As reported on
Flight Global:-
An Airbus Military A400M has received fuel in-flight for the first time, with one of the programme's three development aircraft having achieved the milestone behind a French air force Dassault-Breguet C160 Transall.
"There were no problems for the aircraft," says A400M project pilot Tony Flynn, who describes the first wet contacts as having gone "perfectly" during a trials activity performed from Seville, Spain in late November. The work successfully validated a new set of air-to-air refuelling (AAR) flight control laws referred to as "D6R-P", he adds.
"This is the first time we have had a satisfactory control law for the whole [receiver] task," Flynn says. This follows an extensive rewriting process, which was initiated following early trials performed behind a Vickers VC10 tanker in 2010. "To begin with, things didn't go well," he says. Cockpit video footage of the second dry contact made behind the now-retired Royal Air Force type shows the A400M pitching up and down, before climbing violently towards the tanker's T-tail as the crew abandoned the connection.
(my
italics &
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"To begin with, things didn't go well," -
Click on the link for the rest of the report.
PS - I see that the humongous size of that photo has not been corrected, hence the continuing ruination of formatting!
