F-35C Lands at Lakehurst For Testing

[spazsinbad]

Document: U.S. Naval Aviation Vision 2016-2025
10 Jun 2016 USN/NavAir

"...MAGIC CARPET Carrier Landing
Another technological advancement for pilot proficiency is the Maritime Augmented Guidance with Integrated Controls for Carrier Approach and Recovery Precision Enabling Technologies— MAGIC CARPET. Designed originally for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and also implemented in the F-35C Lightning II, MAGIC CARPET is an enhanced set of flight control commands paired with Heads-Up-Display (HUD) symbology that simplifies a pilot’s control inputs in conducting aircraft carrier landings. This impacts Naval Aviation readiness by allowing money traditionally spent on Field Carrier Landing Practices (FCLP) to be used for increased mission training. MAGIC CARPET software enables pilots to adjust line-up and glideslope corrections independent of one another while holding angle-of-attack at the approach reference setting, leading to improved touchdown precision and safer recoveries aboard carriers.

With current F/A-18 flight software, adjusting the aircraft’s glideslope, lineup or angle-of-attack directly affects the individual approach parameters. Consequently, pilots must learn how to compensate for these coupled inputs by demonstrating their ability to coordinate the individual corrections while minimizing changes in the other controlled parameters through numerous FCLP approaches. MAGIC CARPET decouples the three parameters, greatly reducing the time it takes for pilots to become proficient in FCLPs, which ultimately translates to improved performance in the carrier qualification phase. As a result of reducing flight hours associated with carrier qualification and performance in the carrier landing environment, NAE leadership can reinvest this cost savings in other training areas. MAGIC CARPET completed its first at-sea testing April 2015 aboard USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77). Tests confirmed that carrier landings can be achieved with a lower pilot workload and with increased accuracy of the targeted hook touchdown point. Test pilots, engineers and landing signal officers from Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 23 will continue to test MAGIC CARPET demonstration software on F/A-18E/F aircraft through early 2016. Productionlevel software for the fleet is scheduled to start flight testing in 2017, with general fleet introduction to follow via the F/A-18 and EA-18G program office. The system is designed and will be fielded in the F/A-18E/F, EA-18G and F-35C platforms...."

Document: https://news.usni.org/wp-content/upload ... Vision.pdf (18 Mbs)

Source: https://news.usni.org/2016/06/10/docume ... -2016-2025

[spazsinbad]

Lots of info on this thread about the F-111B and carrier testing - for example: viewtopic.php?f=57&t=15767&p=275681&hilit=F+111B#p275681 and other posts if forum searched using F-111B but anyway...

F-111B The one that got away [7 page PDF attached]
July-August STEWART WILSON; AERO Australia Magazine

"The General Dynamics F-111 overcame masses of ‘bad press’ in its early days and many technical difficulties to be recognised as arguably the best strike bomber of its era. But there was one version which failed due to the flawed philosophy behind its development: the F-111B carrier-based fleet defence fighter for the US Navy.

THE F-111 QUALIFIES as a remarkable aircraft on all counts. It incorporated a high level of new and advanced technology, overcame its problems and went on to perform superbly as a strike and later electronics warfare platform.

In retrospect it can be seen that the US Navy’s F-111B was never going to work. It was a victim of its political architect’s vision for an aircraft that could be both a large land-based strike bomber and a naval fighter.

That architect was US Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara, whose ‘procedural commonality’ philosophy was intended to create industrial, technical and financial efficiencies. It had the opposite effect....

...The cancellation of the F-111B sounded the death knell for Robert McNamara’s ‘procedural commonality’ theories. The concept has reappeared more recently through the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme, and it has also had its share of cost, technical and schedule dramas...."

Source: AERO Australia Magazine July/August 2016 Issue 51

[sferrin]

Wonder how things might have been different if they'd sold it as an A-6 Intruder replacement.

[spazsinbad]

To continue the MAGIC CARPET aspect of the thread (direct corollary to 'Delta Flight Path for F-35C') here is explanation:

The article is long so best read it at the source URL - only bits excerpted below....

Navy’s MAGIC CARPET Simplifies Carrier Landings; Interim Fielding This Fall
30 Jun 2016 Megan Eckstein

"ABOARD USS GEORGE WASHINGTON, OFF THE COAST OF VIRGINIA – The Navy has completed testing of its MAGIC CARPET technology that simplifies the process of landing a fighter on an aircraft carrier – with data suggesting that pilots may make single-digit flight path corrections on final approach instead of hundreds and land “significantly” closer to their target on the flight deck, according to those involved in the testing.

The premise of MAGIC CARPET is simple – rather than worry about adjusting roll, yaw and pitch, adding and reducing power, and predicting how the plane’s course will intersect with the moving ship’s, the pilot can more directly and simply control flight path. And because the services’s Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers have digital flight controls, MAGIC CARPET remaps those controls to do just that.

The Maritime Augmented Guidance with Integrated Controls for Carrier Approach and Recovery Precision Enabling Technologies (MAGIC CARPET), a collaboration by Naval Air Systems Command and the Office of Naval Research, was first tested aboard USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) last year and completed its final test aboard USS George Washington (CVN-73) this week ahead of an interim software version release this fall....

...How MAGIC CARPET Works
MAGIC CARPET accomplishes three things through a software-only change to the airplane, with no changes whatsoever needed to the carrier receiving the fighters.

Capt. David Kindley, F/A-18 and EA-18G Program Manager in the Program Executive Office for Tactical Aircraft, explained that pilots approaching the carrier focus on three things: watching their lineup, with the goal being to catch the third of four wires in the aircraft arresting gear; angle of attack, needed to ensure the tailhook on the back of the plane catches a wire; and speed. Even if a pilot begins his approach to the ship perfectly, every little adjustment to maintain that path to the ship requires counter-adjustments in other areas – “just dozens of corrections, tiny corrections, that I’m making” for the final 18 seconds, called “flying on the ball.”

The Super Hornets and Growlers were built with digital flight controls, and some automation was built into the system from the start.

“We call it a living wing, you see the wing doing this (adjusting itself) all the time because I told it not to roll, and so any disturbance in the air mass that would make me roll, the airplane will compensate automatically,” Kindley explained, demonstrating the dynamic wing movement with his hands.
“So what we’ve basically done is taken that idea and applied it to landing, because I know most of the time I’m going to fly a 3-degree glideslope.”

When MAGIC CARPET is engaged and put into “delta path mode,” the plane will fly on a 3-degree glideslope downwards regardless of wind and other conditions outside. Even when the plane flies through the burble, or disturbed air behind the aircraft carrier’s island, the plane reacts and continues on its planned glideslope.

Then, MAGIC CARPET allows for more intuitive and much less cumbersome adjustments to that flight path by decoupling roll from yaw from pitch, and instead creating a single input that affects the ultimate goal – the airplane’s flight path. The pilot can make a little correction to the flight path using the stick and then simply let go of the stick to stay on that new path.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Kindley said. If a pilot is coming in high, “you just push the stick forward and then let go, and it stops itself on glideslope. Same thing when I’m below glideslope, you just pull the stick back and then let go. So instead of making multiple corrections with the throttle and stick to affect glideslope, I’ve made one and then let go.”

The same is true for side-to-side corrections – the pilot adjusts and then lets go of the stick to maintain the new direction, with the plane always keeping that same 3-degree glideslope for a smooth landing on the carrier flight deck.

Finally, MAGIC CARPET calculates the movement of the carrier as it sails through the water and precisely understands where the landing area will be by the time the fighter gets to it. Today, pilots have to constantly guess the velocity vector, Kindley said, and find themselves “spotting the deck” – which often times puts them too low and may cause the Landing Signal Officer (LSO) on the flight deck to wave them off.

With this new tool, “we can look at how fast the ship is moving, it’s not a hard math problem – if I know how fast the ship is moving here then I can figure out how fast the runway is moving to the right, and so I can just, I go into delta path mode and we have a different symbol, velocity vector goes away and it actually looks like a little landing area. So no kidding, all you do is you put the landing area on the landing area, and then you let go. It’s really that simple.”

Ultimately, Kindley said, MAGIC CARPET “makes it so the plane is working for you instead of against you” while landing.

Test Pilots’ Perspective
Navy pilots see landing on the aircraft carrier as an administrative task: “It’s like filling out paperwork, you have to do it in order to do what you really want to do,” Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Dominick, a test pilot in the carrier suitability flight test department in the VX-23 Air Test and Evaluation Squadron, told reporters after testing wrapped up.

For as uninteresting a task as pilots consider landing – it allows a brief respite for the pilot and a chance to refuel and rearm the plane before going back out to continue the mission – carrier landings are among the most dangerous things a pilot will do.

Using the “closest alligator to the canoe” as an analogy – of all the dangers, he’s most concerned about fending off the one nearest to him so he can survive a bit longer – Dominick said “when we are not at war, the closest alligator to the canoe, to me, to threatening what we’re going to do and the risk we take, is landing aboard the ship. It’s dangerous, it’s every day regardless of whether we’re at war or not at war. … After all of the stress of that combat mission, where people are yelling and things are going on and bombs are getting dropped, you still have to come back to this really really dangerous thing. So will this change carrier aviation? Yes. We can start focusing more time and training to focus on that other mission because this closer alligator to the canoe has been subdued.”

Dominick, who has 11 years of flight experience in the Navy, said that a pilot’s time flying on the ball is considered “sacrosanct.” No one will talk to the pilot over the radio during that time except for the LSO on the flight deck to keep the pilot safe – but otherwise, everyone knows the pilot needs total silence to focus on the task at hand.

During MAGIC CARPET testing, though – two three-hour periods a day from June 23 to 27 – “now with this system, when we’re flying the ball, we are talking the entire way down about exactly what we’re seeing. … We’re talking to the engineers real time all the way to touchdown.”

Kindley said the average pilot makes 200 to 300 corrections in the final 18 seconds before landing. With MAGIC CARPET, test data showed the first-timers making about 20 corrections while flying on the ball, with that figure dropping below 10 once the pilots got used to the system.

Test pilot Lt. Christopher Montague explained that decrease in rapid-fire movements in basic terms. When the testing first started, the pilots came in to the carrier with a “nominal approach,” following the basic parameters pilots are taught to aim for as they begin their approach. After seeing how MAGIC CARPET responded, the pilots then began off-nominal approaches – coming in too high or low, too fast or slow, overshooting or undershooting the runway – “stressing the system, so you force yourself in there to make some aggressive inputs” before successfully landing.

During one pass that Montague meant to overshoot but accidentally significantly overshot, “I probably would have been told to wave off before I even started my approach. As I was coming through, Paddles (the LSO) probably would have said, wave off wave off, maybe take it up the starboard side of the ship, which would have been very embarrassing for me. So, however, I didn’t, I stuck with it (using MAGIC CARPET) … and I landed with the center ball back on center line with about four or five seconds left to go. So it was pretty eye-opening to me, the power of the system. And that was loaded with about as much asymmetry on the aircraft as we could,” meaning one wing was fully loaded with ordnance or fuel and the other was empty, as a way of stressing the system as much as the testers could.

In that scenario, without MAGIC CARPET “the throttles would have been going anywhere between idle and full power and hopefully not into after burner. But I would have been, we sometimes call it sawing logs, I would have been doing that all over the place,” Montague said. With MAGIC CARPET, “I think it’s probably reasonable to say probably at least 50 percent less control inputs. And that was on way off-nominal,” he said, with more nominal approaches resulting in even fewer control inputs while on the ball.

“I am still uncomfortable with how few inputs I’m making,” Dominick said, noting it can feel a little counter to all the years of training and experience at first, but the system has earned his trust – particularly once he started the intentionally off-nominal passes.

Dominick said it was important to keep in mind that MAGIC CARPET is not an automated landing system – the pilots are still flying the plane, and human error and bad weather conditions will still make carrier landings risky. But, he said, “we just changed the way you control the airplane – we made it respond faster and better.”

The Fleet’s Perspective
Aircraft carriers, despite existing to move aircraft around, do not like launching and recovering planes....

...Path to Fleet Introduction
Kindley said he sees the fleet eventually being as reliant on MAGIC CARPET as it is today on the Heads-Up Display (HUD).

“But in order to do that and still sleep at night, I’ve got to make MAGIC CARPET as reliable as the HUD is,” and he said the program isn’t quite there yet.

The test pilots aboard George Washington flew the software version H-10. This fall, once any last issues that arose during testing are fixed, an H-10+ will be fielded for fleet experimentation only.

An H-12 version of the software will be available in simulators in the spring of 2017 and will be delivered for operational testing in the fall of 2017. And the H-14 software, the one intended for fleet-wide fielding, will go to operational test in the fall of 2018 and deliver in 2019.

The main upgrade H-14 will bring is failure modes – the proven ability to continue to make safe carrier landings even if the throttle control breaks, or the navigation system fails, or the wings have been shot at. Kindley said the fleet will need that level of certainty in the system before even considering reducing training or taking on risk with fewer tankers.

Still, rather than wait for 2019 to start fleet introduction, “my idea was, we’re going to give this to the fleet and they’re going to just start to screw around with it,” he said. Pilots already do “circus passes” to practice landing without the HUD or other tools, so MAGIC CARPET passes could be incorporated into the mix.

“On a day like today when it’s beautiful and everything’s going well, we’re going to get the fleet into delta path and they’re going to see what they can do with it,” he said.

This will also help generate more data on fuel savings, maintenance savings, potential training savings and more, to help the naval aviation community understand how to field the system.

“I’m afraid to go commit to anything right now because I don’t even know what the fleet’s going to do,” Kindley said.
“I know this is really good. and I think it could be crazy good, but I don’t have a sense of the quantity of that. So the interim capability goes this year, the final capability still on plan for 2019,” and then the fleet can think about “what checks we can write” in terms of cost savings.

Even as the program office continues to work on the H-12 and H-14 software upgrades, the H-10 software that was just tested will go to an Operator Assessment Group run by the LSO school, where fleet LSOs will talk to the engineers involved in the program – as well as one fleet LSO who was invited out to participate in the GW test period – to think about how MAGIC CARPET could and should alter fleet operations. The LSO school will then make recommendations to the commander of Naval Air Forces – Air Boss Vice Adm. Mike Shoemaker – about future courses of action.

Adopting MAGIC CARPET may not be a hard sell if development and testing continues to go well: Shoemaker is already a fan.

“Initial testing of this technology gives me great confidence that MAGIC CARPET, along with similar efforts with the F-35C and its carrier landing control laws, will reduce utilization of our airframes, minimize the number of hard landings and required maintenance inspections, and increase our aircraft availability rate. I am excited to get this technology to the fleet and look forward to what it will bring to the fight,” he said in a statement after the GW testing concluded. “I am confident this capability will not only simplify the pilot’s workload during landing and increase overall boarding rate, but will also improve the overall efficiency of carrier aviation through streamlined initial and currency training requirements for our pilots and reduced aerial refueling requirements during carrier operations, freeing up our Super Hornets for mission tasking.”

Source: https://news.usni.org/2016/06/30/navys- ... lding-fall

[spazsinbad]

Another Magic Carpet story here but no magic to read it. I need a text vacuum cleaner goldarnit!

U.S. Navy Hopes To Extend F-18 Life With Magic Carpet
30 Jun 2016 Michael Fabey

"ABOARD THE USS GEORGE WASHINGTON—U.S. Navy Lt. Christopher Montague was way off the mark for a safe and solid nominal aircraft carrier landing as he approached—high and right of the seesawing carrier ..."

Source: http://aviationweek.com/awindefense/us- ... c-carpet-0

[spazsinbad]

On page 36 of this thread there is a story about two fatalities during crash of J-15 and at least two aircraft lost when testing for LIAONING. Anyway more details emerge of a recent 27 Apr 2016 crash - pilot ejects, dies....
viewtopic.php?f=57&t=15767&p=277831&hilit=Liaoning#p277831

China reveals cause of fatal April crash of J-15
29 Jul 2016 Richard D Fisher Jr

"China has revealed the cause of the 27 April fatal crash of a Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC) J-15 carrier-based fighter: the first such revelation of its kind.

A report by China National Radio on 26 July revealed that the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) J-15 fighter encountered a breakdown with the fly-by-wire flight control system while practising an arrested landing at an unspecified inland base.

According to Chinese sources, the flight control failure apparently caused the J-15 to pitch up upon touching the ground. When the pushrods failed, the pilot, identified as Lieutenant Zhang Chao, ejected and died as a result of an injury on landing, the report added.

This is not the first accident involving the multirole J-15, which is a key fighter for the PLAN aircraft carrier Liaoning . An August 2014 commendation order to the J-15 test unit issued by Chinese President Xi Jinping mentioned that two pilots had died testing the fighter, but offered no explanation.

This is the first time a Chinese government source has said the J-15 uses fly-by-wire flight control: a system believed only to have been incorporated in the newer SAC J-16 strike fighter and J-11D fighter.

SAC's development of fly-by-wire technology is longstanding, with its experimental J-8ACT fly-by-wire testbed first flown in June 1990.

The canard addition noted on the PLAN SAC J-15's structure does indicate electronic management of the flying controls to assist combat manoeuvrability and low-speed handling characteristics.

However, laws governing management of this technology are generally embedded in early design models rather than retrospectively during upgrade action, given the fundamental impact on aircraft capability.

Based extensively on the Russian Sukhoi Su-33 carrier-based fighter, the J-15 made its first flight in August 2009 and its first arrested landing on Liaoning in late November 2012.

Thus far the J-15 is only capable of ski-jump-assisted operations, but imagery from early July indicates that flight testing has begun for a J-15 with a nose-wheel modified to allow catapult assisted take-off but arrested recovery (CATOBAR) operations."

Source: http://www.janes.com/article/62661/chin ... sh-of-j-15

[spazsinbad]

Magic Carpet Ride: Navy Software Eases Carrier Landings
10 Aug 2016 Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

"NAVAL AIR STATION PATUXENT RIVER: So easy, a journalist can do it. That could be the slogan for the Navy’s new Magic Carpet software, which simplifies the most stressful task in aviation: landing on deck of an aircraft carrier.

I’d never pretend I could fly a real plane. But in a simulator, with Navy engineer Buddy Denham coaching me all the way, this near-sighted and uncoordinated reporter managed to land a virtual Super Hornet on a virtual carrier, three times in a row without breaking anything

Then I asked Denham to turn Magic Carpet off and let me try again. Suddenly, my every move went wild. When I banked to line up better with the carrier, I’d mess up my speed and my angle of descent. When I tried to fix speed, I’d mess up alignment and angle. When I tried to fix angle, I’d mess up alignment and speed. (Apologies to the real pilots for butchering their terminology). I’d still be struggling to correct my previous overcorrection when I spiraled straight up into the sky or down into the water....

...No matter how proud a pilot is of his carrier landings, Denham said, “after an eight-hour combat mission over Iraq… the last thing I want to do is worry about landing on the ship.”...

...In a further birdlike touch, a Super Hornet using Magic Carpet constantly flexes its control surfaces, making the wing look like it’s rippling. “If you ever watch a bird,” said Denham, “he’s modulating lift… to decel(erate) and control which limb he’s going to grab onto…warping and changing the whole wing.” Such “Direct Lift Control” has been tried before, starting decades ago, but without automation, it often proved too complicated for human pilots to keep track of.

When Magic Carpet is switched on, the pilot no longer directly controls the flaps, throttle, and so on. Instead, he or she chooses a path and the computer makes the fine adjustments to get and stay on it. Affecting one aspect of flight — angle, speed, alignment, and so on — still affects the others, but the pilot can focus on one at a time while the computer keeps the others under control. The pilot remains a crucial part of the system.

Magic Carpet evolved out of efforts to improve the AV-8 Harrier, [Tom Morgenfeld says otherwise but perhaps true many moons ago?] a jump jet notorious for killing its pilots. Some of that research spun out into the F-35B program — also a jump jet — and some to the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and its EA-18G Growler variant, Denham told reporters. (The Navy won’t invest in Magic Carpet for the older F/A-18A, B, C, & D Hornets, which are due for retirement).

The pace has been intense. The first demonstration aircraft flew in February 2015; a Navy test squadron did 181 landings on the carrier USS Bush in April 2015; and testers flew a second round on the USS George Washington in July of this year. The software will be made available to the fleet in September, and the first operational squadrons will start training with it in October.

Meanwhile the Navy is signing a contract with Boeing to develop a more refined version with quadruple redundancy to guard against failures. That enhanced Magic Carpet will go out in 2018-2019. At that point, Denham said, the software should be so reliable that the Navy could reduce or theoretically eliminate training on traditional landings.

Originally, the Navy planned to wait for the full-up, quadruple redundant 2018-2019 version of the Magic Carpet software before introducing it to the fleet. But so many senior leaders tried it out and got so excited about it, Denham said, that they pushed up the date so operational pilots could start learning how to work with Magic Carpet as soon as possible.

In the longer term, “it’s going to change how we fly airplanes across the board,” Denham said. “This is the final chapter in manned aviation, we’re doing it right now.”...

...Unlike the X-47 drone, the Magic Carpet software doesn’t know where the carrier is, just where the pilot wants to go. But once the pilot sets a course, the computer makes it vastly easier to stay on it — just ask this journalist."

Graphic: http://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/u ... .52-PM.png

Source: http://breakingdefense.com/2016/08/magi ... -landings/

[spazsinbad]

NAVAIR “Magic Carpet” Innovation for the F-18 Fleet
15 Aug 2016 Todd Miller

"For those of us who are not pilots, we can discuss landing aircraft on aircraft carriers but cannot appreciate just how difficult and fraught with disaster the operation is. Pilots returning from long, mentally exhausting missions are often faced with a night landing in stormy weather, at times perilously low on fuel.

In a previous interview with Cdr. Robert Bibeau (at the time CDR of VFA-31 the Tomcatters), the aviator referenced his first carrier launch:

“As soon as I launched, the very first thing that came to mind was, ‘great, I have to trap now…’”

After many successful traps (Navy verbiage for landing on a carrier) that sense of the challenge ahead wanes, but never disappears.

In a visit to Pax River on Monday the 8th of August 2016, I had a chance to discuss these challenges and ways the Navy is working to improve the situation for the carrier aviator.

James “Buddy” Denham, Senior Engineer of NAVAIR Aeromechanics, puts landing on the carrier in perspective, “landing is not the mission, but it is an outcome of executing the mission from a carrier.”

And learning and then executing landing safely in all weather conditions requires skill and practice.

Prior to deployment on a carrier, a unit will put aside significant time to focus on nothing but honing their carrier landing skills in what is called FCLP (Field Carrier Landing Practice). Due to extensive training, onboard systems and procedures most carrier landings are well within tolerances.

However, there are a percentage of landings that are on the ragged edge of disaster. It is the nature of the activity.

The F-35C was designed from the ground up with new flight control software to attenuate the landing challenges.

This will reduce significantly the amount of time necessary to do carrier training prior to full deployment of a carrier as well.

This opens a gap with the legacy fleet, which NAVAIR is seeking to attenuate with a new technology called Magic Carpet

(Maritime Augmented Guidance with Integrated Controls for Carrier Approach and Recovery Precision Enabling Technologies).

This technology involves what is effectively a reprogramming of flight controls within a specific landing “Delta Flight Path” mode selected by the pilot.

The reprogrammed flight controls help pilots make more precise landings, with reduced stress on themselves and the airframes.

The development has significance beyond carrier landings, as Denham expresses, “It’s going to change how we fly airplanes across the board.” Denham continued to explain how the technology is enabled by redundant fly by wire systems that utilize digital flight control and the availability of low cost sensors/systems (Inertial Guidance Systems) laser gyros (F/A-18E/F and EA-18G), or tactical navigation sensors (F-35) that complete the feedback loop so the aircraft can give the pilot what they want.

And what does the pilot want?

According to Denham, control of speed and flight path. It is that simple.

All that coordination of stick and rudder, throttles up and down, pitch, yaw, roll – it’s all about the pilot manipulating the aircraft controls to fly a desired flight path and speed..."

THEN FOLLOWS A DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THINGS - SO BEST READ AT SOURCE - WHILST PDF WORTH DOWNLOADING.

PDF: http://www.slideshare.net/robbinlaird/m ... m-for-f18s (1.6Mb)

Source: http://www.sldinfo.com/navair-magic-car ... -18-fleet/

[jessmo111]

On page 36 of this thread there is a story about two fatalities during crash of J-15 and at least two aircraft lost when testing for LIAONING. Anyway more details emerge of a recent 27 Apr 2016 crash - pilot ejects, dies....
viewtopic.php?f=57&t=15767&p=277831&hilit=Liaoning#p277831

China reveals cause of fatal April crash of J-15
29 Jul 2016 Richard D Fisher Jr

"China has revealed the cause of the 27 April fatal crash of a Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC) J-15 carrier-based fighter: the first such revelation of its kind.

A report by China National Radio on 26 July revealed that the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) J-15 fighter encountered a breakdown with the fly-by-wire flight control system while practising an arrested landing at an unspecified inland base.

According to Chinese sources, the flight control failure apparently caused the J-15 to pitch up upon touching the ground. When the pushrods failed, the pilot, identified as Lieutenant Zhang Chao, ejected and died as a result of an injury on landing, the report added.

This is not the first accident involving the multirole J-15, which is a key fighter for the PLAN aircraft carrier Liaoning . An August 2014 commendation order to the J-15 test unit issued by Chinese President Xi Jinping mentioned that two pilots had died testing the fighter, but offered no explanation.

This is the first time a Chinese government source has said the J-15 uses fly-by-wire flight control: a system believed only to have been incorporated in the newer SAC J-16 strike fighter and J-11D fighter.

SAC's development of fly-by-wire technology is longstanding, with its experimental J-8ACT fly-by-wire testbed first flown in June 1990.

The canard addition noted on the PLAN SAC J-15's structure does indicate electronic management of the flying controls to assist combat manoeuvrability and low-speed handling characteristics.

However, laws governing management of this technology are generally embedded in early design models rather than retrospectively during upgrade action, given the fundamental impact on aircraft capability.

Based extensively on the Russian Sukhoi Su-33 carrier-based fighter, the J-15 made its first flight in August 2009 and its first arrested landing on Liaoning in late November 2012.

Thus far the J-15 is only capable of ski-jump-assisted operations, but imagery from early July indicates that flight testing has begun for a J-15 with a nose-wheel modified to allow catapult assisted take-off but arrested recovery (CATOBAR) operations."

Source: http://www.janes.com/article/62661/chin ... sh-of-j-15

And finally China and the " China stronque" finally begin to admit that Naval aviation is hard! We will likely never hear about J-20 engine fires or crashes.

[XanderCrews]

On page 36 of this thread there is a story about two fatalities during crash of J-15 and at least two aircraft lost when testing for LIAONING. Anyway more details emerge of a recent 27 Apr 2016 crash - pilot ejects, dies....
viewtopic.php?f=57&t=15767&p=277831&hilit=Liaoning#p277831

China reveals cause of fatal April crash of J-15
29 Jul 2016 Richard D Fisher Jr

"China has revealed the cause of the 27 April fatal crash of a Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC) J-15 carrier-based fighter: the first such revelation of its kind.

A report by China National Radio on 26 July revealed that the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) J-15 fighter encountered a breakdown with the fly-by-wire flight control system while practising an arrested landing at an unspecified inland base.

According to Chinese sources, the flight control failure apparently caused the J-15 to pitch up upon touching the ground. When the pushrods failed, the pilot, identified as Lieutenant Zhang Chao, ejected and died as a result of an injury on landing, the report added.

This is not the first accident involving the multirole J-15, which is a key fighter for the PLAN aircraft carrier Liaoning . An August 2014 commendation order to the J-15 test unit issued by Chinese President Xi Jinping mentioned that two pilots had died testing the fighter, but offered no explanation.

This is the first time a Chinese government source has said the J-15 uses fly-by-wire flight control: a system believed only to have been incorporated in the newer SAC J-16 strike fighter and J-11D fighter.

SAC's development of fly-by-wire technology is longstanding, with its experimental J-8ACT fly-by-wire testbed first flown in June 1990.

The canard addition noted on the PLAN SAC J-15's structure does indicate electronic management of the flying controls to assist combat manoeuvrability and low-speed handling characteristics.

However, laws governing management of this technology are generally embedded in early design models rather than retrospectively during upgrade action, given the fundamental impact on aircraft capability.

Based extensively on the Russian Sukhoi Su-33 carrier-based fighter, the J-15 made its first flight in August 2009 and its first arrested landing on Liaoning in late November 2012.

Thus far the J-15 is only capable of ski-jump-assisted operations, but imagery from early July indicates that flight testing has begun for a J-15 with a nose-wheel modified to allow catapult assisted take-off but arrested recovery (CATOBAR) operations."

Source: http://www.janes.com/article/62661/chin ... sh-of-j-15

And finally China and the " China stronque" finally begin to admit that Naval aviation is hard! We will likely never hear about J-20 engine fires or crashes.

I'm more curious about how well the aircraft hold up. I don't think su-33s latest very long compared to other types in lifespan

[spazsinbad]

Oldie but goodie with some great detail from Myers about dustbusting the Magic Carpet - Suction ON - GO - Call the BALL!

Proper use of 'LIGHTENING' as well - nice one Meghann (and not the completely inappropriate alternate meaning of word).

Navy fighters are one upgrade away from changing carrier aviation forever
03 Jul 2016 Meghann Myers

"ABOARD CARRIER GEORGE WASHINGTON OFF NORFOLK, Va. – In a typical aircraft carrier landing, a fighter pilot may make up to 300 adjustments with the stick and throttle over 18 seconds before hitting the deck and snagging the jet's tail hook just-so across one of four arresting wires....

...The software is still in development and not scheduled for full operational use until 2019, but later this year, Kindley plans to hand it over to Naval Air Forces to decide which squadrons will get to test it.

For now, Kindley suggested, it would be ideal to test the software with squadrons who aren't deployed or preparing for deployment, because they have enough to worry about.

But for those in a training phase, it would be great to switch on Magic Carpet during a perfect-weather day and see how the pilots like it.

"I'm expecting the fleet to incorporate Magic Carpet as a circus pass," he said, turning the system on and off to test pilots' skills, the same way they practice flying without a heads-up display, for example.

Stick and rudder
To operate Magic Carpet, the pilot inputs the glide slope, makes an adjustment to line it up, and the jet locks it in. Unlike before, moving the stick left or right to line up with the carrier is simply a move left or right, rather than a small adjustment that requires several more adjustments of power and angle to maintain glide slope.

"I am uncomfortable with how few inputs I'm making," recalled Lt. Cmdr. Matthew "Pogo" Dominick of his first time landing on the carrier using Magic Carpet.

Dominick and a few of his fellow Patuxent River, Maryland-based pilots from Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 23 brought two Super Hornets and a Growler aboard GW for a few days to do the final carrier tests for the software, before it's handed over to the fleet for further testing.

The squadron flew 598 approaches, the majority of them touch-and-go's, over six days aboard GW, averaging about six hours of flight time a day. The VX-23 fliers flew plenty of perfect passes, Kindley said, but were challenged to purposely mess-up and see how much effort it took to correct themselves.

"I'm going to be high at the start, I'm also going to overshoot the line-up there, so now I've got to make a correction to both line-up and glide slope all before I make it to touchdown," said Lt. Christopher "U-Turn" Montague, of one of his more daring passes.

"On the old system, no chance — I probably would have been told to wave-off before I even started my approach," he said.

But instead, Montague said, he was able to move the stick just so to land perfectly centered with a few seconds to spare, making half as many corrections as he would have needed to without Magic Carpet.

They also tested out a variation of ship conditions, moving the carrier to get between 20 and nearly 50 knots of wind coming across the deck.

"And it didn't matter," Dominick said. "The aircraft could handle all those conditions."...

...Lightening the load
It's too soon to tell, Kindley said, but Magic Carpet could have benefits far beyond aircrew safety.

In a perfect world, a pilot would hit the flight deck and hook the third of the four arresting wires laid out across the runway every time. Obviously, that's rarely the case.

Landings are regularly waved-off, to start. During training, a pilot will get two or three chances before they're told to go land back on base. On deployment, another jet will have to launch to act as a tanker to keep the other jet in the air until it can safely land....

..."There is a tax that we're paying for these airplanes in having to bounce them before they go to sea, and the inconsistencies you're seeing on the carrier," he said. "It's difficult to say what that tax is, but I know it's not zero."

With less stress on the aircraft, the 6,000 or 10,000 flight-hour limits on the planes might stretch a little further.

"We may have done a really good thing in terms of the long-term support of the airplane," he said."

Source: https://www.navytimes.com/story/militar ... /86521216/

[spazsinbad]

Ever WOnDer how the WOD Wind Over the Deck is measured on a CVN? WONDER no more - 6 pages of MWS MORIAH Wind System goodness are attached for your delectation. "And they call the wind Mariah" (sung MORIAH)....

[spazsinbad]

VIDEO is a potpourri of USN NavAv achievements for last year 2016 with NEWS 'Magic Carpet' is OPERATIONAL now....

[spazsinbad]

2 page PDF from NAN Naval Aviation News Winter 2017 attached below.

Fleet Flies Magic Carpet
Winter 2017 Andrea Watters

"F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler pilots across the fleet are conducting pre-deployment workups using the Navy’s revolutionary aircraft carrier landing software—Magic Carpet — with great success and several years ahead of schedule.

"That was the smoothest night trap I’ve ever flown, send me up again,” said Lt. Zach “Bamboo” Hutchings, Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 87, Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 8.

....Renamed Precision Landing Modes (PLM) by aircrew, it [MAGIC CARPET] provides improved safety, efficiency and success rates in recovering fixed-wing aircraft on board aircraft carriers while easing pilot workload, improves overall boarding rates, creates the potential to reduce tanker requirements and improves Naval Aviation’s effectiveness....

...engineers made minor changes to the flight control system based on CVN 77 results and delivered an initial capability that provides the control modes but does not have the full redundancy planned for the fiscal 2019 release.

The program office expedited a revision to the mission system software to provide the head-up display symbols tailored for shipboard landing tasks. The program office set September 2016 as the initial production delivery target.

The upgraded flight control software and head-up displays were tested in groundbased labs during March 2016, clearing the software for flight test in April, and from May through June, shore-based flight test was conducted.

In June, well ahead of schedule, the fleet-production release software was tested aboard USS George Washington (CVN 73). VX-23, NAWCAD engineers and industry partner Boeing engineers conducted the full matrix of tests including more than 600 touch-and-go landings and arrestments, off-nominal approach conditions, low and high wind over deck and asymmetric store loadings on the F/A-18E/F and E/A-18G — the three approach parameters involved in landing on an aircraft carrier.

“All results showed benefits in touchdown dispersion reduction of more than 50 percent when compared to current landing control techniques,” Denham said. Touchdown dispersions refer to the differences between the actual and ideal landing points.

The small test team returned to Patuxent River to develop changes to Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization (NATOPS) and created academic lessons to train the fleet on how to use these new augmented control modes. With the rapid development over the previous year, the fleet operational trainers were about a year behind in adding these new flight control software and displays into the training devices.

NAVAIR engineers developed the Magic Carpet RIDE - or Rapid Instruction Desktop Environment - using commercial-off-the-shelf displays and high-end game stick and throttles, Denham said. NAVAIR developed and deployed the trainers in four months, delivering five Magic Carpet RIDE trainers to NAS Lemoore, NAS Whidbey Island, NAS Oceana, and will deliver the final trainer to CVW-5 in Atsugi, Japan, in early February. By 2019, the fleet’s Super Hornet and E-18G Growler squadrons will have the full capability."

Source: http://navalaviationnews.navylive.dodli ... 17_web.pdf (7.7Mb)

[spazsinbad]

PHOTO from online article of the Magic Carpet Trainer: http://navalaviationnews.navylive.dodli ... 76_web.jpg