EA-18 Growler Walkaround

thank you hey how's it going my name is Lieutenant Tyler Fisher call sign buffer I'm with vaq 129 the Vikings at a Whidbey Island Washington I'm also on The Growler Air Show team we're here in beautiful Tyler Texas at the Rose City Air Fest and I'm gonna give you a nice walk around to the ea18g it's a step in here behind me we'll start with the most important thing because this is a Navy aircraft we do land on aircraft carriers you can see up front we got this massive bulky landing gear two large tires and then a couple systems here on the left and right which I'll talk to you here in a minute of how we launch off an aircraft carrier up front we've got the AOA indexers so this is going to keep the it'll let the lsos The Landing signal officers that are on the back of the boat to let the pilot know that they're on speed the middle one is going to be this orange light here that is on speed so the Pilot's on speed the upper will be green that's going to let the lsos know that the jet is slow and then red is going to let the lsos know that the jet is fast right here this big thing here is our uh launch bar so on the boat when we're taxing around uh here on the field and at on the boat it's going to be up and then at the boat uh we'll have uh taxi directors tax you up into the Catapult and they will give you a signal to drop your launch bar up in the cockpit a switch for it on the left-hand side the Pilot's gonna go ahead and drop that and you'll see the launch bar come down and then after that they will tax you forward into the shuttle and then at that point after they tax you forward we'll come back here towards the AFT end of the landing gear the nose wheel gear this is our hold back fitting here now so the whole back fitting will attach attach this big uh it looks kind of like a hot dog but they'll attach that to the ship and then to this actual hold back fitting here once that's completed they'll go ahead and taxi you forward and this now is the tension that's holding the 40 000 pounds of thrust when we go up to burner power that's going to hold this jet back from going forward and then Pilots will run through a series of checks before they're ready to launch and then in the daytime they'll get the hand salute to the shooter at that point he will check all the final Checkers and then after that thumbs up and he'll point forward on the flight deck and then you'll have a catapult launcher go ahead and press the launch button and it's as simple as a button being pressed and then off to the races 180 miles an hour in about 150 feet it's pretty awesome ride I would love to take everyone out on it that's my favorite part about Naval Aviation is the Catapult shot more stuff on the landing gear obviously we've got our Landing taxi light just like you see any general aviation airplane have sitting there so easy switch in the cockpit turns that on and off steering mechanism we've got hydraulic system on board primarily a nose wheel steering is going to steer this jet around we have two modes of that we've got high gain and low gain so taxing around at an Airfield you can be in low gain easy day taxi around if you need to make a sharp turn easy click of a switch on the uh on the actual uh stick in the front seat and it'll get you into High Gain and you'll get a large Caster in order to swing the jet around and then primarily we'll use nose wheel high on the aircraft carrier because we are taxing in confined spaces and try not to hit other Jets moving forward on The Growler here obviously these are the doors so they're when the landing gear is down they're going to be open like they are now and then once we are airborne and clean the jet up these doors will run through the appropriate process of closing just so the jet is completely covered up uh moving forward here this is our chaff dispenser safety switch so you'll only see this thing out if we're actually carrying items and items would be chaff and flare which is more of a defense mechanism for air-to-air and surface-to-air stuff that that we use in combat and also training but if this jet did have flares on it this would be out and that's just a safety mechanism so there would be no misfires while the Jets parked here sweet other things on here we've got canopy control uh here to open while you're sitting on Deck it's just an easy switch up or down will open and close it and then this is also the ladder deployment which is controlled electrically you can also do it manually which I will show you here in a little bit when we do the walk around but yeah if I were to push that button now the ladder which is stowed up under here The Lex uh would just drop down electrically in here is just a compartment we've got some circuit breaker circuit breakers and some of our our weapon systems which will be unable to open for you guys today uh but here uh it probably looks familiar to most general aviation enthusiasts it's a pitot tube we've got two on board one on the left one on the right so we do have some redundancy with that and they can handle up to very high speeds uh I believe the super horn is rated to about 1200 miles an hour 1.8 Mach so these are pretty strong pitot tubes here uh this vein over here this is gonna be our AOA indexer so AOA is our crucial uh a way of flying when we land unlike most general aviation people are kind of based on air speeds the anytime landing at the boat we're flying in AOA so it's an angle of attack and we'll kind of talk about that more when we go around to the back of the uh The Growler we look at the tail hook and why angle of attack is very important so also when fighting this jet uh in the air-to-air arena it is awesome with its fly-by-wire system it's awesome in the high AOA or high alpha Arena so it's very good at slow speed dog fighting and that's kind of uh kind of a realm and regime that you you'd like to be in depending on who you're fighting and who you're training with so we'll talk about some of the flight control surfaces as we get around to that but you can see this thing has a pretty big throw and that's basically going to be acting as a wing and giving us AOA feedback in the cockpit of like what AOA we're actually flying at 514 that's just the side number of this jet all the Jets are are tied with a buno number that we have in the fleet so this is just the side number of the jet 514. this line right here is going to be the formation lights so at night time they'll appear as green and that will help the pilots maintain formation at night time which is challenging and it's also challenging making joins at night time usually we just take things a little slow moving forward up here is the radom so hidden behind this thing's the apg-79 that's going to be our aesa radar that we use primarily for air-to-air and air to ground it's also you can use it as a weather radar depending how how familiar you are with it but uh awesome radar it's the the newest one on the on the fleet for the United States Navy uh the super Hornets uh rhinos Fox foxtrots and Echoes uh all use this and that's the latest and greatest I won't talk much about this radar there's a lot of a lot of cool information uh that if one day someone's lucky enough to fly it you'll learn about it but that's kind of all I'll talk about the radar but that hides behind this big radome here towards the front of the aircraft as we talked about this is a big radum here it's one of my favorite views uh just kind of looking down the nose of the aircraft you can see uh how how big this aircraft actually is standing up next to it uh which I was unaware uh until I came up to Whidbey Island learned how to fly this how big this airplane actually is uh and just how well it performs for the for the size of it so one of my favorite views standing looking down the front of the airplane uh moving forward same stuff on the other side like I said we have redundancy another AOA indexer here another pitot tube uh back on the right hand side again another formation strip for nighttime flying with the side number four area sorry not aerial refueling ground refueling this is our ground uh refueling door looks similar to pretty much any other jet aircraft on the line they're just going to hook up the hose here and then they will fill the jet up there if you can notice above the side number 514 you'll see a door sorry I can't reach all the way up there a door that's going to be our refueling probe so big mission that seems pretty benign because we put on different hats when we go out and fly it's like we're launching off the boat sweet we're off the boat where are we going we're going to you know whatever Mission we have to to go complete sweet in between there we don't have enough gas to get there so sweet you got to put on your tanking hat and go meet a tanker and go through that process which starting out learning how to tank is is very uh nerve-wracking so once you've got a bunch of tanking experience under your belt it's more more comfortable to go do that but inside the cockpit we have a switch that will open and close the uh uh the aerial refueling door and you'll see a probe come out it'll look like kind of like an arm lifting out and it's just a probe that sits on the front of the jet we've got some air speed limits for it so big thing is opening and closing at less than 300 knots and then once it's out and retracted we're up to 400 knots it's kind of the limit there most are tanking Evolutions that we do are off similar platforms the Rhino uh the the F-18 they have refueling capabilities and that's going to be kind of organically to the boat that we will tank off them they'll provide us with gas and then also Air Force assets Navy tanking is different than than Air Force tanking and that's saying that the the Air Force guys have a boom operator who actually drives the refueling probe into the the jet itself the Navy is different we've got a probe that comes out and we have to make contact with uh with the basket whatever whatever airplane we are uh we are tanking off again here this is just an other uh door that's going to close once the landing gear is retracted moving forward here you can see this big I call it a sunshade right now this is going to be our Lex uh and The Lex as I talked to earlier is also another piece of this aircraft that's going to give us that kind of high alpha High AOA capabilities it does provide lift and it does disturb uh the the wind over the wings which can help out our big vertical and horizontal stabs that we'll get to here in a little bit uh that'll that'll help you give you some good pitch Authority when you're in the high alpha Arena uh inside these doors here again it's just going to be all circuit breakers uh and uh lots of computers the help kind of drive all of our our equipment on board which we won't be able to open up to today this here is going to be our ECS scoop so if for some reason we were to lose uh you know some bleed air uh while we're flying around which cools all these systems that are running in the jet there's a switch in the cockpit we call this the beer can and this will pop out and essentially it's just an air scoop that will just take ram air in and try and cool systems so it's just really an emergency piece that this jet has and again we call that the beer can uh same thing on this side uh not a whole lot uh that we haven't talked to about the landing gear you can see we've got these big hold down fittings uh and these are these are really for uh for the aircraft carrier uh depending on how fast the boat's moving wind over deck you can see winds up to 60 70 miles an hour on the aircraft carrier and we've got a lot of tie down points just to keep these Jets secure on the flight deck moving forward I think a lot of people uh misinterpret this as a bomb this is actually an external fuel tank fpu-12 uh is the the name of it but this is uh external fuel tank holds about 480 gallons which is about 3 200 pounds of fuel and this just helps for for getting us a little further when we're out on the road and a little bit extra gas to kind of work with there these here can be mounted uh pretty much on any of our hard points uh but most likely a growler configuration you'll see a Center Line tank like we have here and this is kind of our uh our like fighter configuration when we're training for that but then sometimes when we're training for our AAA stuff we've got uh AP sorry alq 99 pods which we don't have on the jet but most likely you'll see this external fuel tank um on a hard point that would be here which just looks like this it's just our Brew that's what's going to hold our fuel tanks in a lq 99 pods but here you can see that's where this Brew 32 would would attach and you could also see a fuel tank mounted here uh so a lot of options a lot of different configurations uh like I said our f-18s that we tank off around the boat sometimes their configuration is a five wet so they will have five of these fuel tanks going across the whole Jet and that they're kind of pushing their limits of kind of their max weight for takeoff which is for The Growler it's 66 000 pounds it's pretty heavy most configurations we fly in as usually around 56 000 pound jet uh when we're kind of battle grizzlied out and that's that's kind of our normal configuration uh and then while I'm talking about battle grids we usually refer to that as three Al q99 pods so we don't have any on the jet today to show you but if you go on on Google or watch any of their videos You'll see uh just a big kind of looks like a boat with a big rat on the front and that rat on the front once we take off over a certain speed it'll kick the system online and that rat is literally just going to power that pod so we're usually flying around with three of those and that's our primary mission for electronic attack two drop tanks so these fpu-12s that you see here and then either some variant of a harm or argum which is our air-to-surface missile and then up here under the cheek station we can carry aim 120s which is our air-to-air missile there that we use for the for all our air-to-air mission sets behind here this this big red thing this is our intake cover uh keep all the birds and critters from going in there but behind there uh is a long intake it's probably about 12 ish feet uh into until you hit the first uh first stage of of turbine blades uh and sitting behind here is a general General Electric uh F14 400 uh turbo fan it's an awesome motor each of those at military power so you might hear uh people in the military called military power as essentially the equivalent of a civilian max power we don't say it call it Max because we have After Burner so our Max is afterburner so at military power which is going to be full power not in afterburner they put out about 14 000 pounds of thrust each motor and then once we stage afterburner up to about 22 000 pounds of thrust and then obviously that's going to vary on on altitude but they they're pretty powerful Motors but just realize this is a big airplane like I said we normally operate in that 50 000 ish that uh 50 000 pound range and if you kind of do the math you know twenty thousand times two that's forty thousand so we don't have that one to one thrust ratio like like most Fighters do uh but that's why this this jet does fight well in the the high AOA uh environment uh just because of its size uh and uh and its capabilities earlier we talked about the nose wheel uh component uh here's one of our main landing gears it's our right main landing gear again another hard tie down Point uh which is crucial like I said on the boat and then we've got these uh massive shock absorbers here so when we're doing a pre-flight uh my technique is I just as long as I've got about three fingers of exposure here that's that's good enough for me down here this is going to be our planning link and that's just going to keep essentially these wheels stabilized so they're moving forward down down the runway when you're taking off and landing and then you can see here we've got these big big tires I'm like you see a most general aviation or even Air Force planes these are just this size just because they're they're making a pretty pretty hard impact on landing around the boat uh when doing a pre-flight inspection one thing we're also looking for is the brake plug so down here on the back side I'll kind of put my finger on it probably get a little dirty but you're looking for uh just some exposure here and that's just showing the the wear of the brake so we're usually looking at that on a pre-flight uh and then again more pre-flight stuff just overall Integrity making sure everything's attached and look good underneath here you see a couple of these uh removed before flight standard stuff for for airplanes we've got 10 that we have on board uh four of them are going to be in the cockpit and then the other six will be out uh under the landing gear hook nose wheel and then the wings and then yep underneath here we can I'll come around here and kind of talk about some of the stuff under the wheel well see so under the wheel wheel well here uh so this is our Apu handle so our Apu is what's going to start this jet most civilian uh jet aircraft do have an APU on on board but for for our jet we need to have it charged to 3000 psi so there's this gauge here that that's where you check it on PreFlight cool 3000 psi uh you know your Apu is going to start for some reason you show up and you see a thousand uh then you're kind of in for a workout at that point uh and that's uh that's where you're gonna remove this this handle here go ahead and pop it off so you remove this handle uh and then you'll come up underneath here you'll stick it in here uh you'll put the pin in and then you're just gonna start pumping it uh I've done it a few times there's a couple techniques best ways to have a partner with you and be on the other side and you kind of go back and forth and it could take a good 20 minutes of just doing that so if you're out in the heat uh it's it's not a fun time so that's one thing when I go on the road first thing I check when I get to the jet is how's the Apu and that's going to determine whether I'm going to start sweating or not for uh for the rest of the day kind of pretty much all the stuff like pre-flight stuff like I said it's just general making sure everything is intact uh we've got a hide circuit breaker up here that uh that'll pop uh so if you get under the Jet and you see that popped out then uh you know Jet's probably down gotta work that as I talked to the apus what's gonna start the jet so 3 000 pounds is what you need uh and here's the exhaust right here uh that's gonna blow out uh once you fire up the Apu uh battery power alone will fire up the Apu it's got enough power uh to get that thing turning and then once you got the Apu online uh then you'll go ahead and uh cross bleed the Apu air that the little it's basically a little jet motor inside it's going to produce a bunch of air you'll go ahead and dump that air into these General Electric Motors and they'll start cranking and then we've got an awesome fuel control system that kind of starts it's really just kind of automatic so uh as we talked to earlier with the chaff and flare a little safety switch that was out up front uh underneath here we can hold up to two two buckets here uh and then another one up here these both can hold 30 a piece and that can be combinations of chaff and flare or all flares we've got different variants that I won't go into that we use for combat and then we've got uh you know we'll train with training flares just so you can get the the visuals so like we were talking earlier again we could have another uh a brew 32 here uh it was an older hardpoint just like you see over here on this station uh like I said normally what we're carrying on these stations is just going to be those alq 99 jamming pods which is what we use for our primary mission of jamming enemy threats uh and usually that's what we're going to carry on on these stations and then again we do have the capability to put external fuel tanks uh like we had here in the center line station six on the outside over here uh this is another a brew that uh that you can again hold another alq 99 pod if you want to have a whole lot of drag and then we'll also normally see which I think we have on the other side allow which is that's going to be our launching rack so that's where we would carry our uh harm or Argo which is our uh surf air-to-ground missile that we carry the harm is a high speed anti-radiation missile uh and that's a pretty cool weapon and that's kind of helps with our suppression of enemy air defenses when we're out on the battlefield over top here you can see here it's our Leading Edge flap which uh see most airliners have them but like I said it's a fly-by-wire system uh so I wish I could get in the jet now hooked up to hides and do a Wipeout for you and you can see how all these flight control surfaces they kind of work together and that's for pitch roll kind of any access that you want the jet to fly they'll all work together to help get the jet uh to that piece of sky that you kind of want to do so a really easy aircraft to fly just with this awesome flyby wire system and you can see when we're when we're super alphaed up in that high alpha regime these Leading Edge flaps will come down uh and you'll see you'll see them just taking a big bite out of the sky and that's just what's gonna let us fly in that high alpha Arena which is pretty cool to see when you're kind of flying it with the stick and looking out and watching the wing actually like do kind of match what your what your hands doing in the cockpit uh coming up over here uh on top those are our alq 218 pods uh so again our primary mission is electronic attack uh so in order to kind of suppress the the enemies out there we have to be able to see them uh so that's kind of our eyes in the sky uh and essentially that is our receiver for for our entire system um so that's what's going to kind of locate geographically where our systems are and that's just going to help us see our jamming and into the right uh piece of sky so we can help out the strike package or whatever Mission we're doing sometimes people uh as flotation devices I've heard that as well as hot dogs so uh whatever you want to call them but those are those are kind of the eyes in the sky for this aircraft and it's a pretty insane piece of engineering and Equipment uh just how how awesome those things actually actually work that's a nav light uh up there so standard navigation light uh under the 218 you can see there and then we've got another one sitting here uh which is just uh standard uh Aviation stuff again another move for flight so this is going to prevent the wings from moving so as you can see here how they are they're folded right now and this is usually how you'll see them on the carrier Flight Deck this big motor here is what's gonna go ahead and move those wings out and up it's pretty gnarly to actually see it in person it's kind of cool looking when we're moving those but again this is uh just to minimize space on the flight deck uh because uh not sure if anyone's been on a flight deck it is a small area to house a whole bunch of airplanes all right as you can see as the wings folded yeah this big guy right here is our aileron which as you can see is a massive uh if you kind of look at the ratio of the wing it's a massive control surface so that's just going to give us those awesome roll rates um and they're also going to act as flaps as well when we're we're kind of in that high alpha Arena once this Wing folds it'll fold out and then it'll just be a flush Wing across and then here we've got our flap system so like I said once uh these will primarily act as ailerons and then depending on air speed and and uh how fast or slow you're flying these will also kind of act as a flap as well which will kind of match uh the the control surface um especially in the the takeoff Landing configuration as you can see these flaps again a huge control surface again aiding to that that awesome high alpha Arena uh that that this jet can perform at so huge control surface and you can see this thing will make big swings up and down and that's really just a bite down and give us more lift we can drop our flaps under 250 knots they won't schedule into until 2 40 and then they also have a redundancy system if you were to take off and bring the gear up and leave the flap switch down once you get through 250 knots they'll go into into a normal flight mode and you'll just get a little Caution that'll remind you to put your flaps up I've yet to do that but I'm sure it's been done and that's why this jet uh is engineered that way cool we already talked about underneath uh the wheel well uh again here's another form light so at night time helping the pilots fly formation again it'll just be green like the one that uh we have up on the front of the jet and then looking up at this massive stab you can see in the middle we have uh the uh formation light so again a green light uh to help and for for that helps for night formation and then a massive uh vertical stabilizer stabilizer and you can see we've got two on board here and that's just going to give you extra Rudder Authority and believe it or not Rudder Authority in this jet is also a pitch attitude of ice yaw attitude so you'll see when we take the the Catapult you'll see the uh the vertical stabs we call it tow in so these vertical sabs uh this one here that's hanging out you'll see them both go in and that's going to go ahead and help give you a pitch attitude and they kind of act as drag when you're off the the Catapult and that'll get your your nose attitude coming up which is pretty cool um and again they're all in this fly-by-wire system so we are horizontal sabs you can see here uh it's probably like a king-sized bed up at the top so a massive uh massive here and we've got two of them on both sides these things you'll see them on Deck when we're running through our eye bits or FCS eye bits we'll run run a full systems test and you'll see all the the surfaces moving back and forth and these things take massive swings so again like taxiing on the flight deck or when we're starting up the jet it's a huge safety thing to not touch the stick because if someone's running it underneath here you could you could honestly probably kill somebody with the amount of force that these things uh through the through our hydraulic system sweet the back of the Growler we've got our uh our nozzles here um so this is obviously the hottest part uh on the aircraft this is where all of the jet exhaust comes out from those General Electric Motors we've got two of them and these are going to use uh oil pressure so I can't really show you now because the Jet's not on but they're going to have oil pressure that kind of builds up in the nozzles you'll see expand and uh extract and that's just going to be based on what power setting you're at and that's the the capabilities of that is just to give you more thrust or less thrust if you're in you know have the throttles at idle at night time it's really cool especially on the boat to see uh once you're in full afterburner you'll have about I don't know maybe 15 foot flame that shoots out of both of these uh I've uh I've had a maintainer shooter take me up on the flight deck and I've actually been able to sit underneath these maybe about 10 feet in full afterburner and it is a pretty gnarly feeling so that was a cool experience but it is cool to see especially at night uh this guy right here most important piece of Naval Aviation uh that is the tail hook so this is what is going to actually stop this uh forty eight thousand pound jet when it lands on the aircraft carrier as you can see it's got a tail hook here so uh when we are at the boat uh landing on the boat uh one of our before landing checks and then our Landing checks is we're gonna have the hook down around the boat so the hook will be down and then as I talked to earlier we fly AOA around the boat not airspeed so AOA we're going to fly 8.1 degrees which is essentially going to set our hook to ramp and that is uh you want to keep that constant so the goal with that AOA of how it's set and how the engineers had it designed is that as soon as the main landing gears that you have up front touchdown this hook point should be touching the deck so it's all three points touching at the same time so like I said it's very important to fly AOA so if you find yourself slow most likely your AOA is going to be higher and what that means is essentially here's your Mains here's your hook if you're flying slow or a higher AOA then you're going to drop your hook point so you can see where if you got some kind of wave off the jet could fly away but your hook is now dropped so you can still catch a wire which is uh I've seen it before it's called an in-flight engagement and it's just where you don't want to be in so AOA is what we fly we do have a new flight control system that's been online for for for quite some time but it is now kind of full redundant and that's kind of uh maybe people have heard it as magic carpet but we call it PLM so Precision Landing mode and that has had made landing at the boat a lot easier I was probably one of the last uh deployments of manual ball flying we called manual ball flying where you're just setting a trim and you're using the the throttles and the stick kind of manually we now have Precision Landing modes that now kind of just get rid of all that the jet stays on speed a lot easier we have insanely awesome wave off capabilities and it just makes landing at the boat a lot easier so awesome awesome systems that the that the engineers came up with and that's that's really probably one of the in my opinion uh all the weapon systems that we have on board I think that update to this jet is probably the best update that this jet has ever seen again like it like I said earlier it's it's basically a big computer so kind of like new cars nowadays when there's an update they could just essentially go in and plug a computer into it and you've got new update to you know whatever whatever the jet is so uh this Jet's always advancing and getting better which is pretty awesome capability and even when it comes to the flight Control Systems uh that you can just plug a computer in and and you know give it some new update uh some new some new flight envelope that I can fly in uh but yep the tail hook uh is pretty pretty awesome uh piece of equipment uh and it's actually like pretty insane that that this piece of Steel here can stop a 48 000 pound jet going from you know 150 miles an hour to zero in about 75 feet there are uh sometimes at the boat um the hook may not catch the wire sometimes when it hits we'll call it a hook Skip and it will hit the flight deck and it just depends on how it hit sometimes it'll just kind of kick up a little bit it does have hydraulic pressure that snubber pressure that essentially keeps it from blowing up but sometimes it just hits the flight deck a little too hard and it'll hop over some wires and you go flying so every time we touch down on the boat we're always going to military power and that's whether you're stopping or not stopping and then there's also what we call as a Bolter so there are three wire and four wire ships and uh if you go past all of them uh then we call that a Bolter which which is most Pilots uh take it to heart but that's just all about Naval Aviation so uh cool sometimes you'll also see uh it's so so precisely you see so many Landings that you'll see sometimes the the tip of the the hook Point here will literally just hit the top of a wire and skip over it so you see so many of these uh every Landing is different every pilot flies differently so it's fun being out on the flight deck and and kind of grading these these guys and you know having having Skippers or squadrons kind of you know I'm debriefing you know an o5 a commander in the Navy uh on you know their their bad pass that they have so I think my second best favorite view is just kind of sitting back and look at these massive uh exhaust uh on the growler coming around here again uh similar everything same on the other side uh and then uh nothing too different under the wheel well uh on the the port side landing gear again there's just a hydraulic circuit breaker that we're kind of looking at um and then just overall General uh Integrity making sure nothing's dangling um and then again under here we have a bunch of hide servicing ports that our maintainers are going to use you can see here it's dripping a little bit of fuel it's totally normal that's just a fuel vent uh when we're uh when we put too much uh gas in the in the aircraft uh while we're talking about gas uh we talked about the external fuel tank we've got four internal fuel tanks and we're going to have one through four and they're kind of lined up one two three four uh the the out external fuel tanks are they're gonna feed the feed tanks and the two so the two tanks that sit in the the inside of uh of the two in uh sorry the two tanks on the inside the sinks two and three those are going to feed the motors themselves uh so everything basically ends up going into those tanks two and three uh at the end of the day and we'll usually we'll we'll drain the external fuel tank first before uh before going into the internals and while we're talking about fuel fuels basically uh our biggest weight issue so the uh the Super Hornet is is rated for seven and a half G's but when we are over a certain weight uh the aircraft will G limit itself so in this configuration um if we still have fuel in our external fuel tanks sometimes you'll see a g limit of like six and a half to to seven depending on the on the weight of the aircraft and that's just going to preserve uh the the weight versus G in just the load that that weight uh is putting on these wings so it's pretty cool the pilot doesn't have to do any more app stick to to have less G the the jet will calculate it itself so I can bury the stick in my lap uh in the the computer will just limit the jet to six and a half G's which is pretty cool all right here is different than our Brew this is our Lao so again this is where uh uh this is our our missile launching rack um so this is what this looks like um by compared to the Brew uh that you see that you guys saw on the other side of the jet [Music] cool everything's pretty much the same here landing gear uh again pre-flight we're looking for the the little plug there for the the brake indicator for the ladder I'll go ahead and drop that for you guys now you just go ahead and reach up and grab that lever and then it's just gonna come down cool next thing you're going to do is go ahead and put it in this little side ladder and that's how you drop the ladder to put the ladder up a bunch of release points you got to pull on the biggest one that usually gets forgotten is the one right here in the uh in the ladder and that's how you sew it one of the biggest panes is if you're on the road there's no way of dropping the ladder and securing it so we always need to align someone on the line to come out and drop our ladder so we can get out of the jet or else you're jumping off about eight feet there in a bunch of flight gear so foreign opening the canopy you just easy as that [Music] [Applause] alrighty welcome to the inside of the Super Hornet um see how much you can see here uh but we'll kind of go over some of the switches uh we won't really go over all of them a lot of them we don't really use some of them some of them are platform specific but kind of coming back here this is our obogs that's our oxygen uh system there that gives us 100 oxygen when we're up at high altitudes helps us breathe better there but yeah basically it's got a master switch you throw on and then whenever the actual you put your mask on you'll go ahead and turn the flow on and then you'll get the the nice cool cool air there kind of moving over uh Ford here is kind of our all of our intercom system this is our our Vox so this is when you kind of set this to uh to the right settings so when you talk in the microphone um you the whoever you're flying with in the back seat can hear you you have it up too high then it kind of acts as a hot mic which I guess is fine if you're flying by yourself but it's pretty annoying uh for for however you're flying witches to listen to your breathe uh front uh this is ICS knob so that's the intercom system uh which we use to talk uh front seat to back seat and then a couple other com knobs there that I won't really go into Rudder trim so this Jet's pretty awesome fly by wire it'll it'll basically trim itself but if you're ever in some configuration or certain Mission sets you might need to trim the rudder just to keep the jet straight and level if you're if you're trying to make uh some kind of weird turn or something so we do have rotor trim and then this button on top uh when we're when we start the jet up you go ahead and mash that and it'll set the jet to take off trim so big thing there is it sets uh the horizontal stabs around the field when you're taking off there it'll set it to four degrees nose up and then at the boat we'll go depending configuration but this configuration specifically would be seven degrees nose up is where they'll be underneath here we've got some fuel switches that kind of you can it manages the the external fuel tank so if you're having some issues you can override and try and force fuel out of them or if you don't want to get any gas when you're doing a refuel a hot refuel you can turn them off and that'll prevent fuel from going into them so we hear the throttles here we've got two throttles obviously right motor left motor we call this the right motor engine number two on the left motor engine number one normal startup uh well I can kind of talk through that because we've got the switch here so batteries on you'd fire up the Apu by throwing that guy on APO kind of fire it up fire up on its on its own once the Apu is cooking uh you'll get a green light here and then you'll go ahead and crank the right motor we normally start the right motor uh just because that's got all of our essential Hydraulics so somewhere to go wrong we'd have you know good brake pressure and all that so you go ahead and crank it and then you'll kind of get your eyes up here this is our efd and that's going to show kind of basic engine uh displays as well as uh some some fuel quantities so you go ahead and crank the right motor with that switch like I said and then you're gonna get your eyes up there and you're looking for 10 psi and 10 there and you'll go ahead and put the click this throttle up into idle uh and then essentially from there the jet will start itself you're just kind of monitoring your displays and looking for certain limits uh that you want the jet to kind of uh stay in uh so like I said the Jet's super easy start uh it pretty much starts itself from there cool and then kind of same process for for starting the left uh left motor uh you'll put the engine crank switch over to left and then again just kind of watching your displays get the throttles up to idle uh and and uh they're actually called the fadec uh which that's kind of the computer systems that prevent over speeds um you know all the abnormal starts uh that you would maybe see starting an older aircraft uh the FedEx will essentially prevent all that stuff and it'll do an auto shutdown if something's out of whack it's a pretty cool system uh we kind of talked about the position lights when we were doing the walk around so position lights here you turn those knobs up for brightness and then the form lights those green lights all the way up this switch here is just your your standard strobe light like any other aircraft just a switch on or off and then kind of hard to see on the outside of the throttle is the master light switch so all the way forward is going to be everything on uh if you put it in the middle detent that's just our nvg meds or night flying mode uh and then all the way off is going to be uh sorry all the way aft will be off off with all the lights uh cool moving forward uh just fire Loop tests here that's what these are we've got two systems Alpha and Bravo so you'll test those and start up making sure you're getting good indications in case we would actually have a fire uh moving up here Landing taxi light uh on off um launch bar so you kind of saw that on the walk around uh that's retract and extend so when they give you the signal to extend on the boat you put that down the launch bar will come down flaps we've got half and full those are our two settings for the flaps and then around here this big yellow handle here you can see it's pinned up now that is the canopy jettison so for some reason you were on the flight deck and you need to egress out of the Jet and ejection wasn't an option you go ahead and pull that and essentially it's going to launch uh the canopy off the back of the jet so hopefully never have to touch that thing again here this is our emergency jettison button it's a another kind of important button you don't ever want to touch that unless you need it and if you do push that essentially it's going to blow all of the the stores off uh off those Brews or whatever stations you're carrying essentially it's going to blow them off they've got some charges in them uh and usually for some reason you had to push that button um was most likely uh getting a soft uh cat catapult off the the front of an aircraft carrier and the Jets just slow so you need to get rid of weight just to try to fly away that's what that button does uh landing gear handle like I said cell jettison similar to the emergency jettison but now you can kind of selectively jettison if you have some kind of hung store uh station that you know uh maybe like you're having some issues with and there's some weird asymmetry you need to get rid of them you can go ahead and turn the dials and then it's got we call these the Chiclets essentially you pick what station uh and then uh essentially you can select what you want to get rid of off the off the aircraft uh here right now you can't see them because the the Jet's not on but this is going to be our our landing gear in flap indication so you've obviously got your three green uh so knows we're nose wheel both Mains there and then your flap settings here um it'll basically half or full and then the other lights there for a caution if for some reason you were to uh you know you had some kind of flaps caution uh that's why the third one's there uh moving up uh this is our Master arm switch so anytime we're employing any weapons obviously that guy's got to go into arm uh and then the Jet's kind of ready to fire there uh before I get to the fire extinguished light uh down here is just air-to-air uh Master mode and air to ground Master mode so you can push those push tiles and it'll put the jet into those modes up here on the left and right so this is our uh fire button so for some reason we are in Flight we got a engine fire basically the procedure is going to go ahead and uh raise this little flap here so if we had a fire on the right side you'd raise this push that in and then you're getting your eyes over here to the fire extinguisher right you go ahead and have a discharge light you push and hold that and essentially it's going to put the fire out in whatever motor you've got uh that's kind of the the fire emergency procedures uh obviously there's there's some bold face um and when we say bold faces those are just memory items uh for a lot of emergencies so we've got about 18 they're always changing new procedures are coming out uh but essentially those are just procedures that you have to memorize uh just in case uh that were to happen to you you have to uh you know run through those procedures without pulling out a checklist uh these are all of our displays here uh normal displays this is kind of our situational awareness display is what I call this it's called the mpcd that's the big display down here basically it's God's uh you know a God's view of of the battlefield or wherever you're at and then these displays you'll use constantly changing whether you're you know navigation if you're just flying around navigating uh or uh if you're you know running tactics you'll have those tactical displays up uh basically on the left and right we call these the ddis and then this is the ufcd this is how you're going to turn all your uh change your frequencies you've got uh we've got two comms on this jet or sorry two radios on this yet uh here's the switches for those uh com this is our pry radio it's got a little bit more power than this guy uh but we usually uh on our aux radio is what we call the secondary radar oxidator that's what we're going to be up uh talking to our wingman so we'll be at the same frequency there uh we are UHF and VHF capable so we can talk to you know normal civilian um uh you know control centers uh on on Victor frequencies uh or we can use UHF which is a little nice for going on the road a little less chatter uh you don't have to listen to all the civilians uh this these displays down here sorry these knobs here are gonna turn on the HUD uh which is here heads up display uh pretty awesome you see them now in like modern day sports cars which is pretty wild um and then here is going to be our AOA indexer so this guy is really the big thing when you're configured and landing at the boat you'll see all the indications whether you're on speed fast or slow uh and that's that's going to illuminate there uh sweet down here this is all our standby uh stuff so this is just this jet is equipped with with kind of the old steam gauges uh that you're kind of used to and and you know your your everyday Cessna uh but there are some upgrades where we do have digital uh backup displays in case we were to lose our primary displays um so yep we still still have these on board uh hopefully don't have to use them uh not fun flying that when you're used to all the digital stuff so yeah this is uh how you arm and de-arm the seat obviously it's safe now um so you can read the words safe uh Wing fold switch so yep as you saw in the walk around the uh the wing the wings are folded so there's uh up is to fold and the wings will just fold on its own and then uh all the way down for spread uh if you need it has a hold function which essentially it'll just hold them where they're at and the big thing is the wings will not be locked so never really use the hold function um you're either going to be fold or spread cool hydraulic pressure so normally pressurized to about three thousand pounds and then once we get over uh kind of in the high speed environment it'll go up to 5 000 pounds of pressure and that's just to help those massive control surfaces uh just deflect against uh you know the wind uh here's our hook uh handle uh basically up or down um no AirSpeed limits on it uh you can drop it whenever just uh just realize if the hook is down and you're going you know 500 knots the snubber pressure just doesn't have enough pressure so you'll get a hook light and that's usually just means you're going too fast um cool I have cool emergency switch that's going to pop the beer can that we kind of talked about on the on the walk around so a couple emergencies that'll kind of run you through that usually those aren't good especially if it's real hot out you're most likely coming back to a really hot cockpit a cool battery switch in the middle and then left and right generator switches there then here's all our tabin uh sorry cabin press uh ECS uh switches and then this is uh the the important one this is our air conditioning knob so once we get the motors online and the bleed airs uh it's gonna pull uh pull uh essentially air off the motor uh and then put it through a cooling system and you can get cool air or hot air on deck if it's really hot We have basically a clear canopy so it never really gets super cool in here if it's hot outside but once you get up to altitude uh it's pretty awesome air conditioning system some anti stuff we don't have a lot of capabilities like some airliners do with flying through ice so we just avoid ice you talked about this anti-ice engine heat all that stuff bleed air that's going to be on uh we've got you could turn just the left on uh or right on so it's right off left off uh it's kind of confusing there but if you want the right uh to be off uh then you'd go to that side you'd only do that if you had some kind of emergency you're working that a checklist LED you there this is all internal lighting here uh so instrument panels flood lights consoles we've got a little chart light that sits up on the on the canopy um so you can use that at night when you're trying to read some charts or do a crossword puzzle uh here's our radar that's going to turn that on and this is our ins knob we'll go ahead and plug in a good Waypoint zero of where we're at on Startup and then we'll go into ground and then essentially the jet will find the satellites on its own and get a good alignment once you've got a good alignment a good GPS you're good to go and then here we haven't talked about the stick right between the laps so cool on here that's how you're going to pickle any uh any air-to-surface ordinance and then we've got the trigger on the front The Growler does not have a gun so no gun for us but this will employ a air-to-air missiles aim 120 and then down here this red buttons are nose wheel steering So High Gain low gain and then we've got a trim knob here if you need to trim the jet uh sweet I think that's everything for the front seat uh I'll go ahead and take you to the back seat show you some of the differences uh uh what they got back there all right welcome to the back seat uh as you can see uh primary thing they're missing is uh controls um so all the e18g uh deployed Growlers are all going to have this configuration the backseater is going to be the electronic warfare officer the ewo and they're a naval flight officer is their designation and essentially they've got these big displays here and they're basically going to be the Airfield the battlefield managers back here they're also going to help with navigation and all the comms uh you know standard stuff for for basic flying around uh um you know here uh over in America uh but they're they're basically going to run all the weapon systems from the back so the Pilot's primary responsibility is to fly the airplane um get it to the right piece of Sky uh employ any weapons that they need to and then the ewo the electronic warfare officer is going to back them up cool displays they've got an efd just like the front seat and then here on on the left and right hand side side these are their uh their little controllers kind of like a video game back here these these all these buttons on here basically uh gonna change these displays and they're going to use these buttons to do that efficiently and quickly um so I won't really go into that but that's essentially how they're going to work all the weapon systems uh with these two little joysticks in the back here they also have an emergency jettison button cool the strap you're seeing I didn't talk about in the front seat that's what you're going to strap yourself to the seat we're sitting in a Martin Baker ejection seat so we're gonna have eight uh attachments we're gonna have lowers uppers your waist and then you'll have some next to your shoulders uh it'll be eight total um cool and that's pretty much the back seat not a whole lot uh different here uh there's Comm knobs all that stuff just like the front seat just set up a little different but yeah that's pretty much the back seat

Channel: Erik Johnston

Views: 269,127

Keywords: Aviation, Aircraft, Airplane, Flying, Airport, Runway, Taxiway, Hangar, Walkaround, Tour, Pilot, Aviator, Wings, Prop, Propeller, Veteran, Interview, Warbird, Helicopter, Heli, Adventure, Airshow, F/A-18 Hornet, Growler, E/A-18, NAVY, military, Carrier, Ship, War

Id: ei24-xuUB88

Length: 55min 55sec (3355 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 14 2023