Flight International and the RAAF F-111 1989
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Flight International and the RAAF F-111 1989
This is from a magazine I have kept since 1989. The pilot was a mate of mine from GA days ...Flight International issue 14 Jan 1989
The F-111 from the cockpit – Mike Gaines
The RAAF aircrew call the F-111 “The Pig”, not because of any adverse handling characteristics, but because it has a long snout which spends a lot of its time snuffling along close to the ground. The first thing I note on climbing into the F-111 is the view over the long nose, which sticks out way ahead of a very deep instrument coaming. The bottom edge of the curved windshield is about two yards ahead of me, so the view down and ahead is cut off. As F-111 instructor Flt Lt “Boomer” Taylor explains, “That’s no problem with the Pave Tack, the nav can look ahead on that, but with this [an RF-111B] we have a closed-circuit TV camera just aft of the nose-gear so we can line up on the target. At high level the nose blocks the view of the ground ahead for about 20 n.m.”
As we taxi out, I put our target co-ordinates into the archaic INS, which is a real pain to use. Boomer reads out the lats and longs. “OK, that’s North 48 …, “I say. “No, mate, South. We don’t have that much fuel,” says Boomer. Red-faced, I crank in the numbers. You twist a spring-loaded knob, and the co-ordinate numerals click around on their drums. The harder you twist, the faster they go. Twist one way to increase, the other way to decrease. The system can store three destinations, to use as way-points. It is time consuming and laborious enough to do while taxying; later I’ll find what a pain it can be.
We pull up into a max angle climb from the runway at 9 alpha and 190 kt. Boomer eases the wings back to 26 degrees as we swing east to overfly Brisbane at 15,000 ft, checking out the automatic terrain following (ATF) systems. We obtain clearance into the supersonic low-level corridor as we complete the checks with 200 ft on the Set Clearance Plane and select “Hard” on the “Soft/Medium/Hard” ride selector. The last check is to see that the fail-safe auto-pull-up works. Any faults in the ATF chain and the aircraft will pull up at 3g.
Terrain following
“OK, all ready? Let’s go down,” says Boomer, engaging the ATF and pulling the wings back. The nose pitches down, hesitates, and pitches down again, Boomer is sitting with his hands on his knees as we descend rapidly. At 1,000ft the nose starts pitching up, giving us 2g until we are straight and level at 200 ft. “Now watch this.” The noise levers go forward and the wing sweeps even further back as the afterburners kick in. The sea rushes past, and as we go supersonic there is just the slightest tremor. Boomer hand flies us down to 100 ft and Mach 1.2. The sensation of speed is fantastic.
I look in the mirror: behind us a ball of spray erupts from the sea where our shock wave hits. But what really sticks in my mind are the fuel flow gauges. In full afterburner the left engine drinks 52,500 lb/hr and the right 62,500 lb/hr, with the turbine inlet temperatures hovering around 1,100 degrees C. Taking a glove off, I note that the canopy getting hot to the touch. We maintain this dash for a minute or so before pulling up and slowing to a pedestrian 200ft/540kt.
Auto-toss
We carry out a laydown attack on Snapper Point range, then swing around south for a 270 degree turn to head north for a Pave Tack auto-toss profile demonstration. After the 3g pull-up and release Boomer racks it around in a 4g manoeuvre designed to allow the Pave Tack to continue lazing the target as we escape at low level back to the south. “Now let’s update the nav kit,'' he says, reeling off a string of numbers for me to tweak into the “Present Position” number cruncher.
This is not so easy, because Boomer is pulling us hard round to cross over the centre target on the range, whose co-ordinates I am desperately trying to feed while fighting the g, avoiding the stick, and trying to keep my head up. It really is a pain compared with the modern systems I have used before. I get the numbers in and press the “Fix” button as we cross the target. The kit declines to accept it, so we turn hard and overfly again. This time it goes in, and the INS is updated.
We head inland towards the Great Dividing Range for some low flying. The terrain-following radar has a narrow beam width, so in Auto TF the aircraft often passes extremely close to high terrain on either side. Auto TF is usually a night/bad weather option. In daylight the pilots prefer to fly the TF, following pitch demand bars on the AHI and keeping an eye out ahead. Using the AHI will give the lowest terrain clearance (set in multiples of 200 ft) for the ride quality selected: soft, medium, or hard. We select 200 ft, hard ride, and bat along at Mach 0.9.
There are problems with that, so we decide to do Auto TF. The system takes over, and Boomer sits back with his hands on his knees. “Pretty good, eh?” I am watching a hill dead ahead. “What? Oh … er… yes.” The Auto TF pulls us up and, as we start to clear the ridge, pushes us down again. In hard ride it is a -g push which lasts for several seconds and is absolutely delightful.
Approaching the next ridge Boomer removes a glove. As we unload to 0g again he tosses it into the air, where it floats gently backwards until the g comes back on to position us in a valley. “In hard ride the system leaves it later for the pull-up, to keep our exposure time down as we cross the ridge. At night I would monitor the E-Scope TF presentation and the nav looks at his attack radar display for terrain avoidance in azimuth. Look how close we are to this feature ahead and you will see what I mean about the narrow TF beamwidth”. A small mountain slides past very close. “Good thing about night flying; you don’t see them,” laughs Boomer, “but we would like a moving map display so we can better plan our terrain avoidance, I doubt if we will get it, though.”
Reducing the workload
After ten minutes, I am totally confident in the Auto TF and feel at ease. We are chatting unconcernedly about what we are going to do next, and we are free to keep an excellent lookout all round. In short, the Auto TF leaves the crew free to think tactics and keep ahead of the game.
With a digital nav attack system the workload in the right-hand seat will be much lower, and the overall system accuracy will be much improved. Old the F-111 may be, but the digital update will rejuvenate it.
End
The article was an add on to a main story about the updates planned for the F-111.
The F-111 from the cockpit – Mike Gaines
The RAAF aircrew call the F-111 “The Pig”, not because of any adverse handling characteristics, but because it has a long snout which spends a lot of its time snuffling along close to the ground. The first thing I note on climbing into the F-111 is the view over the long nose, which sticks out way ahead of a very deep instrument coaming. The bottom edge of the curved windshield is about two yards ahead of me, so the view down and ahead is cut off. As F-111 instructor Flt Lt “Boomer” Taylor explains, “That’s no problem with the Pave Tack, the nav can look ahead on that, but with this [an RF-111B] we have a closed-circuit TV camera just aft of the nose-gear so we can line up on the target. At high level the nose blocks the view of the ground ahead for about 20 n.m.”
As we taxi out, I put our target co-ordinates into the archaic INS, which is a real pain to use. Boomer reads out the lats and longs. “OK, that’s North 48 …, “I say. “No, mate, South. We don’t have that much fuel,” says Boomer. Red-faced, I crank in the numbers. You twist a spring-loaded knob, and the co-ordinate numerals click around on their drums. The harder you twist, the faster they go. Twist one way to increase, the other way to decrease. The system can store three destinations, to use as way-points. It is time consuming and laborious enough to do while taxying; later I’ll find what a pain it can be.
We pull up into a max angle climb from the runway at 9 alpha and 190 kt. Boomer eases the wings back to 26 degrees as we swing east to overfly Brisbane at 15,000 ft, checking out the automatic terrain following (ATF) systems. We obtain clearance into the supersonic low-level corridor as we complete the checks with 200 ft on the Set Clearance Plane and select “Hard” on the “Soft/Medium/Hard” ride selector. The last check is to see that the fail-safe auto-pull-up works. Any faults in the ATF chain and the aircraft will pull up at 3g.
Terrain following
“OK, all ready? Let’s go down,” says Boomer, engaging the ATF and pulling the wings back. The nose pitches down, hesitates, and pitches down again, Boomer is sitting with his hands on his knees as we descend rapidly. At 1,000ft the nose starts pitching up, giving us 2g until we are straight and level at 200 ft. “Now watch this.” The noise levers go forward and the wing sweeps even further back as the afterburners kick in. The sea rushes past, and as we go supersonic there is just the slightest tremor. Boomer hand flies us down to 100 ft and Mach 1.2. The sensation of speed is fantastic.
I look in the mirror: behind us a ball of spray erupts from the sea where our shock wave hits. But what really sticks in my mind are the fuel flow gauges. In full afterburner the left engine drinks 52,500 lb/hr and the right 62,500 lb/hr, with the turbine inlet temperatures hovering around 1,100 degrees C. Taking a glove off, I note that the canopy getting hot to the touch. We maintain this dash for a minute or so before pulling up and slowing to a pedestrian 200ft/540kt.
Auto-toss
We carry out a laydown attack on Snapper Point range, then swing around south for a 270 degree turn to head north for a Pave Tack auto-toss profile demonstration. After the 3g pull-up and release Boomer racks it around in a 4g manoeuvre designed to allow the Pave Tack to continue lazing the target as we escape at low level back to the south. “Now let’s update the nav kit,'' he says, reeling off a string of numbers for me to tweak into the “Present Position” number cruncher.
This is not so easy, because Boomer is pulling us hard round to cross over the centre target on the range, whose co-ordinates I am desperately trying to feed while fighting the g, avoiding the stick, and trying to keep my head up. It really is a pain compared with the modern systems I have used before. I get the numbers in and press the “Fix” button as we cross the target. The kit declines to accept it, so we turn hard and overfly again. This time it goes in, and the INS is updated.
We head inland towards the Great Dividing Range for some low flying. The terrain-following radar has a narrow beam width, so in Auto TF the aircraft often passes extremely close to high terrain on either side. Auto TF is usually a night/bad weather option. In daylight the pilots prefer to fly the TF, following pitch demand bars on the AHI and keeping an eye out ahead. Using the AHI will give the lowest terrain clearance (set in multiples of 200 ft) for the ride quality selected: soft, medium, or hard. We select 200 ft, hard ride, and bat along at Mach 0.9.
There are problems with that, so we decide to do Auto TF. The system takes over, and Boomer sits back with his hands on his knees. “Pretty good, eh?” I am watching a hill dead ahead. “What? Oh … er… yes.” The Auto TF pulls us up and, as we start to clear the ridge, pushes us down again. In hard ride it is a -g push which lasts for several seconds and is absolutely delightful.
Approaching the next ridge Boomer removes a glove. As we unload to 0g again he tosses it into the air, where it floats gently backwards until the g comes back on to position us in a valley. “In hard ride the system leaves it later for the pull-up, to keep our exposure time down as we cross the ridge. At night I would monitor the E-Scope TF presentation and the nav looks at his attack radar display for terrain avoidance in azimuth. Look how close we are to this feature ahead and you will see what I mean about the narrow TF beamwidth”. A small mountain slides past very close. “Good thing about night flying; you don’t see them,” laughs Boomer, “but we would like a moving map display so we can better plan our terrain avoidance, I doubt if we will get it, though.”
Reducing the workload
After ten minutes, I am totally confident in the Auto TF and feel at ease. We are chatting unconcernedly about what we are going to do next, and we are free to keep an excellent lookout all round. In short, the Auto TF leaves the crew free to think tactics and keep ahead of the game.
With a digital nav attack system the workload in the right-hand seat will be much lower, and the overall system accuracy will be much improved. Old the F-111 may be, but the digital update will rejuvenate it.
End
The article was an add on to a main story about the updates planned for the F-111.
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"who cares about 115,000 pound/hr fuel flow when you are not paying!"
One of those Aircrew Interview Youtube stories was about an RAF Nav who did an exchange with the RAAF on the F-111.
It was a few years ago since I have seen it, but I recall him saying:
a) Friday was bombing day;
b) You could hear the 2,000 pounders detonating;
c) On the last flight of his tour, the aircraft went unserviceable; it seemed there was some sort of agreement about how many hours he would fly and he had about 4 to go. So the CO told him "take that one, it's full of fuel, don't come back with any fuel in it".
So fuel must have been free!
One of those Aircrew Interview Youtube stories was about an RAF Nav who did an exchange with the RAAF on the F-111.
It was a few years ago since I have seen it, but I recall him saying:
a) Friday was bombing day;
b) You could hear the 2,000 pounders detonating;
c) On the last flight of his tour, the aircraft went unserviceable; it seemed there was some sort of agreement about how many hours he would fly and he had about 4 to go. So the CO told him "take that one, it's full of fuel, don't come back with any fuel in it".
So fuel must have been free!
Last edited by PPRuNeUser0131; 6th Aug 2020 at 06:07. Reason: grammar
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The story goes when being initially trained on the F-111 in the United States, the final rides were through the Grand Canyon at night, Hands Off.
Next morning the same ride during daylight hours to demonstrate how good the terrain following radar was?
Verification??
A great aircraft which could only, ever be replaced with a moden F-111.
Next morning the same ride during daylight hours to demonstrate how good the terrain following radar was?
Verification??
A great aircraft which could only, ever be replaced with a moden F-111.
Last edited by LeoLiability; 8th Aug 2020 at 01:13.
