IWSO wants to play. "DEADLY 12, BREAK LEFT, BANDIT LEFT 7 O'CLOCK!" Since I'm a student, it's always a good thing to practice your break turns. Students are notoriously weak at defensive break turns, and he wanted to see what I had in store. 6G is a normal "weak" break turn. 7G is the minimum acceptable. 8G is what we're shooting for on a regular basis, and the ultimate F-15E pilot pulls a 8.99G sustained break turn, the max allowable. I push the stuck forward to unload the jet, snap into 90 degrees of left bank, then haul the stick 3/4 of the way into my lap. The jet digs into the turn and I look over my left shoulder to try and get a tally on the simulated bandit. With 8.5Gs pushing me down into the seat, it's hard to turn my skull around to look between the vertical tails. An incredible whoosh of wind noise fills my ears as the air rushes over the canopy. With the airspeed decreasing, I ease off into an optimum turn rate, simulating that my break turn has stunted the simulated bandit's aggression. A moment later my WSO is shouting, "He's pointing back at us, TIGHTEN DOWN!" I pop a flare with a switch on the throttle to spoil his AIM-9 shot and haul the stick back into the seatpan. The Gs push us back into our seats and I step on some rudder to get the nose headed downhill and get some more airspeed. I imagine that the phantom bandit is still pointing his nose at us and is still a threat, so I make the decision to "ditch" -- basically a max-performance split-s to spoil the bandit's gun solution. I unload the airplane, roll inverted, and pull on the stick. Using God's G to help us turn, the nose instantly rates 50 degrees downhill and I'm headed for the 5,000 foot "floor." I max perform the jet and arrive at 5,400 feet with 350 KCAS. Rolling right, I again snap the stick back into a slightly climbing break turn. The sound of "Bitchin Betty" saying "BINGO FUEL" lets me know that fun time is over and it's time to go home. The flight home is quiet and uneventful as we soar high over North Carolina. The day is beautiful, so I cancel IFR and head for Seymour Johnson. I tell tower that I want to go to direct to initial and they tell me to report 5-mile initial. I arrive at initial at 300 KCAS with 3800 pounds of fuel...still plenty of gas for some pattern and landing practice. We're not allowed to actually practice landings because it's so hard on the tires, so everything is a low approach, pouring the coals to the motors at the last second so the tires don't touch down. After three low approaches, it's finally time for me to call it quits. "Deadly 12, base, gear down, full stop." And so ended one of the best 1.4 hours I've ever spent in an airplane. Pure joy! Capt Randy Haskin is an F-15E Strike Eagle pilot at Seymour Johnson AFB, NC. He is a graduate of USAF pilot training at Columbus AFB, Mississippi. You can read about his experiences as a student military pilot at his website called "The Road To Wings." http://www.oocities.org/CapeCanaveral/6566/SUPT/aviation.htmlCopyright © 2000, All rights reserved. Back to Randy and Marj's Homepage |