Crazy question to solve argument

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Pat911

Filing Flight Plan
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Pat911
I am having a discussion with a friend of mine about piloting an aircraft, so I thought I would come here and see if anyone could shed some light on the subject.

Here is the premise:

Would a pilot familiar with a King Air or a Piper Apache be able to take the controls of an F-16 fighter already in the air and be able to fly the aircraft.

It is my contention that flying is flying and if the plane is already in the air, a pilot should be able to fly just about any aircraft even if they are not intimately familiar with all the controls.

The person I am debating contends that someone who only has experience with aircraft such as a King Air or a Piper Apache would not have the necessary skills to keep an F-16 in the air or maneuver the plane.

We're not talking about takeoff or landing. Just moving from point A to point B and basic maneuvers like turns, climbing and descending.

Anyone have some professional/semi-professional light they can shed on this debate?

Thanks for your time!
 
I doubt it very much. When I was in training for my Learjet type rating, the fanciest airplane I had flown was a Cessna 421. I had no clue as to what a flight director was or how to use one. Military flight instruments are almost certainly different from anything a civil pilot has ever seen.

The difference in control sensitivity is startling until you get used to it under the tutelage of an instructor. A two-degree pitch change at 150 knots is fairly benign...a similar pitch change in a jet will result in a scary climb rate if you are not expecting it.

Bob Gardner
 
As Bob says - he may be able to change the attitude of the airplane, but that's a far cry from "flying" it.
 
I think it would be possible; perhaps not pretty and I certainly wouldn't want to be IMC. If only we could find out who is right or wrong.....that would be most fun.

My opinion is we should get free rides in military aircraft as a function of taxes paid. Say when you hit the $100K in taxes paid you get to ride up front in a C-130. At the $500K mark you get a ride in an A-10. At the $1M mark you get a cat shot in an F-18!
 
Can't speak for an F-16, so it may indeed be a stretch, but generally I would agree with your statement that an airplane is an airplane.

Here is an example - I was doing some flight training a couple years ago with a guy who happened to be a pilot with a major airline and was able to get a few of us into the sim facility late one night to fiddle around in a Level D sim (767-400). Now the catch was he put us in the seats (one guy in the left and the other in the right) and told us to takeoff, fly the pattern and land it, but wouldn't tell us speeds, power settings.....etc - we just had to fly the plane.

I have zero jet experience, but just fudging the pwr settings and following the same rough pattern procedures that I would in a light twin, I was able to get the plane in the air and back on the ground safely.

After 15-30 minutes of playing around with it, I was even able to make a successful ILS approach to mins at SFO. I did botch the River Visual to DCA and ended up with an excessive sink rate that would have punched the gear up through the wings, though....
 
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Depends. If I have my trusty handheld GPS I could fly the thing and navigate. I bet I could figure out which lever was the throttle, which was the stick. I imagine they have rudder pedals. Four forces of flight, just like any other airplane.








hey, I didn't say I could fly it well
 
Fly it around? Yeah. Fly it well? No. Land it without damage? Probably not but some would likely pull it off.
 
An airplane's an airplane - But the F-16 is a hot airplane! Different pilots of different skill levels would have different results.

Also, generally this is part of the "have the fish" scenario where all qualified pilots are incapacitated, so a landing is involved. Are you talking about just letting someone else control the plane in the air? If so, the qualified F-16 pilot is presumably still aboard and supervising? In that case, the chances of a successful conclusion to the flight are excellent.
 
bobmrg said:
I doubt it very much. When I was in training for my Learjet type rating, the fanciest airplane I had flown was a Cessna 421. I had no clue as to what a flight director was or how to use one. Military flight instruments are almost certainly different from anything a civil pilot has ever seen.
Click to expand...
If you are VFR what instruments do you really need to fly anyways?

bobmrg said:
The difference in control sensitivity is startling until you get used to it under the tutelage of an instructor. A two-degree pitch change at 150 knots is fairly benign...a similar pitch change in a jet will result in a scary climb rate if you are not expecting it.

Bob Gardner
Click to expand...
I agree the plane will sure feel different and person with just GA SE type skills will not fly it well. But I think they would catch on pretty quick and be able to do a reasonable job of flying. Landing might be a whole other situation, but isn't that what ejection seats are for?

Bottom line: my answer for this hypothetical question is, yeah maybe with a possible yes.
 
You might have a better chance after viewing this video so you know which is the throttle and which is the sidestick. :D

 
Baron2PG said:
I think it would be possible; perhaps not pretty and I certainly wouldn't want to be IMC. If only we could find out who is right or wrong.....that would be most fun.

My opinion is we should get free rides in military aircraft as a function of taxes paid. Say when you hit the $100K in taxes paid you get to ride up front in a C-130. At the $500K mark you get a ride in an A-10. At the $1M mark you get a cat shot in an F-18!
Click to expand...

OOH! I like the way you think! Do you get to fire the gun in the A-10 at your "favorite" politician too? :lol:
 
Having worked at the F-16 factory, played around in the cockpit and missed my chance for a ride, I seriously doubt it. It's one of the reasons the USAF Academy trains in the right seat - to get used to the throttle on the left hand, stick on the right. Plus the stick is more of a fly-by-wire than direct control.

Also consider the speed at which things happen. Dorking around in my 110 kt cherokee is much more forgiving than 250 in a 737. Now take that to 400-500 kts in the F16 and please remember me in your will.
 
Heck, any teenager can fly an F-16... Didn't you see IRON EAGLE?!?!?
 
Thanks for all the responses. I guess I should have been more specific. No need for any of the navigation equipment or anything other than just flying the plane while already in the air. No takeoff. No landing. It sounds like most agree it can be done; not pretty, but not falling out of the sky either. That was pretty much my argument.

Thanks for all the responses! And thanks for the video Everskyward!
 
Steve said:
Heck, any teenager can fly an F-16... Didn't you see IRON EAGLE?!?!?
Click to expand...

Lou Gossett Jr. is VERY upset with you right now!!! ;-) I remember watching that as a kid and being impressed. I watched it again as an adult and was embarassed!
 
I flew an F/A-18 Full motion flight sim at NAS Oceana a couple of years ago while down there doing LCS stuff.

The civilian IP asked me if I'd flown before after a few takeoffs and landings.

It took some getting used to, and it's not the real thing, but isn't impossible.
 
I "flew" the F16 simulator at the Illinois ANG base in Springfield... did takeoffs, two landings, and several ridiculous maneuvers.
I think that if you were already in flight and didn't experience any in-flight emergencies or failures, you wouldn't have any problem keeping it in the sky. Having that much power available is a wonderful safety feature.
I'd say that most pilots would be able to land it. Not beautifully, but not a smoking hole, either.
Nice Iron Eagle reference, by the way. Has to be the worst movie I've ever seen twice.
 
Everskyward said:
You might have a better chance after viewing this video so you know which is the throttle and which is the sidestick. :D

Click to expand...

Just pull back on one of them, and you'll very rapidly discover which is which.

Love that the USAF use a Canadian officer to demo their plane! :D
 
JeffDG said:
Love that the USAF use a Canadian officer to demo their plane! :D
Click to expand...
I thought that was interesting too, especially because I didn't think the Canadian Forces had any F-16s...
 
Everskyward said:
I thought that was interesting too, especially because I didn't think the Canadian Forces had any F-16s...
Click to expand...

They do not...F-18s, and they've signed onto the new JSF as well, but none delivered yet.
 
This sounds like something that Henning has done. In ice. Through a thunderstorm. Last Tuesday. :D

Seriously - I have no frickin' clue. I've never flown one in a sim, never flown a jet. But I do know that nothing I've flown with pistons has ever really been too challenging. It may not have been pretty the first few times around, but I was able to point it in a direction and get where I was going.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
An airplane's an airplane - But the F-16 is a hot airplane! Different pilots of different skill levels would have different results.

Also, generally this is part of the "have the fish" scenario where all qualified pilots are incapacitated, so a landing is involved. Are you talking about just letting someone else control the plane in the air? If so, the qualified F-16 pilot is presumably still aboard and supervising? In that case, the chances of a successful conclusion to the flight are excellent.
Click to expand...

There's a certain focus that comes with knowing that if you don't figure this out, you're dead.
 
From the "I learned about Jet Transports from That" file:

I learned to leave my feet on the floor and NOT use the rudder pedals in a swept-wing jet (without more practice) in the United 747-400 Level D simulator. The dutch-roll tendency gets pretty entertaining on short final in a crosswind if you try to fly it like a 182. A little rudder one way, and it brings one wing forward, it has more lift, the other loses a touch of lift, and now we're going to see-saw all the way down final. Wheee! ;)

Also got to see what it's like to lose one of the outboard engines at slow speeds early in a takeoff roll. Slap all four throttles to idle and STAND on the brake pedals, or you're going for a ride out into the weeds. That nice long wing makes for a very effective horizontal lever for the side that has the operable engine, and you're headed for the ditch... tiller or no tiller. It'll just drag the nose-gear sideways if you don't get it stopped kinda like... "Right now!"

Once there's enough airspeed for the rudder to have some authority, you're not all that far away from V1... but there's a tiny little "no man's land" in-between. You're busy as heck if you trash #1 or #4 during that couple of seconds. V1 cuts are entertaining with #1 or #4 out, but it's actually harder to keep it on the runway the earlier it happens. Right at V1, it's almost a non-event.

Final approach:

Hopefully you already have the elevator trim set, and the flaps where you want 'em, but if not... don't freak out that the trim wheel blazes around in circles at what seems to be about 10,000 RPM next to your leg when you hit the button. Trust me, you wanna use the electric trim, otherwise your arm is going to fall off rolling that wheel around about 50 times.

Stop fiddling with the ailerons... get lined up WAY out there and early, because at these speeds, unless you really get after 'em, you're only extending the spoiler on one side a little bit, not moving the aileron at all, and the adverse yaw of even just the spoiler at this speed is being counter-acted by the yaw dampener... all of which have a little lag in it, so you'll set up some nice little PIO's. You're gonna be all over the place.

If you need it, crab... but don't mess with it much. And remember there's an engine nacelle way out there on the wing that you're going to drag in the mud if you slip it much vs. just using a crab and letting the wheel trucks sort it all out.

Short Final:

If it ain't lined up already by now... go around. See note about dutch-rolling tendency if you want to press it, and mess with it all the way down final. You'll go nuts chasing it. :D

Landing:

when the aircraft calls out "50" (feet)... start thinking about landing, sometime later today.

When the aircraft calls out 30... consider twitching muscles toward a flare, and think a little more.

When the aircraft calls out 20... just enough pitch to arrest the sink rate and wait. Don't over-do it or you're headed for a mid-field landing.

Now leave it alone... until you feel the multiple thumps.

Hopefully you remembered to put the spoilers into the auto setting so the squat-switches just popped 'em up and helped you out a whole heck of a lot... otherwise if you bounced it, you might still go back up.

Amazing how well that much mass bounces. I was, um... extra amazing at least once. Way better bounce than a Cessna! :p

Also highly helpful if you had the auto-brakes on... if you pre-set for whatever level of braking you desired, you're golden. Aircraft is probably already slowing considerably.

If the airport fence is coming up at a scary rate, you probably forgot. TOGA button, and get the heck outta there!

If the autobrakes are happily doing their thing, or you have plenty of runway for your silly mistakes thus far...

Grab the handful of engine handles, and drag them all back over the detents, trying to keep them kinda lined up... which is a trick unto itself with four handles that big, and get 'em into the reverse range, and if that's going well, start gettin' on the brakes manually... as needed... for runway length... which will kick off the auto-braking... so once you're on 'em, stay on 'em.

At some point, you'll remember if you're sitting in the left seat, that you are the only person who has a tiller, and those rudder pedals will eventually become useless to you, or the poor guy/gal who just landed it from the right seat. Apologize for not steering for them, and/or when they (or you) get it slowed down, steer with the tiller.

If you got it all even close to right and didn't bend anything, whoop and holler and be amazed you just landed the monster, reset the sim and do it again. :)

Big sims are a total blast. If you ever get a chance to get into ANY of the high-end sims... do it!

Better than an "E-Ticket ride at Disneyland."
 
Baron2PG said:
I think it would be possible; perhaps not pretty and I certainly wouldn't want to be IMC. If only we could find out who is right or wrong.....that would be most fun.

My opinion is we should get free rides in military aircraft as a function of taxes paid. Say when you hit the $100K in taxes paid you get to ride up front in a C-130. At the $500K mark you get a ride in an A-10. At the $1M mark you get a cat shot in an F-18!
Click to expand...

Do you get to sit on the A-10 pilot's lap, or does he/she sit on yours? There are no two-seat A-10s.
 
All I know is that when I tried out the F/A-18 on Flight Sim X yesterday, I found it very difficult to hold any particular altitude, and landing on the carrier just seemed impossible!
 
If I recall correctly, the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds let VIP's take the controls in level flight on occasion.

If a news anchor can keep the aircraft from disintegrating, I expect any one of us would have as good a chance.
 
This argument CAN'T be settled untill the Chair Force allows me to fly an F-16.















Just sayin' :rolleyes2: :D
 
I have flown the F-16 on several occasions from the back seat. If someone used to flying King Airs or Apaches was dropped in the pit in flight, s/he could probably keep it upright, but would be seriously overcontrolling it at first -- the control system is extremely responsive to stick pressures. If you've ever flown something like an Extra 300, you have an idea of what it's like. With a few minutes practice, and a light touch, they could probably keep it within a couple hundred feet of altitude, but those few minutes would be hard on one's stomach, especially if you weren't used to that sort of ride. When I got my first flight in RF-4C training, I hadn't been in a tactical jet in almost a year. Although I had over 800 hours in tactical jets and had probably flown 500 hours in light planes in the interim, my stomach was not happy, and after a low-level and some BFM, I had to call for a short break of straight and level before continuing in order to avoid using the bag.

My guess is also that the odds of a successful landing wouldn't be good -- probably overcontrol it and get into a "Saber dance" type situation or slam the nose down and crush the nose strut into the fuselage, but the odds would improve with every minute of practice before the landing.
 
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kkoran said:
Do you get to sit on the A-10 pilot's lap, or does he/she sit on yours? There are no two-seat A-10s.
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A10B.jpg


A10B1.jpg
 
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That little red handle down by your left hip....First pull the pin just above it out-laterally. Toss the tag that says "Martin-Baker" away. Secure your right arm against your chest. Then do what cirrus drivers do....
 
bbchien said:
That little red handle down by your left hip....First pull the pin just above it out-laterally. Toss the tag that says "Martin-Baker" away. Secure your right arm against your chest. Then do what cirrus drivers do....
Click to expand...

Now that there is funny (albeit in a cynical way).
 
bbchien said:
That little red handle down by your left hip....First pull the pin just above it out-laterally. Toss the tag that says "Martin-Baker" away. Secure your right arm against your chest. Then do what cirrus drivers do....
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You mean the pin that should have been removed before takeoff?
 
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I spent 40+ hours flying an F-5 primary and tactical simulator in the mid-80's before I had any formal flight training. This simulator was a very accurate F-5 flight dynamics model used for training all aspects of F-5 flight. To put this in perspective, during my time at the school the AF lost an F-5 from the 425 Tactical Fighter Training Squadron at what was then Williams AFB. The AF bought time on our sim to recreate the flight profile and learned that the F-5 would enter an inverted pitch hangup-which according to the AF officers was an unknown flight characteristic. The simulator faithfully reproduced it by virtue of the quality of the physics modeled. I say all this because this was _not_ a simplified flight model like is used in many demonstration or collective flight trainers.

Now the F-5 is _not_ an F-16, it's hydraulically assisted manual flight controls with a full size stick and it's not nearly as powerful as the F-16. It's not nearly as sensitive as I suspect the F-16 is.

All that said, (and remembering that there were no G forces involved), I could take off and land predictably as well as deliver (simulated) ordinance on ground targets. I was not prepared for handling very many of the emergency procedures. I could fly a very nice ILS and GCA approach (I wrote the instructor station software and had to test these things). For contrast, I took a discovery flight in a C-152 during my stint working in the F-5 school and I found the F-5 (simulator) _easier_ to fly than the C-152.

For flying around purposes I think a regular pilot could do it and even navigate (at least in an F-5). Landing, not so much. Emergencies, not a chance.

John
 
JeffDG said:
There's a certain focus that comes with knowing that if you don't figure this out, you're dead.
Click to expand...

Kinda like on your first solo flight - you're probably not thinking about the chores your wife has for you when you get home during these times.

An airplane is an airplane. Any post solo student can fly a 747 or an F-16 in terms of stick and rudder work - as long as you stay away from the edges of the performance envelope.

And that stuff about which side the stick and throttle is on is nonsense. I'm not disputing that someone said that or that they even used that rationale but it's still nonsense. It takes about 10 seconds to forget which hand is holding what and fly the airplane. I fly a Pitts with the stick in my right hand and the throttle in my left. I also fly a Columbia with the stick in my left hand and the throttle in my right. It's never even crossed my mind that there's a difference.
 
I have a lot of hours on Falcon 4.0, does that count?
 
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