Warbird Information Exchange

Dan Dugan invited Micheal Gordon and yours truly over to Ames to fly the space shuttle this morning. Very, Very, cool, dudes.

The astronauts were in town doing space shuttle sim time, so they had it configured for the space shuttle. Ames is the only place in the world to get landing and rollout time on a simulator. The others don't actually land.

We all got some landing time. Dan and Mike aced theirs. I porpoised on my first one, heheeee, yep, you can actually porpoise the shuttle down the runway, not pretty. The sim had to be reset. I got the next three though.

The sim starts at ten thousand feet. We were landing at Edwards. You are in a very steep down configuration. It didn't look at the beginning, but, you start at 300 plus knots. Through the HUD, you have to keep the little plane in the center and between the diamonds. You cannot use any rudder. At the bottom of the HUD, Two more diamonds start rising up to meet the little plane with the word "FLARE" next to them. There are two triangles in front of the runway out a ways. The shuttle is pointed at the first one. As the flare diamonds rise up to meet you, you follow them and you will pointed at the nearer set. The flare actually happens around two thousand feet. Following the flare diamonds will put you on the numbers next. The sim was set up to deploy the landing gear automatically.

Once you are down, you press the coolie hat on the stick forward for about 4 seconds, this lowers the nosewheel to the ground, a spoiler. Now you can use the rudder/toe brakes to stay centerline. At 190 knots, you arm, then deploy the chute. At 60 knots, you cut the chute away. One picture shows me doing the chute thing with the three buttons.

After we did the sim, we went over to one of the hangars to check stuff out. For you YO3 fans, this is where one of them are .

Thanks Dan! For a great time! And thanks to the Ames crew for having us over, And thank to the "Princess" for giving us a great sim and teaching how to fly it.

I borrowed my brothers camera, and didn't know how to shut off the flash, so you can't see the surround sim at all. More pictures were taken with a disposable, that I turned the flash off on, so some of those might come out when it is developed. Mike took pictures without the flash, if he sends me some, I will post those too.

_________________
DEEP THOUGHTS BY KIDS:
"If we could just get everyone to close their eyes and visualize world peace for an hour, imagine how serene and quiet it would be until the looting started. Age 15 "


Deep Thoughts,
Jack Handy

O.P., there's a full motion Shuttle sim here in Houston. They can configure for any approach, anywhere in the world. You fly it to full stop. They also have a stationary sim.

We've flown it from takeoff (on your back and the gantry goes by the window as you lift off) through the return to landing at Kennedy. Pretty interesting profile as at one point you are falling at MACH 1.

I think the neatest thing was flying the reentry profile by hand. The computers show something like MACH 47 but the airspeed only shows 1-2 knots because there aren't enough air molecules to register air data.

Spacecenter Houston has multiple Shuttle landing sims. Pretty much a screen with the correct HUD symbolygy and a stick but the process is the same.

Dang thats very cool!
I wanna ride too.
Can one obtain a reservation for a ride or is it a chance-who you know-deal?


The YO-3A is cool to see. I have a shot of 718 at Arlington, TX a few years ago. They were there to fly around with the V-22 to map it's accoustical signature.

Ztex, the Shuttle landing sims at Space Center Houston are part of the package when you go there. They are basic landing sims, the view is correct as is the HUD symbology.

The other sims I spoke of are the actual mission and pilot training sims for astronaut training. Unfortunately that one is who you know. One of our F-4 guys used to work as part of the sim team.

The YO-3A and its mission siblings are cool. Only one has made it to the civilian warbird side of the fence, that I know of. If I remember correctly the prop on the YO-3 was either 5 or 7 blades. They looked like willow leaves. It was said that the acoustic signature when it flew over low was the sound of rustling leaves.