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.Lastly,even though the range was 100 miles long, it was just off the coast and alwayswithin radio range of our control center.Therefore, Bill Alford and I supportedeach other on the missions.If Bill was flying, I was on the control radio, andhe served as controller for my missions.The pilot s windscreen, the portion of the canopy directly in front of him,was unusual.Almost all fighter aircraft, at the time, had a piece of thickbulletproof glass installed directly in front of the cockpit.The F8U-3 did nothave this.It had only standard Plexiglass like the rest of the canopy.Thislimited our cruise time at Mach 2.High-speed airflow easily heated the thinplastic material, structurally weakening it.After 10 minutes, its reduced strengthleft it vulnerable to catastrophic failure.We therefore set a five-minute limiton cruise at Mach 2.This gave us a 100 percent safety factor.The testconductor kept an eye on the time spent at cruise conditions.Once the pilotreported reaching Mach 2.0, a clock started on the ground and the pilot wasgiven a call when he had been at that speed for five minutes.The groundcontroller gave the pilot precise information regarding ground track, altitude,and airspeed.The pilot was busy controlling this thundering monster intothe gate on-speed, on-altitude, and on-track.One of the problems that we hadearly in the program was training our own radar people to give the pilot useableinstruction on track corrections.Initially, we found them calling for 30-degreeheading corrections one mile from the gate at Mach 2.This was impossiblefor the pilot to accomplish.After just a few flights and extensive grounddebriefings, we worked as a team and the data began to accumulate.The five-minute limit at Mach 2.0 was not a problem except on a coldday at altitude.Air temperature affects aircraft performance.A hot outside airtemperature results in much slower acceleration and longer takeoff distances.The reason for this is that the jet engine develops thrust by accelerating a massof air from the front of the engine out the back.The cooler the air, the heavierit is and the engine, with its set volume of airflow, is able to develop muchhigher thrust on a cold day due to the increased density of the cooler air.Thesame is true for acceleration at altitude.If the outside air temperatures arecolder, the engine is able to develop more thrust and accelerate to a givenspeed in a much shorter time and distance.On several occasions, we experiencedcolder-than-normal days at altitude and we reached Mach 2.0 very quickly.Getting to the test gate prior to exceeding our five-minute cruise limit was astruggle.Bill and I became quite a team.We not only worked well together, but wewere good friends away from work too.Bill was an avid bird hunter, and withmy background from the Pennsylvania woods, it was natural for us to become87 The Smell of Kerosenehunting buddies, too.Bill had also been my check pilot on a number of airplanes,and my success reflected on his skill as an instructor.Bill and his wife had anice country-style home with a large back yard.They hosted a number of get-togethers and barbecues for people from the office and their families as Billenjoyed having the group together.Bill and I exchanged every piece of information that we thought wasimportant on the F8U-3.If something surprised me about the airplane or caughtme short, I passed it on to Bill and he did likewise.We had several incidentsduring the operation of this relatively new and high-performance airplane thatgrabbed our attention.On one of Bill s flights, an air-pressurization fuel-transferhose disconnected from a 4,000-pound fuel tank in the wing that provided abig percentage of our fuel.Bill was busy with the acceleration, preparing torun the gate, when he noticed the fuselage feed tank was desperately low.Heimmediately pulled the engine out of afterburner and started a rapid turn backtoward Langley Field.As the big jet passed over residential areas, a sonicboom rattled windows and nerves in Salisbury, Maryland.Fortunately, nodamage was done and Bill made an emergency low fuel landing at Langleywith about 350 pounds of useable fuel left and 4,000 pounds of unusable fuelin the wing.That was the closest we came to losing the aircraft and I was gladthat I didn t have to handle that one.On one of my flights, I forgot to turn up the heat to defog the canopy as Istarted my descent for landing.I normally had the heat turned low and the air-conditioning on cool during accelerations and high-speed runs.Once I startedmy descent, however, I turned the defog heat up to full to prevent the warmmoist air at low altitude from condensing and fogging the canopy as I descended.It may not seem like a big deal, but it was.The air was so moist in the summerthat it took some time, flying at lower altitude with the heat turned full-on, toclear the moisture off the inside canopy so I could land.There was so muchmoisture in the cockpit that it looked as if a summer rain shower had passedthrough.I used a handkerchief and my pressure suit glove to wipe a clear spoton the windscreen during final approach.Since I usually made two Mach 2.0runs per flight, I had little fuel left for pattern operations.I briefed Bill aboutthis moisture problem so that he wouldn t learn about it the hard way.On another occasion, I made an afterburner takeoff and climb to altitude.This used up a lot of fuel and it was uncomfortable because the nose attitudewas so high in the initial climb that pilot visibility outside the cockpit wasextremely limited.I wanted to make the afterburner climb, however, for myown experience.Because I did not keep the nose attitude high enough, I actuallywent supersonic over the residential area of the peninsula.Fortunately, nodamage was done and there were just a few jarred nerves from the sonic boom.It was hard not to be impressed with the performance of this aircraft.The airplane s flying characteristics were excellent in almost all phases offlight.In the landing approach configuration, the aircraft was extremely speed-88 Super CrusaderCourtesy of the Air Force Flight Test Center History OfficeIn flight, a pair of ventral fins unfolded to give the F8U-3 additional direc-tional stability at higher speeds.The fins folded up prior to landing.stable.When I changed the nose attitude, the altitude also changed, but thespeed tended to remain where it had been before the attitude change.I thinkthat this was due to high drag caused by the wing in the approach configuration.The F-8 aircraft were built with a two-position wing to provide increasedvisibility at low takeoff and landing speeds.The system allowed the pilot toincrease the wing angle-of-attack without increasing the fuselage angle.It madefor a very comfortable controlled approach.As the wing tilted upward, however,it also exposed a flat-plate structure on the front of the wing assembly to theairstream.This added noticeable drag.The F8U-3 had a few drawbacks, including one that involved its crosswindlanding characteristics.It had a tremendous fuselage side area and a very narrowlanding gear footprint.The aircraft leaned away from the wind during landing,even when I applied a large amount of aileron deflection.It made me feel veryuncomfortable until the aircraft slowed to low speed [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]