Harrier -- One Pilots Perspective

welcome to Peninsula seniors out and about we're at the Western Museum of Flight in Torrance let's go see what cindy has for us today welcome everyone to the Western Museum of Flight I'm Cindy maka the director permit me to introduce our king of the targets what we have is a seasoned Marine Corps veteran veteran pilot combat veteran and test pilot he now applies his training experience and knowledge to the management of all the programs relating to providing aerial targets or training and tests and evaluation the United States Navy and of course Marine Corps one of his fields of experience that is of special interest to us today is the 44 combat missions that he flew in the av-8b in Operation Desert Storm ladies and gentlemen please help me in welcoming from the United States Marine Corps Colonel Kevin gross good morning everybody welcome and thank you what a beautiful day today I want to thank the membership for taking time out of your busy day in your life to come and be part of this event in the next hour or so I want to entertain you I want to tell you a little bit about the Harrier history from the first p.1127 all the way through the mcdonnell douglas aircraft builds and are currently flying radar aircraft i want to thank the western new museum of flight for the opportunity to speak with you today about one of the most truly amazing and truly versatile aircraft we have in american inventory but specifically I want to thank good friends mr. Jim Sandberg and mr. Roy Martin fellows Nusa and the Society of experimental test pilots who made the introduction that allowed me to be here today you may remember Jim Sandberg he spoke with you a little while ago about his experience flying the northrop yf-23 which is on display i also want to thank sydney cindy and the directorship here and of course all of the volunteers that make the aircraft what they are especially this lovely lady to your right on display and it takes skilled hands and of the artisans to recreate an aircraft for display purposes and it'll be used for years to come to help teach people about reaction control systems and the harrier as it as it flies back in the 15th century when man started watching birds and wanted to fly there was an interest in aviation Leonardo da Vinci spent a great deal of time studying birds studying wing studying the the way they fly he made an ornithopter which was a little heavier than would sustain flight couldn't quite get it off the ground but he knew the importance of flight and he knew that once we started flying we wouldn't want to do anything else but return to flight in the 19th century an aviation pioneer by the name of Otto Lilienthal really progress the amount of aviation knowledge in wing design he was a german engineer and from his hilltop he flew more than 2,000 glider flights and I tribute him to his design build test and fix philosophy that we use today in all of our aviation programs and his quote to invent an airplane is nothing to build one is something but to fly it is everything and any pilot who has flown today understands that principle I admit I'm not a historian I am a pilot with a great curiosity about the origin and the pedigree of the airplane I started to fly in the Marine Corps the av-8b so with that light I'd like to take you through a little history about the aircraft starts off with the p.1127 in the mid 50s the british government wanted to diversify its air force and not cluster all its aircraft around main bases they thought vectored thrust and vertical takeoff and landing was the way to do that designer Sidney cab and Ralph Hooper helped design this first aircraft the p.1127 along with the bristol engine company first flight for this aircraft was in November of 1960 as an untethered hover and it was able to take off and transition to winged born flight on 8 September 1961 following the p.1127 was the Kestrel program the p.1127 s were the primary aircraft used for the Kestrel and that was the next step in the development of the Harrier a tripartite evaluation squadron was formed in the UK and it was flown by British American and West German pilots the American interest was from the Army the Navy and the Air Force the Marines were not yet involved in the early flights of the Kestrel the kestrels first flight was on 7 March of 1964 and they flew nine of those aircraft their primary mission was to explore the unique capability of the aircraft they did short takeoffs and then they came back for vertical landings to truly explore how this aircraft could be used notice on the wing the three-part patch that has the Air Force the Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force also notice the intakes they were inflatable air bags very similar to de-icer boots and they use those to try to control the air as it came into the engine Inlet to optimize that airflow because that engine needs a tremendous amount of airflow in order to hover next in line was the Harrier gr1 - along with the t2 and the gr3 and the t4 which you see to the right on display this is an image of a gr3 on static display in 1984 and you noticed the nose is very similar to the nose you have in your aircraft and that contains the laser Ranger and marked target seeker as the aircraft was being developed they were looking for ways to make it a better close air support weapon system so that they can put bombs on target easily and they were developing the laser spot tracker as part of that and that's why you see the nose the way it is right now up next was the av-8a and the a v8 see it was a Marine Colonel Tom Miller and Lieutenant Colonel bud Baker that gave a favorable evaluation of this aircraft and convinced the Marine Corps that we had to have this Harrier in order to perform our close air support mission for our marine corps it was made primarily again with Hawker Siddeley and in partnership with McDonnell Douglas total procurement of this was about a hundred and fourteen aircraft and they used a early engine called the Pegasus 11 4:02 rolls-royce r400 the Harrier you see here was based on the GR one design it had the pointy nose it did not have the laser seeker that you see on your study display and was used primarily for close air support with ground troops the ability to work away from main bases to go to austere locations and in forward sights is what truly made this aircraft an important asset for the Marine Corps the a v8 C was next now you may ask why was the first one in a v8 a and the second one in a v8 C using the same fuselage structure well it's because in the engineering world the av-8b actually came between those but because they made such a substantial improvement to the av-8a it accepted the next letter in the series a v8 see the way you can tell the difference is because of the large VHF antenna on the dorsal spine so if you see an aircraft with this antenna you know that it's an AV 8c not in a v8 a a v8 c has improved avionics and VHF communications which included for the first time KY 58 secure communications and enhanced electronic warfare equipment so following the av-8a was a sea harrier royal navy realized the importance of the harrier for its maritime defense of the fleet they used the same fuselage design as the gr series of aircraft but in this they added radar up in the front nose and you can also tell that this is a FRS one because of the pitot tube directly above the radome the royal sea harrier entered service in 1980 and there were 57 of them produced and they continued to fly in till March of 2006 at this time the Indian naval forces were using this aircraft as well as the Royal Navy you also notice that the front cockpit was completely redesigned the previous gr series had a very low cockpit they elevated the pilots position 11 inches when they made this aircraft gave him a bubble canopy so he could now see down into the rear and they added the the radar in the nose it's a blue fox mono pulse radar very capable for the mission that it had in defense of the fleet interesting enough because the the gr airframe was land-based they had to add shackles to the landing gear of this aircraft in order to tie it down aboard ship which is another distinguishing characteristic of the aircraft does he harrier served in the Falklands War and flew all the way through the both Gulf Wars and the Balkans conflicts in all occasions it mainly operated from aircraft carriers positioned within the conflict zone its usage in the Falklands was the most high-profile and important success where it was the only fixed-wing fighter available to protect the British task force sea Harriers were able to shoot down 20 enemy aircraft during conflict and only lost one to enemy ground fire the next version of the sea harrier is the fa - flew from 1993 until 2006 and it include an upgraded blue vixen radar which is now a modern pulse doppler radar it's able to look down shoot down this aircraft also added the beyond visual range weapon system the aim-120 advanced medium-range air-to-air missile which is the first mission missile that was able to operate on a production aircraft for the Royal Navy up next in line up is the gr series gr 5 7 9 is built about the same time as the av-8b it was in partnership with British Aerospace now BAE Systems and McDonnell Douglas now a division of Boeing also notice that during this time the United Kingdom Royal Air Force Royal Navy the United States USMC Spain Thailand Italy and India we're all operating Harriers some variety in their forces so this is the the gr5 the fuselage is mcdonnell-douglas out of st. Louis each country had their own wings so on this aircraft starting at the nose you see a little bit of a glass dome that's the angle rate bombing system extremely accurate weapon systems you see the extended refueling probe you see the air intake and the intake boundary doors you also see that the outriggers instead of being at the wingtips were moved mid span also a distinguishing characteristic is the the Brits had a pylon on the Outrigger which was ideally designed for their air air weapons the gr7 was the next in the line up and in this aircraft they actually installed night vision device lighting so this was a completely night-vision goggle illuminated cockpit the pilots started out flying with cats eyes which had intensifier tubes mounted on the helmets and a little in inverted combiner glasses much like an upside down heads-up display in front of each eye to allow the pilot to kind of turn night time into a day light an amazing capability if you take a look at the top wing root of this aircraft do you see what's called the leading edge root extension it's where the shoulder or the wing meets the fuselage and kind of a half arc metal right there we noticed in flight that there was a little bit of a buffett when the pilot wanted to pull G's so engineers at McDonnell Douglas filled in that space which is what you see in this photo with the gr9 and and that allowed that leading-edge route extension fill in it's called a hundred percent lurks allowed the pilots to pull sustain G's without Buffett or wing rock making the aircraft a much more maneuverable acet so now we come to the av-8b family the av-8b was the second generation of the Marine Corps family and included significant improvements over its predecessor the av-8a so why am i smiling because I'm flying a Harrier it was it was my life to dream and call it from college on to fly the av-8b I was only successful in doing that because for the young people in the audience making sure that you do as well as you can in school so that when you given the opportunity you get to make choices coming out of primary flight training I was the number one graduate in my week so I got to choose going fixed-wing a rotary wing and there was only one fixed wing slot that week so while all my peers went down the streets to fly helicopters I went to Kingsville Texas to fly the ta for Jay and the t2 Buckeye and then coming out of the T a4j Buckeye and advanced training I was able to make another selection my choice is coming out of advanced jet training were the f-18 Hornet the ea-6b Prowler we still had our F fours that were available for selection when I selected and then of course we had the av-8b and for me the choice was clear I wanted to fly the Harrier I wanted to support Marines on the beach I wanted to fly close air support for Marine Corps missions yes the f-18 is a very sexy airplane it still is today with a Super Hornet but I foresaw the time when marine the Hornet pilots would embarked aboard carriers for the Navy and frankly I didn't want to fly close air support protecting some Admiral ship when I knew Marines needed my support on the beach so it was a very simple choice for me to fly the hair here so this is the av-8b harrier it has external tanks on it this picture was taken of me on my first-class country over the Grand Canyon very fond memories with this aircraft there are three underwing pylons in one centerline pylon for weapon storage as well as provisions for a 25 millimeter GAO 12 cannon the big improvement of the gr 5 family and the av-8b family is in avionics we had increased stability augmentation which made the aircraft to almost carefree to fly in all regimes up front for a weapon system the angle rate bombing system was a very very accurate weapon system that allowed for very precise bombing during many flights in competition with my Hornet brothers we would often beat the Hornets in our bomb accuracies and our central point of impact which was very embarrassing for them but very good for us the harrier ii came out as the next variant this is a night attack aircraft we still have the angle rate bombing system but right on top of the annual rate bombing system you see the FLIR the forward-looking infrared we had this FLIR image in our cockpit in our heads up display and also heads down on our multi-purpose color displays if we wanted but this allowed us to set thermal cues for targets allowed us to fly that night attack mission extremely well so now with a combination of night vision goggles and the FLIR we were very comfortable flying at night below a thousand foot at 480 knots persecuting target attacks as a section of aircraft a very very capable aircraft then in the 2001 timeframe under the right-hand wing you see the Lightning pod that was a laser designation pod that allowed us to designate our own targets as Harriers so we weren't relying on a marine on the ground with a mule mule is a multi utility laser equipment to designate a target with us we can now sell flay's and we can now buddy lays the beautiful thing about the Lightning pod is it has the ability to data linked to a marine on the ground with his own handheld console and he can see I can send him the image of the target area that I want him to look at and he can receive that image and in Sunday football fashion when they're drawing next is the nose and in drawing the routes of football players that marine on the ground can can circle the target say this is the target this is what I want you to hit so it's taking the guesswork out of target attacks which is a great capability this aircraft also has what's called hands-on throttle and stick when my hands are on the stick and the throttle all the buttons that I need to use for ground combat air combat are in one central location which makes it very easy to to fly the aircraft in the early models of the aircraft there were only two dispenser systems for chaff and flares in this model we added four additional chaff flare systems above the tail then we added the radar we added the apg 65 pulse doppler radar we actually got those on loan from the Marine Corps radars as they upgraded to the apg 73's the radome is a little bit smaller than the Hornets so we had to redesign the antenna a little bit but it's still a very capable radar system for the Marine Corps it also allows us to fly the aim-120 amraam so between 1969 and 2003 824 variants of the of the Harrier were produced of which 340 of those were in the av-8b family of aircraft the last remanufacturing aircraft the Harrier 2 plus configuration was delivered in December of 2003 and that ended the production line for McDonnell Douglas and and that ended full-time engineering support for the aircraft as we develop the next fighter which is the 35 in 2011 in agreement with the British government the Royal Navy in the Royal Air Force sold all of their remaining Harriers and parts and pieces to the Marine Court and that will allow us to sustain our Harrier operations through about 2026 as that JSF is fielded and slowly takes over the role that the Harrier had so now the first distinguished guests we have today is a trainer it's a t4 ya Bureau number x-ray Zulu one four five and if you look to your right that's the aircraft that you see today which is why we're here isn't she a beautiful aircraft so Dennis Jenkins who was introduced earlier and his team found this aircraft and brought it over from the UK this is what she looked like with her engine over in a UK when he bought it from Everett Aero they took it apart took the nose cone off disassembled it put it on a truck and shipped it so how do you get something from the UK to Southern California what goes by sea in this case to this aircraft the fuselage went by a surface vessel to the Port of Baltimore and then it was loaded on a flatbed truck and driven across country to the Western Museum of Flight imagine seeing that on the road the wing was taken off engine was in a different container and all the parts that you see the refuel probe the the front laser marker a lot of other parts and pieces were all put into a convex box and they too worshiped but now this cargo box was shipped through the Panama Canal to the Port of Los Angeles and then via flatbed here's a view of the front section bulkhead avionics shelf intakes intake suction doors with the air path you can see inside and nose landing gear is missing the wheel a view of the front cockpit you can clearly see the heads-up display the attitude gyro because this aircraft was used for parts while the world air force was using was flying world aircraft to Harriers the grip is missing you can see the throttle quadrant and martin-baker ejection seat and this is the finished product anybody who's involved in this project please stand dr. Phillips thank you for your leadership inquiry mr. Dennis it truly is a team of volunteer artisans that make this a beautiful addition to the Western Museum of Flight currently on loan until the California Science Center makes the endeavor upright in its launch position and then it will come back and enjoin the California Science Center shifting gears a little bit what makes a Harrier Harrier what is so unique about this aircraft well first it has a Pegasus engine it has a single engine and everything is centered around this engine and there's a reaction control system that allows it to fly when the aerodynamic controls aren't effective both pilot controls the pilot has to be able to control that RCS system and control the nozzles in order to get it to fly and then of course it needs skilled pilots because there's modes in this aircraft that other aircraft do not have the early Pegasus one aircraft 1959 used the jet reaction controls and 10,000 pounds of thrust for performance in contrast the pegasus 11 was able to generate 20,000 pounds of thrust in 1972 so the current engine that we have in the harrier is the rolls-royce f4o to tack our our tack 408 Bravo it has twenty three thousand four hundred pounds of wet thrust and twenty-two thousand pounds of dry thrust the basic aircraft weighs about thirteen fourteen thousand pounds so you can see a basic aircraft weight is well under this engine thrust performance limit a combat loaded harrier is about twenty to twenty three thousand pounds so you can see there's still about a one to one thrust ratio there although we're not able to hover at that weight because we always wanted a little bit of thrust margin and a fully loaded aircraft can weigh as much as thirty one thousand pounds so it's not a very large aircraft but it's a very very capable aircraft so this rolls-royce Pegasus engine it's a split spool engine there's three low pressure compressor stages up front and they're driven by the low pressure turbine on the inner shaft of this engine it's a split spool counter-rotating design engine split spool counter-rotating so the high-pressure compressor consists of eight stages and it's driven by the high pressure turbine of two stages and that's on the outer shaft so imagine balancing these two shafts rotating masses front and back the engineering that went into the harrier is truly remarkable from both rolls-royce and early Hawker Siddeley and McDonnell Douglas so putting it all together it takes a tremendous amount of airflow while hovering in order to let the engine operate without surges without stalls with hiccups if you will and it takes intake suction doors which you can see are open on the image here that allows increased air mass flow to come in through the engine intake so it can be consumed by the engine part of which goes out to cold nozzles part of which goes out to hot puzzles we reference the cold nozzles because they come out of the fan section and the hot nozzles how to the back of the turbine section if you take your hand along the side of the fuselage right below the canopy you can find what's called the boundary layer doors and those are spring-loaded doors that are that are closed and slow speed flight but they will open up in high-speed flight to help pull off some of that boundary layer air to help mass flow in very high speed flight I like this picture of a TA V abs Matador this is a Spanish t-bird very equivalent to the one that you see there right you can see the outrigger landing gear at the wingtips you can see the canopy but what I like about this is you see the engine and two men around it so you see the size of that engine you see that high-bypass fan and how big it is in in relative size to the airframe when it comes time to change an engine no matter where you are in the field or a board ship or at a base it's time to change an engine these Marines from VMA 211 at Camp Bastion in Helmand province are doing just that so how do you change a Harrier engine well first you have to Jack the aircraft up and you put it on a jack stand and then you and then with the landing gear retracted you level the aircraft so that the engine is perfectly level and then you go up underneath the armpit of the wings and you remove the panel's and there's four big bolts two on each side that hold the wing to the fuselage you have to disconnect all the fuel lines you have to disconnect the reaction control system all the electrical lines hydraulic lines and then once all that is connected with the crane you pick that entire wing up just as these Marines are doing and they're getting ready to place it down on a wing stand so that they can now have access to that engine in order to pull it out and change it here's an image of a Royal Air Force Harrier with a new engine being removed in Afghanistan so you can see how big that engine is in relation to that task so what's it take to control the Harrier it takes a nozzle control lever it takes a a separate lever inside the cockpit in order to move those four big nozzles the two cold nozzles and the two hot nozzles so just inside the throttle on the harrier on the throttle quadrant is the nozzle control lever if the nozzle control lever is all the way forward the nozzles are all the way aft as the pilot pools that nozzle control lever aft the nozzles begin to program down they also have a stove stop it's kind of gray kind of mid span you can see kind of an arc along the nozzle control lever that stow stop is used by the pilot to very rapidly make a nozzle selection for short takeoffs and it typically said between 50 and 55 degrees of nozzle angle the pilot will lift that knurl knob move that stow stop and place it in one of the pegs and those holes arranged from 35 degrees to 75 degrees that allows the pilot when he gets to his nozzle rotation airspeed for a takeoff to simply take that nozzle control lever without looking and bring it aft as quickly as you can and it stops at that fixed position to allow them to take off very easily the nozzle control lever then for hover the pilot will remove that that stow stop the hover stop position is a fixed detent so the pilot can easily select however stop and then the beautiful thing about this aircraft is we have reverse thrust we have the eight and a half degrees of reverse thrust so the pilot can lift the nozzle control lever onto the hover stop and slide it further to equate 98 and 1/2 degrees of nozzle angle for reverse thrust this is an image of a gr cockpit that shows the blue throttle and the red nozzle lever as it moves forward and aft the top portion of the illustration shows airborne wing borne flight about mid throttle and forward nozzle lever the stow stop is still in place but it should be cleared in the second image from the top you see the nozzle control lever at the stove stop position for a short takeoff in the third image from the top you see the nozzle position in the hover stop detent so you can get vertical thrust and in the very bottom picture you can see the nozzle lever in the reverse or braking stop position so how do you drive those nozzles what really is a mechanical system as the nozzles progress down the butterfly valve opens and sucks off some of that eight stage compressor bleed air into the reaction control system that drives a single air motor servo unit which allows the air to flow throughout the RCS system so that air pressure is progressive as the nozzles are lowered from zero degrees and fully energized at 36 degrees the ration control system is an acceleration demand system it's not a rate demand system if you are a pilot and you have aerodynamic controls you're actually commanding a rate in this aircraft it's a acceleration demand and you can see that high energy air is ducted out the wingtips through RCS ducting out the nose and out the tail maximum control deflection and one axis will use over half of the available reaction control power available to the pilot so when you're hovering you need to be very careful and not run out of RCS bleed in any one so how does this work air comes in the engine goes through the engine and you have hot exhaust gases coming out hot nozzles you have air coming out cold nozzles and that's kind of your column of jet air as is coming out the engine that that's what gives you your primary pedestal of thrust but you have to be able to balance the jet so out of the left and right wings you have balancing force along with the nose and then along with the tail for pitch and yaw so how does this work if the pilot is hovering and he wants to move to the right he wants to transition to the right in an airplane you would apply a right stick the same thing in the Harrier you apply a right stick in in that in that right stick movement the aerodynamic controls are moving but they're not effective so connected to the trailing edge down of the left aileron is the left wing tip reaction control system and that's actually blowing down so that allows you to have a rotational energy about the longitudinal axis of the fuselage to move the aircraft right if the pilot needs more than half stick then the opposite wing tip will apply a little upward ration control air to help the pilot with that roll left stick is exactly the same thing it begins with a little RCS out blowing down off the the right wing tip and then help from the left wing tip if he needs more of it so forward stick if I want to bring the nose down I apply forward stick and that opens up the aft puffer duct and that allows the nose to come down in the tail to come up conversely if I apply aft stick the aft shooter is closed and now the nose puffer is open and it picks my nose up left pedal if I want to do a pedal turn in this case I apply left my rudder trailing edge goes left and the reaction control on my left side blows to actually move my tail to the right and that's what allows me to move my nose left the aerodynamic controls are needed for whenever the aircraft is in wing borne flight and we have a Lorentz flaps stabilator and rudder and speed break in this picture you see that the pilot still has a 25 degree flap angle that the flaps are cruise which is 0 or 5 degrees automatic which is auto programming between 0 degrees and 25 degrees for maneuvering flight and then stole flaps install flaps the flaps are down at 25 degrees and the ailerons droop to give additional wing lift for very slow flight as the nozzles are rotated down those big flaps rotate down to 62 degrees trailing edge down the wing is able to generate lift as slow as 40 knots with this wing design so in this case the pilot is doing a vertical takeoff water is on because you can see it from the black smoke and he's beginning to use his nozzles to accelerate out so physical characteristics the aircraft is 46 feet long 30 foot a wingtip to wingtip wing area is about 240 square feet up front you see the radar and you see the FLIR laser spot tracker and heads-up display ejection seat for this aircraft it's a stencil engine accessories like any aircraft and then you have the fuel tanks what's unique about the Harrier is we have a 500 pound capacity the tank doesn't weigh 500 pounds you know that the tank capacity is 500 pounds of demineralized or distilled water and that's what we use for water injection in order to get the additional thrust that we need in those high performance maneuvers that allows us to generate 800 degrees Celsius of engine thrust with water augmentation you can see the fuel tanks aft a V Onix the outriggers the actual fuel tank design everything is centered around the aircraft the center of gravity is critical for this aircraft so you have the left feed group consisting of the left and right front tanks the left center feed and the left wing tank the right feed group consists of the right center feed right wing tank and the rear tank internal fuel capacity is seventy seven hundred pounds if we have two external tanks we can carry eleven thousand seven hundred pounds if we have four external tanks then that fuel volume increases to fifteen thousand pounds so up front this is the front office this is the pilot controls front console is comprised of the heads-up display which is very prominent and for the night attack aircraft it's a much larger heads-up display about 50% larger than the day attack area and then the multi-purpose color displays a full digital moving map radar displays FLIR navigation we have an extremely powerful computer a board that helps with with all of our flight planning all of our cruise flight profiles for optimum altitudes our engine performance to know what our stove calculations are what our vertical performance is when you come back and land a very powerful computer for that the modes in the heads-up display RV stall vertical short takeoff and landing allows us to to operate the aircraft very carefully and in carefreely now we have navigation modes air-to-ground modes and air-to-air modes I like this artist's rendition of a gr9 on a British carrier getting ready to launch kind of a pilot's eye view of what he sees he sees his deck crew off to the right he sees the aircraft out in front of him just off the ski ramp he's ready to launch himself in the right MPC B he has the backup HUD display in V stall mode just in case his HUD fails during takeoff and in the left MP CD multi color display he has a digital moving map so he's ready to launch for landing gear we have a bicycle landing gear with main gear and nose gear and outrigger gear in the av-8b and the gr 579 you see that the outrigger gear moved in board and the wing is much larger if you take a look at the nose gear in the main gear they're much larger especially the nose gear is much larger than the nose gear of your other typical fighters it's designed that way so that we can operate off of unimproved surfaces to include grass operations where we wouldn't rut too deeply with small nose Vanagon it really does take a skilled pilot to fly a Harrier but I don't mean that lightly a lot of training goes into making a Harrier pilot proficient in the vertical short and takeoff roll a normal aircraft has typically a single takeoff mode a conventional takeoff you you apply power you release brakes you get to your rotation airspeed you apply a stick and you fly right when you come back and land you have a conventional landing you set your power you set your glide slope you set your approach speed your touchdown speed you flare at the bottom you touch down you apply brakes and you come to a stop pretty much one take off one landing the Harrier has four different types of takeoffs and five different types of landing that's what makes the Harrier unique among other aircraft for a conventional takeoff which is the first the Harrier comes out he does his engine checks he's ready to go his nozzles are at 10 degrees when he's cleared to take off he applies full power and like any other aircraft a rotation speed he applies a stick he uses his pitch attitude capture task and gets airborne sucks up the gear and is on his way well there's also a short takeoff bestow mode this is used when the airfield isn't very long say I have a thousand foot strip and I need to take off I can't do that with with a conventional mode so in the short takeoff mode I come out to the runway I always do all my pre calculations first I always know which type of takeoff I'm going to do and which type of landing I'm going to do so I can do that that pre-flight planning and be a head of the aircraft I come out to take the runway I set my - rotation stove stop remember that little device that I can set between 35 and 75 degrees I set that between 50 and 55 based on my engine performance I do my engine run ups I check my engine acceleration race I check my inner stage guide vanes to make sure they're working right I checked my duct pressure to make sure I don't have any leaks in my RCS is working when I'm giving takeoff clearance nozzles are a 10 I'm given takeoff clearance i slam full power and in about one potato two potato I'm already at my nozzle rotation airspeed I apply full aft nozzle control lever to that stove stop and I unstick beautifully the aircraft really gets up and accelerates and then as I'm slowly accelerating for the accelerating transition I moved my nozzles forward I raise the landing gear continue moving in my nozzles for until I'm a winged born flight a thousand foot airstrip I'm approaching 250 knots by about a six thousand seven thousand foot of travel extremely high acceleration rates in the Harrier the Harrier actually owns the time to climb record from service to fifteen thousand feet we have an excess of a fifteen thousand foot per minute rate of climb at the low altitudes with our high-bypass turbofan at that point the the f-15 outdoes us and continues that climb up to fifty thousand feet before we can before we get there the next takeoff is called a rolling vertical takeoff so if we have close to hover performance and we even have a shorter takeoff environment we set the stove stop in this case 270 degrees of nacelle angle we do the same engine checks before we slam engine power we set the nozzles to 35 degrees once we're cleared to take off we slam power as soon as we slam power we bring our nozzles afto that 70 degrees toe stop and we get airborne and we can begin that accelerating transition very very very very fast and then of course the vertical takeoff so for this we need an appropriate surface we prefer not to do vertical takeoffs over asphalt or over unimproved surfaces we always like a concrete surface or aluminum matting or a steel deck below our tires and so for a vertical take-off pilot does his checks again the snow stop is clear this time I don't need it I run my engine up do my engine checks do my ig v's make sure they're working right I bring my nozzle control lever all the way aft to the hover stop I check that my flaps or programming correctly and then when I'm cleared to takeoff I apply full power and as I apply full power there's a little bit of a rumble right there at the bottom and then I get I break free of ground effect and I'm hovering and it's a very beautiful thing to hover in a jet if if I want to do an engine check for example I can stop at a hundred foot hover altitude I can check engine performance and then from there I add power suck up the gear apply nozzle control forward and I begin that climbing accelerating transition many of you seen airshow videos where a pilot does a steep climb away and accelerates vertically as he takes off a very very capable aircraft the accelerating transition is the term that's used to go from the jet born semi jet born flight into a wing born flight so now landings landings are predicated like takeoffs on the gross weight and the service condition and for landings there's five different landing types actually there's seven if if you clued a couple flap configurations the first is the conventional landing the aircraft is very stable very able to do a nice 3-degree glide slope our maximum landing tire speed is 180 knots so we have to be slower than that but once we get on the ground our brakes are fully able to bring us to a stop but because we have reverse thrust we use what's called power nozzle braking so with power nozzle braking once our on the ground we raise our flaps to crew so that we don't get any additional wing lift as we bring our nozzles back to the breaking stop if a normal landing rollout is about four and a half five thousand feet with power and also breaking I can reduce that landing roll out to about 2,000 feet very very capable braking stop very powerful the second is a fixed nozzle slow landing typically come into the break about 350 knots the landing gear speed is 250 knots so on downwind my gears down I bring my nozzles down to a hundred to 250 degrees of nozzle angle and I'm about 110 knots flying downwind and as I make my approach to landing I keep that nozzle angle at 50 degrees and that's my fixed nozzle slow landing my nozzles are fixed at 50 degrees if I have engine trouble and I want to do engine performance and keep my rpms set at say 80 I'm sorry a 95 to 100% engine rpm like a oil low oil pressure situation I have the ability to do that now with a variable nozzle slow landing in a variable nozzle slow landing I set my engine power and now I modulate nozzles for the desired rate is sent to to landing a rolling vertical landing is used for roads or for grass conditions or for very short runways and we operate many times out of 29 palms California where we have an expeditionary airfield there we have one airfield called surprise Springs that is 1500 foot aluminum adding surface so in 1500 feet I need to be able to land and get my harrier stopped we do that with a rolling vertical landing technique for this we decelerate and at sixty degrees of nozzle angle as we approach our intended landing spot we pick up a six degree glide slope and we can bring nozzles back and we fly that 60 degree glide slope all the way to landing and in the final the most fun landing is the vertical landing where we get to stop make a vertical landing like a hummingbird so the flying qualities in winged born flight accelerating and decelerating the aircraft is very carefree easily pull 6 G's 7 G's in air combat maneuvering very fast acceleration rates very fast deceleration rates I can have over a hundred knots of closure on my lead as I'm joining him and I set my power and now I bring my nozzles in and I have aerobraking with my nozzles in order to reduce that closure velocity so I can join up very very crisply very easily maneuvering turn rate turn radius is in my mind equal to Hornets many times I would be in a 1v1 maneuvers with f-18s it's not the airplane that is the the the challenge in those competitions it's the pilot many times I come in with inexperienced Warner pilots and it can easily beat them in 1v1 dogfighting before we begin our combat maneuvering we have nozzle drills we will take a student out to 15,000 feet and we'll introduce the the nozzles and we do what's called hover stop push over hover stop wing over and a hover stop flop yes we intentionally sometimes depart the aircraft in order for the student to understand how to respond when an aircraft departs but more importantly how to regain control so before I hover stop push over we will be at 15,000 feet 350 knots set the power about 95% pick the nose up to about 85 90 degrees nose up as we're decelerating to about a hundred and fifty knots we bring the nozzle lever into the hover stop position which really slows our deceleration rapidly energizes the reaction control system and now if we're doing the hover stop flop I allow the nose to come up over the top and I actually end up tumbling backwards sometimes end over end the engine is very robust the engine takes a great deal of wear and tear as it as it as it rotates vertically but without doing damage to the engine and then as we regain control the nozzles come forward the sticks neutralize and it flies out beautifully that's called the hover stop flop um hover stop push over is the same procedures as you're passing 150 knots bringing the the nozzles to the hover stop this time I'm pushing forward on that control stick the a spoofer is open pushing my nose down and I'm actually able to push over so in this case I'm almost coming to zero flight I can look left look right everything is beautiful and as I'm regaining my nose down attitude I nozzle out and I accelerate nicely on the hover stop wing over same same process pick the nose up set the power 150 knots nozzles come in and now instead of pushing forward I apply either left or right rudder and what does that do that pivots the aircraft around its vertical axis and now I'm able to do a wing over almost like a pirouette to my new heading and that can accelerate out the other direction that's a form of V vector in and forward flight it is very effective but as any fighter pilot will tell you speed is life so you don't necessarily want to be stopped at you know 15,000 feet with a big target on you but those are the types of nozzle handling drills that we have to teach our AV ators in case they're in those positions so V is used in combat it only takes about 10 to 15 degrees of nozzle angle in order to really increase a turn rate and decrease a turn radius but you bleed energy quite dramatically so it's not used very often in semi jet born flight you want to make sure that you have zero side slip and control your angle attack because you don't want any of those out of parameters and then in jet born flight we have a 30 knot limit so imagine being able to be in a hover role your right wing down and translate sideways out to 30 knots and and then in order to stop you have to apply opposite control to to stop that rate of travel and then pedal turns are are very easy so for operations harrier operates beautifully land base or sea based for a land-based we have main bases expeditionary airfields forward sites grass or roads or air sites and then sea based regular big tech carriers we operate very well from as well as la chaise LHDs the the Marine Corps Navy carriers and then the Spanish Navy Italian Navy use ski jumps for their carriers in their seaboard operations this is an image of comparison between a conventional aircraft in red on the left side of the screen and a Harrier in blue on the right and it shows the differences between runway length and the ability to carry weapons to any distance or a mission you can see that in the third and fourth case there is no comparison to the conventional aircraft the harrier outperforms conventional fighter easily royal navy gr 9s on the HMS Illustrious for operations in Iraqi Freedom so here's an image of a navy 8b on the United States ship USS boxer LHD 4 so there's a big yellow line at the end of the deck and I would have words with this pilot as a landing signal officer this pilot isn't doing it right and and he's not doing it right because when you get to the end of the ship you need to bring your nozzles into that stow stop position and he hasn't done that yet so it has late nozzles which means he's already picked up a little bit of a downward vector towards the ocean which isn't good and I know that because his flaps haven't programmed down to a 62 degrees trailing edge down wet stow off of another US Navy ship I know it's a wet short take off because of the the black smoke that's emitted when water injection is used so this carrier is only about 850 foot long and our minimum deck run for the Harriers 300 feet and we have 50 foot graduations for all of the different launch deck positions so for a normal launch say from 400 feet remember the Harriers 46 feet nose to tail if the lead aircraft is positioned at the 400 foot marker - - is positioned at the 450 foot marker which leaves 4 foot of distance between the lead in the - - we both run up together the lead takes off and then as soon as the lead is airborne - - takes off and we're able to do very expeditious rendezvous together we talked about the large landing gear that allow for grass operations as long as we have firm terrain unimproved soil grass football field track stadium roads we're able to do harrier operations there's a road on the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune called Lyman Road in this case I'm the landing site supervisor supervising all of the harrier operations - and from this narrow road our outriggers are 17 feet tired attire so that road width there is 25 feet wide which doesn't allow very much room on either side so centerline control is critical in the back you can see a Harrier backed into hide as he's getting ready to come out we were doing this day time and then we're also doing this at nighttime notice the height of the trees around Lyman road when you're downwind a beam the trees are so tall you can't see your Intendant point of landing you can't see that road that you're going to land on so it makes night operations a little bit more of a challenge and for this we use that rolling vertical landing technique I greatly appreciate your time and attention thank you very much thank you for watching Peninsula seniors out and about I'm Betty Wheaton see you next time

Channel: PeninsulaSrsVideos

Views: 43,841

Rating: 4.857904 out of 5

Keywords: AV-8B, Harrier, USMC, Veteran, pilot, flying, gulf war, desert storm, Betty Wheaton, Peninsula Seniors, Videos, Museum, lecture, F-18, Navy, aircraft carrier, Kuwait, fighter, bomber, Iraq

Id: 1545Cbdumg0

Length: 58min 30sec (3510 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 09 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Churrofighter]

Also the Q&A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1cx4ZdyGyA

[u/SwedishWaffle]

https://www.reddit.com/r/hoggit/comments/4nhw9i/for_the_upcoming_aircraft/?utm_source=reddit-android

here are a bunch more

[u/Rlaxoxo]

https://youtu.be/1545Cbdumg0?t=1135

Best part

[u/d53687]

He says you can tell when the Harrier is using water because the jet exhaust is black. You learn something every day.