Lightning symbology

[Ewan Whosearmy]

Any Lightning mates here able to remember what the combining glass symbology at 2:42 means?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fLMhdUYUQQg&mode=related&search=

I am particularly interested in the little brackety thing that appears from the lower left of the screen, latches onto some kind of aiming dot, and then wanders off again.

As a side note, how did you guys know you were in range for the missile? Shoot cue light/audio tone?

I was amazed to learn how sophisticated the Lightning's HOTAS was for the time.

TIA.

[petermcleland]

The little thing that you see coming in from the left in the Pilot Attack Sight is the "Pipper" (a white aming dot) and under it the "Horizon Bar" the short white line. If you watch it come into the centre then you will see a pair of white "Range Brackets" appear...This indicates that missiles on both sides are in range and can be fired. Not in the sight picture but attached to the side of the sight body are two "Missile Aquisition Lights"...These come on to tell you that the missile's radar has aquired the target. They will NOT aquire if you have forgotten to arm them early enough and if they don't aquire then you won't get the "Range Brackets".

[Ewan Whosearmy]

Thanks, Peter.

What is the crescent shape bar above all of this? Some sort of range scale?

Can you comment on how easy it was to operate this kit?

[Ali Barber]

The HOTAS was not that complicated as far as the stick goes, but the radar hand controller was a work of genius! The story told to me was that it was designed by a blind person andI can believe it. The exact number of functions escapes me in an alcoholic haze, but the control you had over the radar and the attack displays was phenomenal. I have an early generation controller that I am still figuring out what to wire up to as there are too many oprions.

[BOAC]

I recall around 21 or 22 functions - made life interesting when you tried the thing with the right hand in the T-bird.

[petermcleland]

Ewan,

Yes,

That crescent is a sort of count down final range which gave you some idea of how much further you needed to go...Notice that it has shortened by several divisions before the left missile gets its "Range Bracket" followed by the right missile. Can't now remember the name of the missile, but it had a heat seeking arial inside transparent windows in its nose. If you walked past it with a lighted cigarette then you would see it lock on to it...Anyway, for that missile you would not expect the range brackets to show till that range arc had shortened some.

Easy of use? ...Well the Pilot Attack Sight was instinctive and dead simple to use at the very end of the attack. However, the radar control handle with all its buttons, triggers and wheels required considerable learning and the whole attack was planned and executed by the pilot using this. It was not easy and the simulator was used a lot for training. I was a Lightning Simulator Instructor at Leconfield...The sim was the Mk2.

Here are a couple of shots of the Sim:-

http://www.petermcleland.com/misc/lsim01.jpg

http://www.petermcleland.com/misc/lsim02.jpg

The instructor in the first shot is Dave Trick. That is my TACAN wheel tucked up against the windscreen on the left of the cockpit.

[ORAC]

Firestreak and then Redtop. Redtop had a, supposed, frontal capability against a high speed target from the friction heat. Really loved the Firestreak with all those little valves though......

[Ewan Whosearmy]

Thanks for the fascinating posts, gentlemen!

[ArthurR]

Sorry to distract from the original post

I remember a time in the 60's, I was an erk at 4FTS RAF Valley ( Hunters )
Every morning a weather aircraft was sent up ( Gnat ). As it was linning up for take off, one of our friends aircraft, a voodoo I think would come over low at a fast rate then climb, no chance for a gnat. Then one day the Lightnings arrived at the M.P.C. Obviously chat were had in the officers mess that night, for next morning a lightning was the weather kite, on the dot in comes the Voodoo, low fast then climb, off goes the Lightning, t.o. then climbs, overtakes Voodoo, Voodoo never returned wonder why :D :D

[Jetex Jim]

Nice pictures of the sim and sim cockpit.

Too bad we can't see the little control assembly that was used fly the aircraft while the pilot was head down staring at the radar display. not a joy stick but an horizontal twist grip for pitch and rotating around the vertical axis for steering if memory serves. I never flew it but it seemed very intuitive.

Amazing what you can do with analogue electronics. Now did anyone ever test the auto attack system?

[petermcleland]

Jim this is the Mark 2 Lightning...Pretty sure that thing came with the Mk 3

[Sl4yer]

I believe you're right Peter. The F3 was the first to have the full OR946 implementation, with the AI23B radar, which included auto-attack.

[Brian Abraham]

Peter, could you please explain the TACAN wheel. Not heard of it before. :8

[Ewan Whosearmy]

And a description of the Auto Attack system and its operation would also be great, Peter :).

[ajmacleod]

"Too bad we can't see the little control assembly that was used fly the aircraft while the pilot was head down staring at the radar display."

Actually, I think you can, though it's cunningly disguised as part of the throttle assembly in the photo above. Do you mean this?

http://www.adeptopensource.co.uk/personal/fg/lightning/lightning_radar_controller.jpg

It's been great to read more details of the Lightning's weapons systems here; I could find very little indeed on the web about how they were operated.

Cheers,

AJ

[petermcleland]

Brian,

The TACAN wheel was a device that individual pilots constructed for their own use...There was a particularly good design in circulation and I used that. As far as I can remember, it was a device with only one moving wheel sandwiched between two layers of perspex and a map. My fading memory suggests that the rotating wheel had range circles radiating out from the pivot and somewhere there was a bearing scale. The idea was that you could somehow correlate three TACAN beacon Range readings. I think you used a chinagraph pencil to mark the front window of perspex and get a quick fix using the range readings only.

To be honest, we didn't use it much on the Mark 2 simulator because that had the "Offset TACAN" facility, so you could move an existing TACAN beacon "virtually" by dialling in an "Offset bearing and distance". By selecting a switch in the HSI to "Offset" the TACAN display at its centre would steer and range you, NOT to the TACAN beacon but to its offset position. The Offset switch was a bit of a trap if you forgot to switch it back to "Normal"...this might result in you homing in on base, short of fuel, only to discover when you got there, that you had in fact homed to an offset position seventy miles away!

I made the wheel when I was training on the Mk 1 sim at Coltishall...The Mark 1 did not have the TACAN offset capability. So it became a bit redundant when I moved to the Mark 2 sim at Leconfield.


Ewan...As I was a Lightning Mk2 Simulator instructor, I'm afraid I can't tell you anything about something it didn't have...Auto Attack :bored:...On the Mk2 Lightning SOP, you climbed from take-off to 36,000 feet at the "Loiter Gate" and then flew the loiter holding pattern. You would be advised by Ground Radar of a incoming threat and when you had it showing on your own radar then you would manipulate it to guide you round an attacking curve to attack from behind and below the target. During this manoeuvering you would be in full reheat and accelerating to at least M1.6...The targets for this exercise were always at 56,000 feet and the final part of the attack was an "Energy Climb", arming and obtaining missile aquire...Then you would use the Pilot Attack Sight for the last bit till you got "Range Brackets" show...Fire the missiles and fall back down out of space and back to the Troposphere. It was normal in this SOP sim exercise to find then that the weather had clamped at base and you would be diverted (a nice "Offset TACAN exercise) :)

[Ewan Whosearmy]

Fascinating stuff, Peter. Thanks for taking the time to post.

With the Mk.2 sim, did you have visuals? I notice a map of some sort on one of your photographs.

Also, how were targets generated on the sim's radar scope? Do I take it that you had a real radar processor black box somewhere into which you fed in fake target returns?

[Jetex Jim]

I may be wrong but I don't think any of Lightning sim's had visuals, but I think it was a Vulcan sim I saw (about this time) with an early form of camera/model visual. The model (which was just of an airfield and its immediate suround) was constructed on a continues canvas belt. The motion of the belt produced the main motion down the runway but the camera was arranged on a track and could move from side to side. And there was an optical system to adjust the field of view for pitch and roll. The belt just went around and around to permit endless straight ahead touch and goes, if you like.
The rig was arranged with the camera at the bottom and the belt vertical and little monopoly board style buildings were stuck to the belt and these would periodically come unstuck and bounce down the belt towards the camera, a phenomena only rarely seen outside the sim environment ;)

ps I think Peters picture is actually showing the simulated aircrafts track recorder. Nowadays video displays are 10 a penny but in those days aircraft position would be recorded on map using a servo driven pen

[petermcleland]

>With the Mk.2 sim, did you have visuals? I notice a map of some sort on one of your photographs.

Also, how were targets generated on the sim's radar scope? Do I take it that you had a real radar processor black box somewhere into which you fed in fake target returns?<

Ewan,

No visuals on the Mk2 sim, hence the opaque white canopy and windscreen. However, it did have "Roll Motion" which was considered very realistic. It also had a thing called a "G Seat" which had a set of bladders under the cushion which inflated or deflated with changes of G. One person described it as "Like sitting on a litter of puppies"...It was not considered as realistic by just about everybody and we just left it switched off.

Twelve targets could be generated and their blips showed on that large round orange CRT on the instructors console. Each had separate knobs for controlling speed, height and heading...One could turn up their "Afterglow" and then try to make them do a "Red Arrows Bombshell Break", but you needed too many hands :bored:

[Fitter2]

Jetex Jim said:
I may be wrong but I don't think any of Lightning sim's had visuals, but I think it was a Vulcan sim I saw (about this time) with an early form of camera/model visual. The model (which was just of an airfield and its immediate suround) was constructed on a continues canvas belt. The motion of the belt produced the main motion down the runway but the camera was arranged on a track and could move from side to side. And there was an optical system to adjust the field of view for pitch and roll. The belt just went around and around to permit endless straight ahead touch and goes, if you like.
The rig was arranged with the camera at the bottom and the belt vertical and little monopoly board style buildings were stuck to the belt and these would periodically come unstuck and bounce down the belt towards the camera, a phenomena only rarely seen outside the sim environment ;)

Well, the F3 sim at Coltishall certainly did have one of the rubber roller visuals - if common erks chatted up the sim techs we could do a few run in and break arrivals when they were getting it to work after one of the numerous failures. Livened up a dull evening shift. Towards the end of December each year unauthorised additions were invariably stuck on.

[Brian Abraham]

Peter, Got the feeling that you have found employment as an unpaid instructor? :p Many thanks for your enlightment.

[ExBinbrook]

Hi All
I was a Sim Tech at Binbrook from 1972 thro 1977 responsible for maintaining the Lightning Mk 3/6 Sim, Flight and Visual systems.

Indeed the Lightning visual system was the same as the Vulcans in that it had a rolling map mounted vertically with the camera mounted at the bottom looking "Up" the map. The map gave an effective 10mile range with about 2-3 miles of azimuth. The Visual signals were fed through to three colour projectors (Red, Green and Blue) mounted above and behind on the cockpit which also had 3 axis of motion. The projectors ran at 50Kv so some interesting safety procedures needed. Overall the Visual system needed nearly as much maint per flying hour as the actual aircraft - remember this had been designed in the early 60's, predominatly based on Valve technology

The Binbrook Visual system was decommissioned in 73-74 owing to the high utility power consumption, where we had to load shed due to the national power outages that where happening at that time. It was quoted that the Sim Visual system with all artificial lighting requirements consumed nearly as much electricity as the real airfield / runway lights.

Lots of interesting stories of how we modified the visual system for unsuspecting junior aircrew - amazing how big a spider looks when attached to the rolling map :)

Regards to all who knew me at Binbrook, Chris Rackham, Taff Harries, Nige Adams and Dennis Rowe to name a few

I then moved onto the Hawk Sim at valley and the F4 at Coningsby

Dave - now resident in Texas..

[212man]

Lots of interesting stories of how we modified the visual system for unsuspecting junior aircrew - amazing how big a spider looks when attached to the rolling map

Or Jelly babies!

[ORAC]

The thing I remember about the Binbrook sim was that they could pull out the drag, so they could fly with gear down at multiple Mach speed, and make the earth's surface flat, so it was all a runway, and then see who land it the fastest. I believe the record was somewhere over M3.0

The few times I had a go I couldn't land the bugger at all. :{

[Fareastdriver]

This is straying off the thread a bit but it's about simulators. In the early 70s I was an SH pilot on Pumas and we were using Honington as a refuelling base. They were at that time gearing up for the Buccaneer and in Ops there were two simulators. One was the ex Navy one that had a miniture topo map of the South of England and a bit of the Moray Firth with a minature Ark Royal. The visuals was a minature camera which tracked over the map in response to control inputs. They were flying it in after reassembly so in no time I was poured in to have a go. Thottles to the wall and off I went.
A couple of near misses before I got used to it but being stationed at Odiham I knew the area quite well and was happily scooting down on the deck. Went round a hill and flew straight into a electricity pylon. Instinct had me going straight up and when I recovered and flew around I saw this big hand come out from the sky and straighten the pylon.
Thank you, God, and I carried on.

[Jetex Jim]

The F4K simulator at Leuchars was shared by 43 Sqdn, operating the K and 892 when they were ashore from the Ark Royal. The sim had been built for the navy and had a model board visual with RNAS Yeovilton on one model and the Ark Royal all at sea on another model.
A little servo motor was attached to the model of the Ark to make it pitch and the sea spray at the stern was produced by fluffed up cotton wool.

This was a fully functional sim with A to A and ground mapping modes on radar and a functional RWR

Yet the simulator was only provided with two little digital computers, one with 64K of memory the other with 48K, a fraction of the amount of memory I carry around on the data stick on my key ring, but you try and tell the kids today that, they just won't believe you. Come to that i can barely believe myself.

thread drift, what thread drift?

[Gainesy]

The Harrier sim at Wittering "flew" a camera around a model landscape for the visuals. Had a 1 v.1 with a startled moth one evening, great fun.

Probably the only sim with a coiled-up rope ladder attached to the cockpit side, in case it got stuck in the high hover position, about 30ft up.