DCS: F/A-18C Hornet, Episode 3: Preflight, Startup, Taxi and Takeoff

[Music] [Music] hello everyone and welcome to episode 3 of our dcsf 18c video series in this video we'll review the Hornet pre-flight start up taxi and takeoff procedures one of the great things about the horn head is as extremely easy to start up unlike other aircraft and which must go through a myriad of procedures to get the aircraft started the horn is much more straightforward this is because much of the start of procedures automated and happens without direct pilot interaction after all even Russell from Independence Day could fly a Hornet this is a big reason why this video has taken as long as it has in order to create an authentic video with no negative trainee we first had a carefully model many of the Hornets underlying systems like the engines the air turbine starter or ATS the airframe mounted accessory drive or a mat the auxiliary power unit or APU fuel electrical hydraulic flight control systems or FCS the caution and visor II system the ground proximity warning system lighting the built-in tester bit the integrated fuel and engine indicated or I fee the fire test system the bleed air system the inertial navigation system where I ns and even the seat functions we first had to build a solid foundation from which the other systems will be built upon whereas it would have been easy and fast this helped me script many of these systems really it's vital to reproduce all these subsystems to create the most authentic simulation possible well now jump into a hornet parked on the ramp and get started the first thing we'll do is a pre-flight checklist and we'll do this and a left or right sweep around the cockpit left all circuit breakers are in the mission computer and hydraulic isolation switches are set to normal oxygen is off and tenant's to auto both volume knobs as we desire the FCS gain switches to normal fuel dump is off sternal wing tanks to norm refueling probe retracted for all those are back and off yeah we can set our external lights as we desire make sure the strobe is on jin-tae is guarded parking brake is on it's like a jettison to safe flaps to fall down anti skid off and lights off landing gear handles down the canopy jettison is forward master arm to safe fire lights are both out and the left and right DD eyes the HUD and the MP CD are all off ADF is off attitude to auto ECMs to off dispensers to off I are cool to normal spin recovery is guarded standby attitude indicator is caged radar altimeter is off hook is up wing fold is matching the wings AV cool switch to NorAm left and right generators to normal and the battery is off ECS to auto temperature to about 10 o'clock cabin pressure to normal Pio heat to Auto engine anti-ice to off and bleed air to normal yeah we can go ahead and set our internal lights make sure our defog is about midway all of our sensors are off and our right wall circuit breakers are all in and that's a quick look at doing the pre-flight now general you really don't have to do that when you're playing the game but we just want to give you a little idea of what pilots go through on a day to day basis so the next step is getting the electrical systems up and running now on the left side here we have the external electrical power panel but you really wouldn't use this unless you're doing some ground checks normally almost always you'd be using the battery button here and the battery button has three positions on/off and override and when you place it to the override position it's just checking the emergency battery it should be about 23.5 volts and you get the indication of battery switch on but when you start a hornet you'll be using it in the on position and be using both utility and the to see battery both again should be looking at about 23.5 volts and the better itself will power the canopy as well as gating apu started and ignite the igniters during the engine start sequence now moving to the left side we have our brake pressure which is about 3000 psi which is all good and now we'll take a look at the fire test system there's two circuits a and B and when you run either it will close the bleeder shutoff valves you'll hear the audio warnings and you'll see the lights on the instrument panel so let's go ahead and do fire test right so that's time it actually takes about seven seconds to rewind the tape for the next one but a quick way around that is to just recycle the battery so we'll do that so well battery off battery on and now we'll test the next circuit okay so now we can go ahead and just release the switch and we're all done with that part the next part is the APU or the auxiliary power unit and the APU is a self-contained small gas turbine engine an aircraft that will power the ATS the air turbine starter as well as giving some supplementary power to the ECS system and a piece which is located down here and once both engines are up and running about a minute after that it will shut down automatically and once you do start it and it's up to full cycle the green ready light will come on so let's go ahead and put the you won [Applause] so get a little noisy now I want to go ahead and close the canopy okay that's better so the next step now is actually just start the right engine and you actually start either the left or the right engine first but the right engine will give you normal hydraulic power to the brakes usually good idea to start the right one first and when you do start the right engine what will happen is the APU will start the 80s and the 80s in turn will start the right a mad and the Rayment a mad will then use the crankshaft to get the right engine up and running and then at about rpm a 20% on the right engine will move the right throttle forward and at that point it'll to introduce fuel into the combustion chamber as well as the batteries will start the igniters and they'll get full engines start at that point so let's try that and at about 40% the 80s with disconnect and you'll hear that and then 60% the cycle will be complete and the right generator will be online light control light control so those cautions you heard the first was their role left or left and that's simply the ground proximity warning system doing a self-test and then you heard a master caution tone and then after that you heard a flight controls flight controls caution which indicates that there was a bit of an issue with the flight controls but we'll take a look at that here in a second and also here on the I think want to make sure that engine temperature is no more than 815 Celsius so coming back let's go ahead and put the I NS stock to ground alignment so this will be run in the background as we go through the rest of the startup procedure now when we did the fire test I noted that doing the fire test will actually close the bleed air shelf valve so we go ahead we need to go ahead and reopen those and we'll do that by rotating the bleed air knob 306 degrees clockwise you actually may have heard ECS air come on at that point as well so go ahead and now we'll turn on our to D D is the HUD and the MPCV and can adjust the brightness on these and he'll go ahead and set up a radius and go ahead and engage or standby indicator set our radar altimeter radar tiller on yeah I'll go ahead and put the left DVI to the SES page now at this point we'll go ahead and start the next engine so just as we did before left engine crank wait for 20% [Music] okay so now both engines are up and running and that wasn't too painful I hope so let's go ahead and turn on our oxygen put our radar to operate now you notice here on the left DDI at the top over the top of the bottom portion of the DDI we have cautions and these are generally in a larger font and are more important and then below in a smaller font we have the advisories and here the master caution buttons yellow indicating that a caution has been tripped so go ahead and we'll recognize that by clicking on it and then we'll go ahead and click it again to restock this now on the SES page you notice these X's and these are errors detected in either the trailing edge flaps and the ailerons let's go ahead and clear this out now and that's probably happened because of wing droop that the aircraft is parked too long now you can see that those have been cleared out also at this time we'll go ahead and we'll set our takeoff trim to 12 degrees on staves and then I see 12 and we'll move our flaps up to auto and you'll see 12 on the staff everything else is yard out now and what we can do now is we can actually particular in a winter day nice and cold wicked run an exerciser and we did this by holding down the SES reset button and moving the SES bit switch up and now we see the control surfaces articulating you can also see that here on the SES page well let's do I want to go ahead and set my bingo to 8,000 let's go ahead and check our controls so we're going to go 24 back 3 for 25 to the left 25 to the right and 30 on the rudders I'm gonna go ahead and set up my tack in now soon transmit/receive on clear and we're at 44 x-ray and now we have good indication there and also set up my course to the runway and that will be units 880 okay and that looks good and all so I'll go ahead and set up my Zulu time on the HUD and that looks good let's inspect AP I'm gonna go ahead and release my parking brake anti-skid on flaps back to half lights on and because we're operating from a feel of us at my hook bypass the field and now I'll go ahead and put my i ns to Nev and do a last Chuck around the cockpit ok I think we're good so I want to go ahead now and change my left DDI to the takeoff checklist and my right to the SGS page now up here on the HUD we have NWS and that stands for nose wheel steering and this will allow our rudder pedals to control the nose wheel and if you hold down the nose wheel steering button you go to nose to steer steering hi and this will give you a tighter turn radius and very useful when you're on the carrier go ahead and start for sheriff Falls for and generally she'd be taxing around 75% but rather than keep you guys bored watching me taxi push it up a bit they'll use the tow brakes to a break prior to hitting the threshold so at this point let's go ahead and arm up the ejection seat tidying up or straps doing one last check around the cockpit okay let's go ahead and take the runway okay we'll bring her to a stop a line down the middle now change my left DDI to the HUD page now we'll keep the right on the SES and the MPC DB on the HSI this point I want to go ahead and hold down the break and run throttles up to 80% and check my values go ahead wipe the controls eg tea looks good just want to go ahead and release the brake and full burner now the Hornet center gravity is pretty far forward and so she really does not want to rotate but you want to rotate to about 7 degrees let her fly off Europe then flaps up and you want to make sure you have your gear up prior to 240 knots and that is a look at the pre-flight on the start of the taxi and taking off in the Hornet I really hope you enjoyed this video and I'll see you next time thanks

Channel: Matt Wagner

Views: 1,068,028

Rating: 4.8460293 out of 5

Keywords: Digital Combat Simulator (Video Game), dcs, Eagle Dynamics (Video Game Developer), the fighter collection, Lock On: Modern Air Combat (Video Game), flaming cliffs, nttr, simulation, flight simulator, air combat, jet, dogfight, Flying, Plane, Aviation (Industry), aircraft, vr, virtual reality, rift, vive, hornet, f/a-18

Id: SaMBmQxzzPQ

Length: 20min 10sec (1210 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 20 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/InHartWeTrust]

1080p 60FPS version, versus the compressed Facebook version. Enjoy.

[u/AirplaneNerd]

The external view in the first part of the video where the Hornet is flying over the Caucasus in 2.5 is indescribably, eye wateringly beautiful

[u/CptCreosote]

So sexy. Can't believe the audio warnings are on tape though. :D

[u/goldenfiver]

Quality is so much better than FB.

[u/snarkbomb]

My body is extremely ready.

[u/Goose506]

Okay, time for beta release! Just direct me to the purchase page please.

[u/wilbur1340again]

I posted this earlier and the thread mysteriously vanished. Hmm...

[u/Doodenkoff]

I thought I had enough modules.

[u/Russ_Dill]

Can't wait to see if it's possible to do the FCS bit test while in flight, and if so, what happens.