We also have what's called a HMCS,
so a helmet-mounted cueing system.
It is a monocle that basically
will put any of those different features.
So if we've got a target
that we've designated on the ground,
we can look over at that particular target
and see, no kidding, red triangle that's over top of it,
as long as it's boresighted correctly.
Hi, everyone. my name is Capt. Lindsay Johnson.
My call sign is MAD.
Today, I'm going to show you everything that I take with me
to the jet when I go to fly the A-10.
The standard helmet we've got here, we've got a black visor.
This is if I'm going to go fly
kind of a normal cross-country flight
or an instrument sortie.
Nothing that requires necessarily too much
as far as tactically speaking goes.
So I'll usually put that on there.
We keep the cover on it,
so that way it doesn't get scratched up.
Because when you get out to the aircraft,
the crew chief will throw it up in front of the HUD,
and you want to make sure it doesn't get scratched up.
The helmet itself's got the standard masks.
We hook into what's called a CRU-60.
That's actually in the aircraft.
It's what hooks our oxygen hose
to the oxygen that's on the actual aircraft itself.
And that's where the oxygen will come
flow through into my mask.
We'll make sure that everything is clear,
it's not dirty,
that we're not seeing anything that's going to be impacting
at least our ability to talk here.
And then you just give it a once-over to make sure,
hey, all of my normal audio connections are plugged in.
For me, I fly with what we call ACCESS.
So it's specific earplugs that we use
to plug into the helmet itself.
It's formed, molded to the inside of my ears.
So when you see, I wear them like this,
it's a lot better for me.
You're probably hearing me talk a lot louder now,
but it's a lot better for our ears.
We can hear the communications a lot better.
So, typically, if you fly with regular earplugs,
this thing is still plugged in.
But for me, I plug in --
before I get into the start engines and everything
I plug into there,
have these on, have my helmet on,
and I can hear everything through these earplugs
rather than the normal foamy earplugs that you see.
So for me, I usually just make sure,
hey, this is actually still good
and that this is unplugged for me.
But it's a typical helmet for us.
It's got what they call a nape strap.
So this is what helps keep the helmet
fitted to the back of your neck.
It goes right under your actual nape of your head
and stays fitted onto your head.
So if you have to eject for any reason,
the helmet is going to stay properly on your head.
And then we also have good ear foamies
that cover up your ears
to help give you additional ear protection
for the loud engine noises inside the cockpit.
Other things for the helmet itself,
we have what's called a lip light.
If you look, it's right on the inside
of where you would actually --
it's going to look weird when I actually do it,
but no kidding, you could see,
this right here, if you push on that,
that changes the actual light on or off.
So you, no kidding, just put your tongue out like this
to turn it on and then back off again.
This is huge at night for us to be able to have.
So if I'm writing on my knee board
and I need to be able to see the piece of paper
rather than turn on a bunch of lights
and then affect my night vision,
I have this little lip light that I can just
turn on quickly, make sure I'm seeing what I'm writing down
or see what I wrote down previously,
and then turn it back off.
So usually what we do if we're not flying at night is
we keep this unplugged to save the battery for it.
Generally what we say if we're flying nights,
if my lip light's not working it's an emergency, and --
which is not serious,
but we feel like it's an emergency
'cause you hate not being able to see things in the cockpit.
So, generally, I'll show you what I do.
Once I make sure my helmet's good to go,
throw the helmet inside the cockpit,
or, inside the helmet bag, put that in there.
I've got my water bottle that'll typically put in there.
Next thing I'll talk to you about is the harness.
So, for us, each of us flies with a harness
since we're in an ejection-seat aircraft.
So our ejection seat is the ACES II.
It's a seat that's rated for zero zero.
So we're at zero feet and zero knots.
So I could be canopy closed, sitting in the aircraft,
and have an issue, and I need to eject,
and the canopy should open up safely for us.
So, standard stuff for the harness.
We've got a chest strap right across here,
and then we've got two leg straps.
So they've got three contact points for us,
both with the legs and then across the harness.
Over here, I didn't talk about this with my helmet,
but we also have what's called a HMCS,
so a helmet-mounted cueing system.
You've probably seen some pictures of it.
Let's see if there's any helmets that are here.
Borrow this guy's helmet. We can talk about it.
It is a monocle, essentially. They're fairly expensive,
but they have a whole electrical cable
that will go through to the cockpit,
and it'll plug in down here.
You'll plug in on the actual harness itself,
and then you actually will put it through here.
So that way, hey, if for any reason we need to eject,
this is safely there to keep you.
So, our monocle, it's hooked up to our aircraft.
We have moving maps.
We've got different ways we can designate targets.
We can see other aircraft that are airborne.
It is a monocle that basically
will put any of those different features.
So if we've got a target
that we've designated on the ground,
we can look over at that particular target
and see a, no kidding, red triangle that's over top of it,
as long as it's boresighted correctly.
So it's really actually fairly accurate.
It allows us to just have more information
as to what we're seeing in a battle space,
which helps us out a lot.
So a little bit bigger of a visor that we've got
that will go over top of it.
And you can turn this on and off with a button
that we've got on our actual sticks
using what they call HOTAS, so hands on throttle and stick.
So right eye over here is where we're going to be looking,
generally looking out over our canopy from the right side,
and we can see other aircraft that are airborne.
You can see different targets, friendlies,
those type of things out on the ground.
So, when we go to step to fly,
generally for us as A-10 pilots,
we generally fly with two knee boards.
These knee boards are used to put any of our data cards
or any pieces of paper
underneath products that we have when we're flying.
We'll place them here on our knee, so when we're flying,
we have a quick access to be able to fly.
And then typically pilots will fly
with what we call, like, a pencil tab holder.
They'll easily put their pencil in here.
They can keep flying the jet and then quickly just go
and write on the knee board like that.
So, usually when we brief with students,
we've got data cards that we talk to.
It goes over, hey, what's our takeoff time?
What time are we going to land?
What airspace are we going to?
Who are we going to be talking to?
And then any other pertinent information.
So once we've finished briefing,
we'll put our piece of paper on our data card.
We'll go up to our step desk,
where we get any of the applicable information
for our flight that day.
We get what tail and spot that our aircraft is at.
So the tail number for the aircraft,
where we're going to be going as we step,
we throw that on there,
and then we'll put that in our flight bag here.
So our pubs bag that we all fly with.
For us, up on the A-10 itself right in front of our HUD,
we have a place on our glare shield
that we can place this pubs bag.
So, pretty large.
You can fit a lot of different stuff in it.
But what we'll do is right in front of the HUD,
it'll sit up here like this in the aircraft itself.
Publications bag. So it used to be,
before we had electronic flight bags or iPads,
we used to carry all paper publications.
So you'd have to stuff everything in all these pockets.
Yeah, so for us, we've got any of our,
what they call tech data.
So if we've got any emergency procedures,
hey, I've got a hydraulic issue,
I can quickly touch that, go to the hydraulic-issue pages,
and reference the particular pubs pages,
as well as we have what's called an in-flight guide.
So flying in the local area,
it's kind of like a quick-reference guide for us
for people that we talk to, airspaces we go to,
frequencies that we use,
as well as, hey, if you've got any emergencies,
these are your no-kidding minimum fuels
that you need to have to be able to go
to a different airfield for bad weather
or emergencies that you particularly have.
So all good stuff that we've got
that's just right at our fingertips when we're flying.
So now, rather than having a bunch of paper pubs,
we have two of these that we'll throw in here
along with our typical knee boards that we fly with.
We throw all of that in there.
And then for us generally as well,
I've also got a knee board that I can use
for my electronic flight bag that will just slide on here.
So I'll show you at least an easy thing for that.
I can throw that on here, put that on my knee,
and then I've got my one piece of paper over here
that I can write on.
That's generally what I use for cross-country flights.
Throw that in there and make sure I've got all the
applicable pubs and pieces of paper that I need sometimes.
Now that we don't have paper pubs,
you'll tend to see pilots will put snacks, waters,
all that kind of stuff in there
for the longer cross-country flights that we've got.
The next thing I'll show you is the G suit.
So, for us, that is what we use to be able to help
go against any G's that we're undergoing
under any flight.
So for us it's a requirement.
If we're expected to pull more than 4 G's in flight,
we need to be wearing a G suit.
However, typically we wear a G suit
every single flight for us.
So, there are bladders,
air bladders that are inside of the G suit.
We've got ones in front of our actual stomach,
so to help our stomach muscles, ab muscles,
to push up against as we're pulling G's.
And then we've got bladders all throughout our legs as well.
So through this tube here,
as we're hooked up to the aircraft itself,
through our bleeder,
it will actually push air through here
as the aircraft is starting to go under G.
So if I'm going to be undergoing about 4 G's,
I'm going to be feeling like I'm pulling about 3 G's
with the use of a G suit.
I'd probably equate that to putting a blood-pressure cuff
around your whole entire waist and your legs
is what it kind of feels like against you.
So, for us to have this, this helps --
when you undergo G's generally,
it's going to pull the blood away from your heart
down to your outer extremities.
So when you undergo G's and you have a G suit,
that's going to help push the blood back towards your heart,
keep you from having any light loss,
and things of that nature.
So keep you being, you know, fit to fight,
be able to keep flying.
So for us in the A-10, generally,
we don't endure more than 5 G's for a whole lot of time.
We can't sustain it, kind of like the F-16,
but for us, at least we're able to to pull G's,
and then this is going to help us
keep from having any light loss.
So, things that we've got on here,
each G suit has a pocket for a hook knife.
So for anytime -- if we have to eject
and we end up under canopy and there's any issues
with some lines, we have line-overs,
we're able to cut up to four lines
of those that are having any issues.
So generally each pilot will fly
with their own personal knife, but we also have this
right over our leg to be able to grab
for under canopy as well as, you know,
if for any reason we're in an area
that we need to utilize a knife,
we've got that there as well.
So, the G suit itself will go around your waist.
It's got two buttons to button itself
and then a zipper to come back up.
And then over here,
these are where we can loosen it up
as we're actually putting the G suit on on our legs.
And then once you actually get the pants on,
you'll tighten it up so it's tighter around your legs.
We've got two G suit straps as well.
So before they kind of invented knee boards
that I showed you earlier,
people would put their data cards
or any paper that they need, products to reference,
they'd put it here on their actual G suit legs itself.
For me, what I do is I keep my flight gloves here,
so when I have my G suit actually on,
I can just pull those off
before I do my walk-around of the aircraft.
Recently, only in the past few years,
we've actually gotten approval
to be able to have flight gloves
that have up to three holes in our fingers.
Usually it's, hey, you're going to have
all your fingers covered.
A lot of the reasons why this is useful for us,
so when I'm using my iPad,
I can actually hit the buttons on my iPad
rather than have to take the whole entire glove off,
use the actual buttons on the iPad, and then put it back on.
I'm sure you've seen some gloves in the wintertime
where you can open up your phone and text on your phone
with the gloves, with all your fingers covered.
But it's just not always 100% accurate and works for us.
So we got approval to accept the risk that,
hey, if we were to have, you know, a fire in the cockpit,
that we're going to have
three fingers that are exposed for us.
But so we've got these flight gloves that we'll wear.
I usually put them on
just prior to my walk-around of the aircraft,
and then I keep them on
until I'm outside of the aircraft afterwards.
And then for me, I'd say, you know,
if you ask percentage-wise of people that fly,
that fly with contacts or with glasses,
I don't know the exact percentage,
but now that it's approved for people
to have corrected lenses to fly with,
for me, I fly with contacts.
I've had contacts since I was in the seventh grade.
But if you're going to fly with contacts,
you have to get through an approved contact-lens program.
But while I'm flying with them,
I am required to have my glasses with me
in my pocket at any point in time.
So that way if I'm flying, I have an issue with my contact
and I have to take them out,
then I can quickly grab my glasses.
So these are not anything that you'll see in vogue
or fashion type of glasses.
They're the standard-issued, you know,
kind of BCG-type glasses.
Oh, gosh, OK. So, I can't see now
because I've got both the contacts and the glasses on,
but nothing that you're going to probably be catching
anybody asking for your number in these things.
But, hey, I'm still flying an airplane
if I had to wear them, so.
I have to keep those there in the pocket.
For me, I usually always carry some tissues with me,
'cause no matter what,
the nose always seems to run afterwards.
And then other than that,
I generally just keep an open pocket for,
hey, I've got a long sortie,
I've got a snack in my pocket,
or things along those lines that you've got.
But yep, two pockets here that we can keep
generally their glasses,
some people will keep, if we're going to fly nights,
they'll put a flashlight in their pocket,
things along those natures.
So no requirements
other than having to have your glasses in there
for those specific pockets itself.
This is everything that I would take with me
to the jet as a fighter pilot.