Trials and Errors

by Mike Brooke

  The best part of the day out to the Freugh was that we stopped for lunch, taken in the RAE canteen there, and the favourite dish of the day was a bridie. This was the Scottish response to the Cornish pasty and was usually enormous, covered in rich gravy and served with heaps of neeps (turnips) and mash or chips. Except on Fridays when fish and chips were on offer. I soon found that if I wanted to stay awake and alert on the long flog home I had to persuade the bonny ladies that served us to give me a smaller portion!

  Life as a part-time ‘truckie’ was a real bonus that I had not expected, let alone known about, when I was posted to Farnborough. Mostly it was a sinecure and a good way to keep up the hours tally per month. However, one trip in the Devon is permanently etched on my mind. It was on 16 November 1978, my last month of flying at Farnborough. Flt Lt Sean Sparks and I had flown a Buccaneer together earlier in the day and even in that solid aeroplane it had been pretty bumpy at low level. A front was approaching from the west with increasing north-westerly winds, lowering clouds and rain forecast for the evening and night. After landing the Buccaneer we made our way together to Transport Flight HQ to do the evening Bedford Ferry; Sean was a categorised guest artist nav as well.

  Being November we arrived at Bedford in the dark and the wind was really picking up. Once we had exchanged passengers we got airborne and headed home. I soon began to hope that there was an adequate supply of sick bags down the back because we had to fly at our usual 2,000–2,400ft and the turbulence was becoming quite violent. When we arrived at Farnborough the wind speed and direction was at and occasionally above the Devon’s crosswind limit for a landing on the main runway. However, I gave it a go. But as we came down to the last 100ft before touchdown the drift angle and the turbulence coming off the hangars upwind of the runway threshold was getting very silly and unmanageable.

  I went around and told the local controller that I would have to use the short north-westerly runway, which was not very well lit. I told Sean to keep an eye on the airfield in case we got blown away too far from it and I concentrated on flying as accurately as I could as we passed over the well-illuminated areas of suburbia that surrounded the RAE. When I turned back towards the airfield with the landing gear down and locked and the first selection of flap down I could just make out the runway and headed down what I estimated was a 3° glidepath. The turbulence and drift angle were much improved, but the wind was now blowing at 30–35 knots and it seemed to take us ages to get to the runway. I did not use any more flap and kept a good 10kt of speed in hand for air pockets. We touched down firmly and virtually stopped immediately.

  While I taxied back to our parking spot Sean unstrapped and went to see what the passengers looked like. There were no overt signs of illness and some of the select few who had been through it with us seemed quite enthusiastic – probably the effects of relief that they had survived!

  I ended my tour having flown 120 hours in the Devon to destinations all over the UK. I thoroughly enjoyed being a ‘truckie’; although I still didn’t want to do it for a living.

  23 A MISCELLANY OF

  WORK AND PLAY

  It was soon apparent that a test pilot at Farnborough was fair game for anyone around the place who wanted someone to sit in their simulator, play with their special piece of kit or simply be a guinea pig in whatever was their latest test programme. Most of which did not involve getting airborne. A lot of which did involve being ‘wired for sound’ with electrodes to measure all sorts of bodily parameters while one was undergoing the tests.

  On trials that required this rather intimate monitoring of one’s heart rate, temperature, breathing rate and similar data the aeromedical team would turn up at the squadron and apply the sticky little pads, wires and electrodes before we donned our flying kit. For most of us it was not a big deal but for poor old ‘Jack’ Frost who, like Esau of ancient biblical history was ‘a hairy man’, it was something of a trial before the trial! The medics had to shave off small squares of ‘fur’ from Jack’s torso before they could apply their instrumentation; he looked like a ragged rug afterwards! But the best bit was Vic Lockwood’s loud protestations to the proposition that a rectal thermometer be used during one of the high-G trials! I personally think it was a wind-up.

  Work in which I got involved included experiments on voice-activated systems, refining a pilot workload measurement scale (comparable with the Cooper–Harper numerical scale used for aircraft handling qualities) and a variety of aeromedical trials into survival at high-G levels. Other trials run by the IAM involved measuring visual acuity and the use of an advanced flying helmet with protection against nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and their effects.

  I also took part in the development of HMDs in the combat simulator at BAe Warton. I had very briefly ‘flown’ this device on the ETPS visit in 1975. But this time I would spend several hours in the combat simulator, during one-day visits over a period of months, evaluating HMDs and HUDs. Most of the HUD work was aimed at helping pilots in extreme manoeuvring flight keep track of where they were in relation to the horizon and the HMD work was aimed at giving the fighter pilot continuous displays of his aircraft’s potential energy, fuel state and weapons status through a small display in front of his right eye. It was really fascinating stuff and I was sharing the work with a pilot from the Air Staff Requirements branch at MOD. He was an ex-Lightning pilot called Sqn Ldr Dave Carden. To get to Warton he used to drive to Farnborough and I would fly us up there in one of Transport Flight’s Devons. I let him be co-pilot and do most of the flying; quite a change from his last steed! An odd thing was that neither he nor I had used HUDs operationally and here we were setting standards for the future! Fresh minds and fresh eyes, I guess.

  The cockpit in the combat simulator was a generic fighter design and mounted on a stand about 8ft from the floor, with wooden steps up one side to give access for the pilot. There was a platform alongside the cockpit and sometimes the scientists would kneel alongside while we did our work, watching over our shoulders. The projector that provided a schematic simulation of the earth and sky was mounted above and just behind the cockpit at the centre point of the dome-shaped structure. Although unsophisticated, the visual impression was strong and unlike many other simulators the cockpit was not furnished with a motion system. However, there were devices to simulate increasing G loads: shoulder straps that tightened and a seat cushion that inflated and a ‘greying’ of the projected scene as the G level increased. As there was no change in the textured matrix that simulated the ground there were voice height warnings at 10,000 and 5,000ft and every 1,000ft below that.

  The lack of cockpit motion was more than overcome by the very strong sensation of movement endowed by the very wide field of view. In fact one day I was in the simulator, ‘fighting’ one of the model aircraft projected onto the earth-sky background, when I was told that some visitors were going to enter and watch me. They came in and were conducted up onto the platform. We set the fight in motion again, and as I pulled up and rolled a couple of the visitors very nearly fell off, such was the strength of the optical illusion of motion! After a couple more manoeuvres one of them suddenly departed looking ashen and a bit green around the gills!

  Back at Farnborough, two lady scientists in a lab on the main site were doing the voice recognition work. Their research had reached the stage of trying to refine the equipment so that the error rate in response to a voice command was sufficiently low as to make the system’s credibility acceptable. It was centred around the sorts of commands pilots would make in flight and in combat situations to activate weapons, radios or ascertain critical information. When one had spoken a word from the list provided then the system would respond by displaying that word on a screen. One day when the pollen count was at its height I sneezed. The screen came up with the word ‘FUEL’! But the trials progressed to a stage where it was flown in a Phantom fighter at Boscombe Down. One particular area of interest was what the effect of stress or speaking under high G might h
ave on the recognition of words. One of the ladies told me later that the Phantom crew had seemed to have forgotten that the system was recording as they discussed the characteristics of various senior personages back at their base!

  The pilot workload rating scale trials came in the form of sitting in a fairly simple simulator, ‘flying’ a series of tasks, which became increasingly demanding, while someone made one do mental arithmetic. A measure of our workload was the time that it took us to come up with an answer. We were then asked for our assessment of our workload on a scale with which we were provided. These tests invariably brought on a headache and a great thirst for a pint or two of the amber nectar. Thankfully they often took place at the end of the working day when one could swing by the Officers’ Mess on the way home.

  The aeromedical trials were the best fun, although an element of sadomasochism would be needed to call them that! Throughout my tour there was a lot of work going into the configuration of the cockpit of the next generation fighter, still called AST-403, but eventually known as Eurofighter and then Typhoon. One of the requirements was for the pilots to be able to sustain a force of nine times that of gravity (9G) for up to thirty seconds. The most obvious solution was to start with the seat being installed at a reclined angle. With the pilot’s body in a semi-prone position the vertical heart to head distance would effectively be reduced and allow a greater G threshold to be sustained. Of course this arrangement had to allow enough display surface above the pilot’s legs for the flight instruments, engine parameter and navigation displays. The use of a large field of view HUD would be essential. There would also be a need to use the normal anti-G trousers, always called a G-suit, to squeeze the legs and lower abdomen to prevent too much blood flowing down, away from the brain. Without that the pilot could quickly lose consciousness – black out.

  To this end the IAM’s centrifuge was fitted out with a reclined seat and we gallant guinea pigs had to climb aboard to see how much G we could sustain, with and without the G-suit operating. Various reclined angles were to be trialled starting at 30° and going in stages up to 60°.

  When I did my first ‘flight’ in the centrifuge it was to establish a baseline for my performance. The seat was set at 30° and I was wearing my G-suit. I achieved a steady thirty seconds at 7G, above which my peripheral vision closed in markedly. This was discovered by the doc, who sat in the rotating centre of the twin arms of the centrifuge, watching me on CCTV, as well as my response to lights that came on randomly towards the edge of my visual field. When I saw them come on I had to push a button clutched in my sweaty little hand. As my vision faded, called greying-out, the lights stayed on because I could no longer see them. All the while I was breathing in a special way, tensing my stomach muscles and ‘bearing down’, sometimes quite noisily.

  When the doc slowed the huge whirling dervish towards a stop, a very strange thing happened. I had a very strong feeling that I was tumbling over backwards. I knew that this was impossible but I couldn’t stop the feeling. It wasn’t at all unpleasant and I had no nausea, unlike some of my colleagues.

  As the trials progressed and the seat angle became more inclined a new problem arose. The increased force of gravity was compressing our ribcages and making it very hard to breathe deeply enough. However, at 60° it was possible to hold 8 or 9G for thirty seconds, but the pain was almost unsustainable. The next trick that the medics came up with was graduated pressure-breathing. This increased airflow through the oxygen mask, which helped with the breathing problem; however, that brought with it another predicament: a danger of over-inflation of the chest cavity and yet more pain!

  So the next trick was a vest that inflated along with the G-suit and held everything in balance. With this arrangement and a 60° reclined angle most of us managed the 9G threshold without blacking out. But it was physically very taxing. On top of that some folk were suffering with nausea every time that they rode the centrifuge. Luckily I wasn’t and I learnt to play a game during the deceleration of trying to convince my mind that I had indeed completed a small loop in my seat!

  The 60° seat seemed to be the solution for the G, but it brought all sorts of ergonomic stoppers for cockpit design. In the end it was realised that a 30° seat could be used and so allow a sensible arrangement of the cockpit because, as the envisaged fighter’s AOA would increase as more G was pulled, then that angle, which might be up to 30°, would confer the same benefit as we had found at 60°. It was the total angle between the vertical and the pilot’s body that mattered most.

  There were some test flights coupled to this research and these really did push the sadomasochistic boundary! The IAM had its own aeroplane: two-seat Hunter T7 XL 563 and they always had a medically qualified pilot on their staff, invariably known as the ‘Flying Doctor’. In my time this post was occupied by an RAF squadron leader called Mike Bagshaw and a USAF Lt Col called Dave Root, who had been the aeromedical specialist at Beale AFB where he was attached to the SR-71 Blackbird and U-2 squadrons. Dave had come up with a way of measuring the real stress levels on pilots during high-G air combat and had invented a demanding flight profile to test this. He briefed several of us on this new trial and its flight profile, but it was when he got to the bit about taking blood immediately before and after each flight that we started to regret having said yes!

  Apparently there is a protein or enzyme (or one of those things) in the blood that can indicate the level of physical stress, even if the subject (for that is what we were) doesn’t necessarily feel stressed in the classic sense of the word. The problem is that once the cause of the physical stress is removed things quite quickly revert to normal. Hence the need for blood letting no later than immediately after we had dismounted from the Hunter’s cockpit. This sample would then be compared with the one taken immediately before we had boarded XL 563.

  Each pilot had to fly three sorties on, if at all possible, consecutive days. The flights consisted of a departure to the west to get into clear airspace and then a series of high-G manoeuvres up to the aircraft’s limit of 7G. Then a dash back towards Farnborough with two low-level 6 to 7G turns over the airfield before landing and a high-speed taxi to our dispersal area. Sure enough as one descended the ladder there was a medic with a needle!

  The ETPS Courses of 1975. Front row, left to right: Sgt Hatschek (Adjutant), Terry Heffernan (FTE Tutor), Peter Sedgwick, Walt Honour, Duncan Cooke, Graham Bridges (FW Tutors), Wally Bainbridge (CTFI), Alan Merriman (OCETPS), John Rodgers (CGI), Peter Harper, Tony Bell (RW Tutors), Brian Johnson (AGI), Mike Vickers (QFI), Vic Little (QHI), Wedge Wainman (Systems Tutor), Bill Anderson (Clerk); Second row, left to right: Len Moren, Terry Colgan, Terry Jones (air engineers). Students: Me, Gerard Le Breton, George Ellis, Rob Humphries, Svend Hjort, Udo Kerkhoff, Simon Thornewill, ‘Rusty’ Rastogi, Duncan Ross, Bruno Bellucci, Mark Hayler, Ted Steer (Ops Officer); Back row, left to right: Students: Neil Sellers, Tom Morgenfeld, P.K. Yadav, Edward Küs, Terry Creed, Roger Searle, Vic Lockwood, Jerry Lambert, Chris Yeo, Rob Tierney, Dave Morgan. (OGL (A&AEE))

  The CGI – Wing Commander John ‘Chalky’ Rodgers in action with the rolling chalkboard behind him. (Author’s collection)

  Officers’ Married Quarters in Bawdsey Road, Boscombe Down. (Author’s collection)

  Pre-Summer Ball drinks on 4 July 1975. Tom Morgenfeld and Simon Thornewill watch Vic Lockwood trying to find his mouth! (Author’s collection)

  OC ETPS about to commit aviation in the vintage Blackburn B-2 with Chief Test Pilot Don Headley. (Author’s collection)

  One of many photographs from the infamous Danish Viking party. Svend Hjort, Tom Morgenfeld and me having a welcome break from report writing! (Author’s collection)

  Buccaneer S2 XV 337 in which I flew the final sortie of our Preview exercise. (OGL (A&AEE))

  Buccaneer S2B XW 987 of C (Weapons) Flight at RAE Farnborough. (OGL (MODPE))

  C Flight personnel in 1977. Left to right: Mo Hammond, ‘Jack’ Frost, Rich Rhodes (OC), Pete Hill, Jerry Fisher, me, Sea
n Sparks. (Author’s collection)