![]() It felt more cramped than the Harrier, certainly narrower but it was still well laid out. It had an almost identical UFC and the same MFDs on the left and right, but this time with an additional larger MFD in the middle. I particularly liked the Throttle Designation Controller (TDC) being on the top of the throttle and operated by your thumb – all those years of practice on the Playstation controller paid off and made slewing the Sniper pod second nature!īeing a McDonnell-Douglas design I found this cockpit easy to convert to after the Harrier. ![]() The HOTAS was intuitive and fairly common with most F-teen series jets. I will always remember the advice I was given by one of my instructors during the VSTOL phase of the Operational Conversion Unit – “if you move something in the cockpit and the jet does something scary – move it back!” A Harrier GR.9 aircraft conducts a combat patrol over Afghanistan Dec. There was one crash during my time at an airshow on the South coast of England where the pilot moved the nozzles aft inadvertently when he should have moved the throttle to max. We had it drilled into us during training that we had to be very sure which lever we were pulling in case we moved the wrong one. It was situated beside the throttle but was much smaller and of a different shape. It didn’t just tell you your attitude, but it also rotated and gave you a heading readout too – great for practice partial-panel approaches on your annual instrument rating checkride!Īs for what made the jet unique, the nozzle lever. The 6-pack of analogue flight instruments were purely there as a failsafe, although I have to say I loved the standby Attitude Indicator. There was a lot of space taken up by the old analogue weapons control panel on the lower left, I’ve got to say I never used it other than to flick switches when I was bored on a long transit. This is something you definitely can’t do ‘on the glass’ on current jets. Something that has been lost in all glass cockpits is the tactile feel of pressing buttons and knowing you got a response – I found you could enter Lat/Longs by feel whilst looking out the window. The Up Front Controller (UFC) was easy to use and well located, it made entering co-ordinates during CAS easy. It was a bit of a crossover between analogue and digital it had a good HUD and two MFDs with the classic 20 pushbuttons around the outside. Plenty of space, a huge canopy with excellent visibility and reasonably well laid out instruments. I loved this cockpit, and to this day it remains my favourite ‘office’ of all I’ve flown. To celebrate use discount code PHANTOM4000 for a phabulous 20% discount on The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes (today only) TODAY ONLY On this day in 1971, the 4000th F-4 Phantom was delivered. We found that students stepping from the T2 to Typhoon were coping so much better than those who had flown just the T1. It had three MFDs and a HUD and the radar simulator was pretty much an unclassified version of the Typhoon’s radar. The T2 (Hawk Mk 128) was introduced sometime in the 00’s and was designed to mirror the Typhoon more or less exactly. Someone once told me that the gun/bombsight was the same as used in the Hawker Hurricane – whilst that may not actually be true it was certainly of a similar vintage! By the ’90s it was definitely showing its age and the jump from Hawk T1 to any of the RAF’s frontline aircraft was (avionics wise) too much. It was totally ‘steam driven’ with no digital instrumentation, but as an advanced trainer of its generation it had everything you needed. Probably the oldest cockpit I have flown in as captain was the BAe Hawk T1A in the RAF. I can’t speak with much first-hand credibility about the fighters of the 50s-70s, nor can I tell you much about any twin-seat fighter aircraft. I Have flown the Harrier II and F/A-18 Hornet operationally as well as instructing Tactics and Weapons training squadrons. My background – Current F-35 pilot and Weapons School graduate. ![]() ![]() The F-35 helmet: does it show too much too small? ![]()
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