MAVs Hit or Miss?
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You make a fair point Blue, but I would say that in your example that it was also the pilots sense that something was amiss that saved his life (if he survived a +mach ejection). But I do get your point. I guess it’s more of a thing that occurs when visual cues are absent. When I’m using the Mavs as the sensor, the picture is smaller and I have to lean in closer to the MFD cutting down on my FOV. Of course, when I’m leaning closer to the MFD is when I sometimes put in a little forward stick without even noticing it. I just figured there was a more “seat of the pants” feel to actually flying an airplane, than a desk.
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Oh, it gets crazier - not only did the guy survive, he even flew fighters again afterwards, despite grievous injuries you would think would stop you flying ever again.
http://www.ejectionsite.com/insaddle/insaddle.htm - theres an account of it here.
Its one of the big things they drill at the club - DO NOT get into IMC. If you get into IMC as a VFR rated pilot… trust your instruments above all else, and PRAY.
Theres a video I appreciate on the topic, entitled ‘178 seconds to live’ -
I understand the figure comes from a study where they got a number of VFR pilots and had them fly in a full motion simulator under IMC. The average survival time was 178 seconds - although it was much lower if you exclude a few outliers. One guy survived for over an hour, and another for nearly an hour.
In BMS, with our infalliable HUD, it becomes rather easy to scoff at things like instrument cross checks, and human factors like ‘the leans’. Probably the closest thing to worry about in BMS is the situation described above, where you are heads down doing TGP or WPN page operations, not paying attention to the nose of the aircraft. I suppose that is one excellent reason for the attitude awareness indicator in the FCR.
You make a fair point Blue, but I would say that in your example that it was also the pilots sense that something was amiss that saved his life (if he survived a +mach ejection). But I do get your point. I guess it’s more of a thing that occurs when visual cues are absent. When I’m using the Mavs as the sensor, the picture is smaller and I have to lean in closer to the MFD cutting down on my FOV. Of course, when I’m leaning closer to the MFD is when I sometimes put in a little forward stick without even noticing it. I just figured there was a more “seat of the pants” feel to actually flying an airplane, than a desk.
The sense of it being amiss was reportedly due to the few times he had been transonic in the trainer aircraft (I think it was the T-38?) he had flown, he had felt that ultra sensitivity of the controls, and that whistling sound on the canopy. Something to consider is that that sensitivity cue would not be present if he had been flying an F-16, with its FLCS inputs being designed to remain the same across the majority of the flight regime. Make no mistake, I am certainly not advocating assuming your instruments are always correct! Failures can happen, which is part of the purpose of your cross check - do your instruments all agree with each other? So you do need to assess the information you have available. What I am saying, and I am backed up by a lot of sources on this, is that a lot of the sensations your body generates in flight are useless for gauging what the aircraft is doing, and that you cannot fly the aircraft on feel. You have to have instruments - and if one fails, you have to be able to identify that failure, and exclude it from the check, while interpreting the other instruments to make up for that.
I would not want to rely on being able to ‘feel’ a descent while being heads down. If you are heads down, glance left or right to the center pedestal to check your flight instruments every so often. 10 to 15 seconds works for me. Mostly. My second to last flight, I recall ending up in a serious descent due to being padlocked on the TGP. Its easy to happen in the sim, but I dont think in that specific case, that you have any extra physical cues to warn you in the real jet, either.
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You do have to practice…and scan, scan, scan…
…I was having a session in a trainer once and one of my “friends” leaned over and told the operator - “I’ll give ya $5 if you can make him puke”. And as usual, from desk flying the first thing I did airborne was to try and use the Trim hat to change views…forgetting I was in a full cockpit trainer (muscle memory is also a b…)…so I was fairly out of trim when the operator slammed me into a cloud deck shortly after takeoff. Because I was blind and out of trim I did a left had roll in the goo…or two…before I got almost upright in the semi-clear and centered my trim, but was still leaning left. At which point the operator threw me into another could deck and I rolled over again…this time I actually scanned the HUD and realized that I needed to roll right to get to level fastest…but knew that if I rolled right that was going to puke…so I did another left hand 360-ish to upright and hit the burners and climbed out before he could slam me again. Once I could see the world again I was fine.
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I really have to make my POV a trim hat. Its rather useful to have obviously…
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I fly the OS X version of FAF on my iMac and use a utility called ControllerMate to program controllers like my Warthog stick, Saitek pedals, and a modified Cougar throttle. Using ControllerMate I have set up an interface where commanding double CMS->down in .5 sec changes my Trim hat between Trim and POV functions…very, very handy at the desk with a single monitor.
I’ve also done several other things - proportional toe brakes by rigging key repeat rate to pedal throw, command ejection by holding CMS-down + pinky, and centering trim by double tapping the Weapon Step/NWS switch.
I really, REALLY, REALLY, wish there was a version of ControllerMate for the PC…it would make a lot of the interfacing work for my Viperpit build a lot easier.
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Thought I would reply to this thread instead of starting a new one as I have a quick q? About Mav handoffs.
Should it be possible to get a completely ‘successful’ handoff without the Mav acquiring a track? I’ve had a couple occasions where I bore sight the missile, point track with TGP, get a complete handoff but Mav isn’t actually tracking. As best as I can tell the only indication of failure is lack of the BSGT mnemonic in the upper left. Otherwise everything checks out. There’s a C on both MFDs, the pointing cross is solid… But if I fire the missile goes straight down into the turf. While I think I know the issue (trying to acquire from too far away when the Mav doesn’t have enough contrast to track), it seems like there should be some indication that the Mav failed to track after handoff (aside from the missing bsgt symbol). Of course if that’s the proper behavior then that’s fine, and I don’t get to tell Raytheon how to code their software to my preferences.:p
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Is the Maverick in area or centroid mode (G model)? Are you somehow interrupting the handoff by switching SOI to the WPN page? That is indeed screwy to get a C without a genuine track by the missile. Perhaps the C report comes a little too easily (comparing vector matching only).
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I have no idea about centroid mode, but I’m using D models so if that’s a G function it shouldn’t factor in. I usually wait until the “Handoff in Progress” completed before doing anything. Still if I had interrupted it would I still get the C icon? I haven’t tested to see if that happens
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Somebody mentioned before about Laser guided Mavs, I cannot found them modeled at BMS 433, am I wrong ?
Are they used actually in real life ? -
Absolutely, a USN/USMC favorite. I don’t think they are in FBMS at all, certainly not for the F-16.
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I thought they were…particularly now that BMS will do buddy lasing. Look for AGM-65E.