Trials and Errors

by Mike Brooke

  Expletive deleted!

  Eventually I was back, somewhat sweaty and a bit more nervous, and I got on with the checks. A cold silence was all that emanated from the back seat. Eventually we were ready to go. I put the power up, released the brakes and the attractive, sharp-pointed jet moved forward. After a quick check that the brakes were working, I turned left to follow the yellow line, passing in front of a row of Jaguars all neatly lined up awaiting their crews. There didn’t seem to be a lot of room for me to get through. I said as much, but got no reply. Then I remembered that the Jaguar was not overendowed with wingspan. I’ll try a bit of humour, I thought.

  ‘It’s OK, I’ll just pretend that I’m in a Buccaneer with the wings folded. Mind you, I hope that this little jet doesn’t fly like a Buccaneer with the wings folded!’

  Silence still reigned.

  Once we were up and away I soon felt at home in the Jaguar. It handled very nicely and the more I did, under Whitney’s watchful eye, the more I enjoyed it. When we got back to Lossiemouth I felt even more at home – it was quite like the Lightning in the visual circuit: very similar speeds and lots of buffeting. Landing was easy and on the final one I streamed the brake parachute, which was very effective.

  In the debrief Whitney was not too rude about me, and he said that we would fly again after lunch. I made a mental note to wind the rudder pedals fully towards me before I even started strapping in. The second sortie went well and after briefly going supersonic, doing a loop that took up a lot of sky and then flying around on one engine, including in the circuit, Mr Griffiths seemed a lot happier.

  ‘You can go off on your own tomorrow,’ he said, almost enthusiastically.

  The single-seat version flew much like the trainer and the course literally flew by; by 17 December, just two weeks since I had started flying the Jaguar, I had finished. The twenty hours had included instrument and formation flying, low-level navigation and three bombing sorties on Tain Range, across the Moray Firth from Lossiemouth.

  Two memories have stayed with me. The first was on my first low-level navigation trip, during which I had to fly from the Great Glen and Loch Ness across the mountains to the west coast. The weather was generally good but as I travelled up the valley to pass over the hills I could see that the head of the valley was in cloud. I would have to turn around. I was travelling at 420kt and so I crossed to the right side of the now rather narrow valley before starting a hard left turn to go back the way I had come. As I turned I noticed that the speed had dropped quite a lot. I was used to aircraft like the Buccaneer and Canberra with lots of lift available. But the Jaguar’s small, highly loaded wing wasn’t able to generate lift without also producing lots of drag. I put the throttles fully forward. The speed was now down to about 300kt and, after 90° of turn, the opposite side of the valley seemed to be getting ever closer. There was nothing left for it but for me to engage the reheat on the engines. This was usually not allowed at low level overland because it might frighten the horses (and the natives). But I thought that the extra push to help me round the corner was much better than getting close to hitting the hillside, which would frighten me as well as the locals! It worked and I found my way back to the Great Glen and rejoined my planned route further south.

  The second memory illustrates the hypnotic effect that new ‘magic kit’ can have on pilots not used to it. The first navigation exercise for the long course guys was to be flown at around 15,000ft. This was so that they could get used to handling the NAVWASS switchery without worrying about being near the ground. The route was a triangular one to two distinct landmarks. One of the course members was a wing commander who had no previous experience with advanced avionic equipment. After his return we were sitting in the crew room chatting about the moving map display and operating ‘the kit’.

  ‘It was marvellous,’ he enthused. ‘When I got to the second turning point it was spot on, right in the middle of the circle on the map.’

  ‘Could you see the ground?’ I enquired.

  ‘No, there was full cloud cover below me,’ he replied.

  ‘So how do you know that the navigation system was “spot on”?’

  ‘Well, as I said, the point on the map was right in the centre where it should have been,’ he answered.

  ‘Yes, but …’ Then I gave up. He would find out eventually!

  Because of the relatively short notice of the change to my tour length, and the need to find my replacement, I was given an in-post date at ETPS of 1 March 1981. However, I was then detached from Bedford to Boscombe Down with effect from 5 January so that I would be able to convert to all the school’s aircraft, and generally get ‘bedded in’ before the students started flying in early March. So off to Boscombe it was!

  PART 4

  BACK TO SCHOOL

  30 BACK ON THE

  LEARNING CURVE

  I knew that returning to ETPS as a staff member would, at least initially, demand almost as much from me as doing the course had. I knew my own limitations, especially academically, and that there were many areas of the syllabus that I had not practised much in the five years I had spent as an experimental test pilot. As I was not officially posted to ETPS during the first two months I would not be put on the waiting list for a married quarter until at least March; so I had to live in the Officers’ Mess single accommodation. This was located in an old single-storey block behind the main mess building. At least I was allocated a ‘suite’ that had a study and bedroom, albeit of bijou proportions! This was actually a benefit as I would be able to spend some time in the evenings catching up with the academic syllabus, preparing briefings, marking reports and generally trying to keep myself at least one step ahead of the students! As things turned out a married quarter did not become available until towards the end of my first year at ETPS, in November 1981, so the Mess became my home for eleven months, to where I commuted weekly to and from Harrold.

  I arrived at ETPS on the first working day of the year. I had to settle in during the rather quiet period, the ‘Phoney War’, before the students arrived in February and started flying in March. That gave me two months to get ‘up to speed’. I needed to requalify on some of the school’s aircraft and I started with the Jet Provost and the Hunter, neither of which were strangers to me. However, after about a week of this I was told to get my bags packed to fly to the USA. We were making a staff visit to our sister Test Pilots’ Schools in the USA. More on that later.

  The personalities at the school had, of course, changed in the five years since I had departed east at the end of 1975. The OC was Wg Cdr Robin Hargreaves, an ex-fighter pilot who had been the first RAF test pilot to fly the Jaguar. Robin had done his test pilots’ course in France and was a bit of a Francophile. I soon noticed that he could hear the clang of the teapot lid going down from anywhere within the ETPS building. Robin had recently arrived and was a jovial character, but he soon got a firm hand on the tiller. The other Fixed Wing tutors were Sqn Ldr John Thorpe, Sqn Ldr Jock Reid and Lt Cdr Keith Crawford, USN. The man I was replacing, Sqn Ldr John Blake, was still there, waiting for his departure on retirement in March.

  There were some familiar faces around the place, in particular Mrs Linda Wood, the PA to the CO, and the Ops Officer, Mr Ted Steer. But there were other folk new to me. In an office up the corridor was Sqn Ldr Ron Rhodes, who had taken over from the indefatigable Mike Vickers as the unit’s QFI and IRE. Then over in the hallowed halls of the Ground School, which had moved from its previous location about a mile away to just around the corner from the ETPS Hangar and offices, there were the ‘new’ Ground School instructors: Sqn Ldr Alan Mattick and Sqn Ldr Andy Debuse. These guys had the usual qualifications of having brains the size of planets and more post-nominal letters than were in their names. The rotary element of the school was still collocated with the helicopter test outfit, D Squadron, on the other side of the vast airfield. I made a promise to myself to not get involved with them – despite my helicopter experience I would have enough on my
plate!

  By the time that the 1981 courses had started I was current on half the Fixed Wing fleet and by the time the students were allowed out of Ground School, at the end of February, I was fully up to speed on all of them. This included the twin turboprop Andover, which had replaced the Argosy. I had also got fully at home in the Jaguar, especially with sitting in the rear seat from where I would dispense my instruction and guidance to the students. The mysteries of operating the Variable Stability System in Bassett XS 743 were also demonstrated and I had practised those with some of the other tutors.Finally, and best of all, I had ‘converted’ to the T5 version of the Lightning; the T4 that I had flown during my course, XL 629, was now resplendent on a pole, like a giant Airfix kit, outside the main gate. It’s still there!

  The first three students that I was allocated were a good representative selection of international ETPS students. From the USA was Capt. Blaine Hammond, from the Netherlands Flt Lt Ed Van Kleef and from ‘Down Under’ Flt Lt Greg Rulfs. These guys all had fast-jet backgrounds and were, initially at least, eager to get back in the air and learn new things. The conversion sorties continued apace and then they soon became immersed in the first-term test flying exercises, bringing with them the usual workload of producing sensible test plans, test cards, programming their flights, analysing data, and writing their reports. The first time I had to assess a report and return it to the student with the shortest possible delay brought my workload into sharp focus.

  My initial thought that the first year of ‘tutoring’ would be about as much work as being a student again was not far off the mark. However, it was even more fun. I was flying seven or eight vastly different types of aircraft every month, gaining 25–30 hours in the process, and interfacing on a meaningful level with some of the world’s best aviators. I was glad that I had not joined an aerospace company – this was a much better number!

  The wide range of experiences and knowledge that these guys exchanged in the crew room enhanced much of the work that we tutors did; I remembered that it was a major factor on my own course. These were men who would be leading aerospace development in their various nations. Helping them to acquire the skills and knowledge to do so was going to be both a privilege and a pleasure.

  31 TUTORING AND OTHER

  FLYING STORIES

  Over the next three years I took personal oversight of the training of over two dozen of the world’s future test pilots; I flew occasionally with many more. It was always rewarding, sometimes frustrating, occasionally exciting and rarely frightening. Some of ‘my guys’ went on to greater and higher things. For instance, USAF pilot Blaine Hammond became a Space Shuttle pilot and flew two missions. Wolf Haverstein would become involved with and fly the Eurofighter/Typhoon. Two French exchange students, Jean-Pierre Hagneré and Michel Tognini, became cosmonauts and flew on Soyuz missions; Michel flew a Shuttle Flight as well and ended up as the head of the European Space Agency’s Astronaut Branch. But they all had to start from the same place and that was where we tutors came in. To help, teach, coach and train.

  Many incidents come to mind from those three busy but exciting years. Like the day that I was sitting in the back of a Jaguar with someone up front who had flown it only three times before. But he was making a good fist of it and we carried out a few circuits before our time was up. Just after turning onto the final approach to land I heard Jock Reid’s voice call that he was at 3 miles on his final approach to land. I knew that Jock was in the Lightning and that he would be down to the minimum fuel level. So when my man had finally touched down and streamed the brake parachute I told him to turn off the runway at the first exit so that Jock could land behind us; he would have been very short of ‘go-juice’ if he had been made to do another circuit. But my student test pilot, a USAF fighter pilot, did not use the brakes anywhere near their maximum capability and we sailed passed the turn-off. However, I knew something that he didn’t.

  ‘I have control!’ I said and turned right onto the grass, applied power to get clear of the runway and jettisoned the ’chute when I knew that it wouldn’t blow back onto the runway.

  ‘What are you doing?’ came an amazed voice from the front seat.

  ‘Well, the Jaguar is allowed to be taxied on prepared grass surfaces and this bit of the airfield is our grass runway,’ I replied.

  ‘Gee! Wait till I tell the guys back home about this!’

  That student was the aforementioned Blaine Hammond and we had another bit of excitement together. From the first part of this book you may recall that the Hunter can go into an inverted spin if aileron is applied during one of the many hesitations that occur during the normal spin. One of the demonstrations we had to give the students was how to avoid that and they had to practise applying the aileron so that the aircraft did not go inverted. On this occasion I had done my bit and handed back control to Blaine for him to try. We climbed back up to 40,000ft and, after carrying out all the usual radio procedures and looking out all around and below, Blaine applied full left rudder and full back stick. After about a turn and a half I told him to apply full right aileron not at a hesitation. By the time that he had decided which way to move the stick another hesitation was upon us. Wait, I thought. But no, the stick went rapidly to its full travel to the right. Oh-oh! I thought. There was a brief pause and then the aircraft suddenly and quite violently went upside down and started spinning again.

  ‘OK, recover,’ I said. He did so successfully. I looked at the accelerometer on the instrument panel. It showed –4.5G – well over the negative G-limit.

  ‘We’d better go home,’ I said, ‘and get the old girl checked over.’ Blaine readily agreed. The ground crews gave the aeroplane a thorough check but nothing was bent or broken.

  The other incident that I recall was when I was asked to take one of the ground crew flying on a Hunter spinning sortie. He had asked to experience an inverted spin. This had been approved because it was during the time when we staff members had to get ourselves up to speed for that phase of the course. I had a good long chat with him to make sure that he knew what he was getting into; at the end of which he was still as keen as mustard! The flight would take place in the afternoon so I told him to have a light lunch and make sure that he had a readily accessible sick bag about his person. He was waiting eagerly when I arrived to sign for the aircraft wearing all the correct flying kit. As we lifted off the ground half an hour later, he was visibly excited and we chatted and I pointed out landmarks during the fifteen minutes it took us to reach 40,000ft. After a couple of upright spins, during which he had seemed relatively unperturbed, I made sure that he still really wanted to experience the upside down version.

  ‘Yes, please,’ he replied eagerly.

  ‘OK, here we go.’ I used the rolling inertia-coupled entry and she went in as smooth as silk. After three turns I applied recovery action. The stick went forward and as it passed the place where the spin usually stopped we continued rotating. Oh-oh! I thought. I kept the stick moving forward and rechecked that I had used the correct direction of rudder application with my feet. As the stick reached its full forward travel the spin stopped. Phew! I thought.

  ‘How about that then?’ I asked my passenger, trying my best to appear unconcerned.

  His reply was to offload his lunch into his sick bag! All the way home all I could smell was strawberries. I haven’t been able to enjoy strawberry yoghurt from that day to this!

  The Lightning sorties always provided that added spice to the variety of our lives. The most demanding of which could use all the fuel down to the minimum allowed in twenty minutes. Due to its complexities the Lightning was the only aircraft that we did not allow our students to fly as captain. A member of staff always occupied the right-hand seat but we tried not to interfere at all and let the students fly their test profiles without comment. We were only there to keep an eye on things and take over if a serious emergency should develop.

  This philosophy was amply demonstrated on the return from one of
those flights. Everything had gone to plan and I was talking the student through the procedure to set up an ILS approach using the autopilot. I told him not to lower the undercarriage until we reached the final descent point where we intercepted the glidepath. Sure enough that soon arrived and he punched his undercarriage button. Instead of getting three green lights the left main wheel indicator stayed on red – showing us that it was down but not locked. I took over control, told the approach controller that I was going around and changed to the tower frequency. What I knew was that the Pilot’s Notes said that in this situation it was not safe to land the Lightning and that the only option, if one main wheel red light stayed on, was to eject. I didn’t mention this to my companion yet. One of the other ETPS tutors was flying in the visual circuit so I asked him to fly as close behind and below us to see if the left leg looked as if it was fully down. He did so and said that it was.

  As usual in the Lightning I was keeping an eye on the fuel gauge, because if what I was going to do next didn’t work we needed enough fuel to fly down to Portland Bay and relieve ourselves of this broken flying machine via Mr Martin Baker’s excellent ejection seats. What I did next was to fly a circuit and do something we didn’t usually do in the Lightning – a touch-and-go landing. So I flew a normal circuit and crept up on the runway using all available cover on a shallow approach angle. As we came over the touchdown area I flew level with the ground and used a small reduction in power just to kiss the tarmac with the main wheels. As we did so the left undercarriage indicator light went green. It was just a maladjusted electrical micro-switch. I applied power, heaved a big sigh of relief and went round for the final circuit, which I let the student fly. I never did tell him that we might have had to eject.