Well since this Homo hasn't spoken. (we love ya anyways Mr. A-10)
I spoke with one of my friends at TPS last night on the Phone that was a test Manager on the NAW "Whale". I was a student, Honor Grad and Instructor there in the 90’s. He referred me to his article that will come out in a publication for February 06.
This is an article He wrote for the Magazine on the YA-10B.
Feb 06 Volume 36 no. 2
www.wingsairpower.com
"The YA-10B & Me" by Gary Aldrich
<i> Welcome to the second edition of "HOT MIKE", the newest WINGS & AIRPOWER feature, that puts you in the cockpit of some of the worlds greatest, and most interesting airplanes. In our January 2006 issue of AIRPOWER, we featured a story on Fairchild Republic's last grasp at an operational combat airplane-the two seat A-10, latter officially designated as the YA-10B. Although that program was unsuccessful in resurrecting A-10 production, the air force later utilized the machine for further development of the Warthogs Close Air Support and fighter missions. Here now is a first hand account by the Air Force flight test engineer who saw aviation history unfolding as he flew this unique airplane in the early-1980’s </i>
<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote> My involvement with the A-10 Program and the two seater in particular began with a phone call from a Major Charlie Longnecker in March of 1983. I had just graduated from the Air Force test pilot School at Edwards AFB and was working on the F-16XL Test Force when Charlie asked me if I wanted to be the Chief Engineer at the A-10 Combined Test Force (CTF). I was always impressed with the A-10, and this was a way for me to get close to that airplane, so I started working on a program called " Single Seat night Attack" .
Our Objective was to determine the workload associated with a single pilot flying Low-level at night or in bad weather using a LANTIRN system (Low-Altitude navigation and targeting Infra-Red for Night) for both navigation and targeting against the perceived threat at the time, which was the Soviet presence across the Fulda Gap in Central Europe.
The Air Force decided to reconfigure the single YA-10B, which had been evaluated as a two-seat trainer and "Weaponized" attack airplane with no success. They would use this airplane as a flying "test bed" for battlefield workload analysis. We used a captive TGM-65B Maverick Missile mounted on the right wing, with FLIR (Forward-Looking Infra-red) and a pod mounted radar on board, and put a pilot in the front seat that was instrumented in order to monitor his physiological functions. He would fly representative low level missions at night initially in the Edwards' area, and there would be a safety pilot in the rear seat whose job was to basically keep the airplane from hitting the ground.
On of the interesting early results that we found was that you could correlate actual height above ground to the pilot's heartbeat. When he went below 500 Ft. his heart rate would start to march up in an inverse relationship to the altitude-the lower the altitude, the higher the heart rate. You could actually tell what altitude he was flying by looking at his heart rate on the monitor! It was very intense workload, especially trying to deploy weapons, and one pilot actually became physically ill upon deplaning after a test mission due to the stress of flying low-level on a dark moonless night.
We also tried to get weather that more closely represented the European environment by taking the airplane up to Fairchild AFB in Spokane, Washington in December 1983. With three pilots and two Airplanes - one sing seat A-10 and the two-seater which we called "Whale" - we flew against the Army in training up there in very poor weather, and discovered limitations in the FLIR system. We'd come rolling in on a target looking for the hot Infrared signature and see something and then lock it up from maybe 4 or 5 miles away. Then we'd press on to the point where we'd have to commit to a simulated launch which was usually about a mile away when suddenly our "target" would grow four legs and turn out to be a cow! We probably blew away more cows in the area of Ft. hood Washington than simulated commies (these are electronically simulated kills here folks. No cows were harmed in the making of this article. -Ed.)
This was probably due to the fact that between the rain attenuation of the heat signature in the FLIR and trying to hand it off to the IR Maverick, you were literally on top of the target before you could actually get the weapon off. Keep in mind were talking about technology that is now 25 years old at this point. and IR technology has certainly been improved since then, but some of the things we did in this program could be considered the impetus for the upgrades and improvements that led to the A-10's operational success in Desert Storm. For one thing, we showed that with upgrades such as an INS (Inertial Navigation System) and a HUD (Heads-up Display), the airplane could become a very effective day fighter. A lot that we learned in this Program such as Human factors and cockpit "Switchology" was probably cross-flowed into the F-16C and later models as well.
One thing that was really great about the YA-10B was all the room we had in the cockpit. It had dual controls and was very easy to fly - kind of like flying a big Cessna, actually. It was a very speed-stable airplane, and it was a very smooth ride flying at low level. It would pull 4G's at 250 knots, and their wasn’t any other fighter in the Air Force inventory that could do that. Even though the only defense mechanism we had on the airplane was its 30mm gun at the time, A-10 pilots were confident that they could turn inside an adversary, point the gun and lob a few one-pound shells at him, and he'd probably go somewhere else. If there's anything that can turn inside an A-10, however it's a helicopter, and those were very serious threats until the Air national Guard guys came up with the idea of putting AIM-9 Sidewinders on the plane.
Overall, the YA-10B was a joy to fly. It had great control response, and could do low-speed aerobatics with its big straight wing. You could even loop it in 1,000 ft. - almost like a glider!
<i> Gary Aldrich retired from the Air Force as Lt. Colonel in 1996, and currently works as a civilian instructor contracted to the USAF Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB, CA. He is president of the local EAA chapter, and can be found on weekends at the controls of his immaculate Cessna 180, which he proudly named "The Fightin' Skywagon.'</i>
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>
"The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see their near and dear bathed in tears, to ride their horses and sleep on the white bellies of their wives and daughters."
-Genghis Khan
Edited by - thebigthug on Jan 11 2006 12:52 PM
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