sides
Sides
I gotta tellya. Only "side" I am on is the one that emphasizes safety via airmanship. Of most incidents I have reviewed, most had more airmanship factors than design factors.
Except for my war experience, most fatalities I was close to were due to poor airmanship and not aircraft design.
Only "crew" jet I flew had a radar guy in the back seat and no dual controls. Only "override" he had was the ejection seat. And he didn't know what I was doing with the controls, only what the jet was doing.
I fully appreciate the inputs here from the "engineers" that have credibility from close contact with the pilots and also actual flying experience of their own. Nevertheless, I shall still maintain a position, or "side", that favors the pilot inputs to design of a jet.
I must admit that the roles and missions I flew necessarily flavor my bias, as my experience in the high performance jets is not akin to the commercial jets with a crew of two or more that are jointly responsible for the safe conduct of the mission assigned. Only exception was when I was the pilot-in-command in a family model.
My first 1,000 hours in a family model resembled the 1950's designs, about the time the jet was designed. Pure mechanical controls to the control surfaces and mechanically-connected sticks. The brakes were not "summed" and I had a tire blowout one day when the nugget in the other seat wasn't braking hard enough and my "extra" pressure locked up a tire and it blew! Caught a lotta flak for that one, heh heh.
My second 1,000 hours as an IP was in a single seater. I flew close chase ( figure 30 - 40 feet) and tried to figure what the nugget was doing with the controls. It was easy to see what his jet was doing with zero feel for his inputs. And I would make "suggestions". So my conversion to the Viper was no big deal.
The Viper was designed as a single seater, so not much thought as to connected sticks. When we got the family model, the engineers and pilots decided that we did not need to mechanically connect the sticks.. Further, that design would have been awkward, as the origianl design did not involve a stick that physically moved!!! Those things, and the first 40 or so models, had zero stick movement, including the family models.
I can fully appreciate the value of physical feedback as to what the other "crewmember" is trying to do. But I also question some of the actions of the "other" crewmember in accidents such as AF447 and the recent Asiana one. In both cases, I believe that just seeing what the jet was doing should have been enough to forcefully talk about or even take control. I can get a "feel" for the problems with crew coordination when things go to hell. But I cannot fully appreciate all the problems due to my background.
So my "side" is for super airmanship and to hell with the specific design of the jet, O.K.?