okay and welcome back to Fast Jet Performance and this is the website if you haven't been
here for a while it's worth going to, we talk about performance and we talk
about flying and today we have a low level tape - my name is Tim Davies, I'm a flying
instructor in the Royal Air Force on the Hawk T2 out of RAF Valley on IV(R) Squadron
and today I'm in Hawk T2 as you can see there with a friend of mine Steve in
the front seat and Steve is on some training that is doing for himself called
staff continuation training and I've come along to basically film in the back seat
here and give you guys a bit of an education in the 'engaging' with the public about
the Royal Air Force this is a moving map this is what we're going to be using for
our sortie today to keep us out of trouble primarily - we also have paper map
copies in the cockpit which tell us where all the 'avoids' are and we'll be
using those throughout the sortie as well to make sure that we're gonna stay away
from all these sensitive areas at low level. Okay, so we are... I've got a map in
front of me here that I actually have from the sortie and we're actually over the
North Irish see we are pretty much about ten miles west of Blackpool
northbound this time we're in the descent pretty much from about five six thousand
feet, if I remember correctly, our low level entry point then is just south of
Windermere near a town called Ulveston at this time then in the descent - the reason I left
this part in is that we're looking at the weather primarily and we're also
looking at the wind what that's doing we're talking about traffic there's a
lot to get done as we enter low level so we are taking our time about it and
that's the way to fly safe is about planning ahead.
Now we're both calling height checks in the descent, we always do that but we do
it primarily, or we do it mainly, as we are over the sea. Now the checks we're
going through now in this airplane, there are a lot of checks you have to go
through and because there's two people an airplane we are verbalizing them in
the cockpit. What Steve will be doing now is getting rid of traffic from Blackpool I
believe he's holding at this time, or Warton and going 'en route' -when he goes
'en route' then he's going to select Stud twenty six for us which is the
level of a frequency and we'll be putting out blind calls on that, that
some people will hear and some people won't but either way when we go around
we'll be telling other users of the low level environment, which is below 2,000
feet in the UK, of our position and where our intended track is
to help deconflict us from other aircraft. The checks we go through here called the
SMARTL checks so we're looking at the squawk which is our IFF identification
Friend or Foe and Steve will set 7001 which is what we wear, we're also making
sure that our HUD is in (magnetic) for this sortie and that our altimetry is set
and although we are descending to level now a, what's called a Regional Pressure Setting (RPS) which
will be in the Head Up Display (HUD) we'll also be setting the RADALT or the
Radio Altimeter to 250 feet or 225 feet - 10 percent lower than we are going
to fly we can fly 250 feet as a minimum - that is a minimum not a target and 225 is were the Warner is sets if we do go below our 250 which we shouldn't
do but we do we'll get a RADALT Warner sound and we'll be pulling up. Er, what are
we on? The T is for TCAS so make sure that is on, we do use that low level
it's not actually designed for that level but it is a useful aid for us as
well they're going to make sure our lights and anti-collision lights to white which give
us the bright flashes that people might help see us - with those done also going
to work - this is Ulverston here that we're coming in now 1000 feet for the
coastline because that's where the birds live because it's best deconfliction
from any one of them and now we're gradually as we move away from the water
descend back over the land down about 250 feet we're at 420 knots which is 7
miles and it's about 90 percent RPM in this airplane and we have
acceleration markers in the HUD to help us achieve that - we are looking out,
we're looking at the weather and we are looking towards where we're going to
make sure that we have the visibility and we do have the visibility today to fly
this sortie - I'm in the back seat Steve's in the front and we are approaching Lake
Windermere. Looking at the map now so Steve were coming down Windermere again
he's getting himself settled at low level - he would have also gone through
a set of checks called his SWARDILLA which are pretty much weapons checks or
'fence in' checks which is make sure we've got things such as the correct weapon
package selected the weapons switches in the right place and some other bits and
bobs to make sure we're ready to fight the airplane so here we are in Lake
Windermere now, town of Windermere coming up pretty soon on the right hand side
and from what I remember about the sortie, we're both discussing the weather ahead
because we've got to go to Keswick, pretty much up flowing up into Scotland towards
the Moffat Valley which we're gonna have a look at later and then over to the
west of Scotland so the weather is our slight concern for us the visibility is
good and it is only a thin layer as well as we can pull up and go through it. I
believe that's Windermere town on the right-hand side there - wave to all
the boats - 'hello boats' and then we're going to move
up from Amble, Ambleside where we're heading to and we will flow across to
Thirlmere, I believe before moving up towards Keswick. So again, the things
to think about at low level here, as I said, the avoids are very important to us
and we do have light winds today so we are concerned about
paragliders activity which is a big concern for us and that's normally
happens, it's actually marked on the map, it doesn't normally happen on light wind
days very light wind days in fact and it tends to happen on the side of hills
pretty much, that are protected from the wind or the winds come into that side of
Hills sorry those are those are the ones that leap off so we know some of those
hills are up here as we come through Thirlmere (lake) so we are
keeping eyes out for those and regularly we do fly underneath paragliders so
we have to make sure you're fully aware. What else
do we think about at low level now - so obviously fuel is a major concern for us we burn
down here on about 25 kilograms per minute of fuel - obviously other aircraft
burn lot more but we're only small, we're only light, we're a Hawk T2, so again
we're doing a lot of fuel checks we're talking about the next Waypoint in fact
running towards on the map here waypoint 5 but it's not joined up with a
straight line, the straight line will take us across the mountain to the left,
we're using the valleys here to stay low, obviously that's what we do as Steve tries
to visually judge the 250 feet MSD and then use the RADAR Altimeter in the Head Up
Display to back that up. I think on the water up here in a minute we see as we
come up past Keswick we can see our own reflection because it is so calm the
wind is so light there isn't any movement on the surface and again this
can be a very difficult time for a jet pilot or any pilot over very calm flat
reflective water, very easy to descend down into that, before you know it you find
yourself bouncing of the surface in a very ungraceful manner -
lots of aeroplane then spread all over the countryside right! So here we're
looking to the left looking for these paragliders, don't see any on this sortie,
don't think there were any there today as I said, it is a school day after all,
and they're probably all at work. Keswich then is going to be on the right-hand
side you come out of this and again we're going over to the west slightly.
Okay and now we're going to transition this video across to Scotland so pretty
much we've coasted out and we are dropped into the Moffat Valley which is
gonna is.. here's a map right now... so this is going to take us down the Moffat this
lake here if I just quickly jump up my map to Scotland, I can tell where it is,
again you must be very careful here because it's very easy to
fly into a very, very flat water. This lake at the bottom, about in the middle
one now is called, it is coming up now for me, St Mary's lock, that's the one
we've flown down there really, and again and making sure that we are flowing the
valley as it is intended and we think we come out of Star Wars here and then as
you turn right at Moffat up the A74 again thinking about fuel think about
weather as you move across to the west of Scotland, it all happens quite
quickly so you need to have the the look ahead the next look technique squared
away really so we know now we have a climb option which means that if we do
get in trouble at low level for a bird or anything we can easily come out we're
not going to go IMC (in cloud) - see we've got nice layers, they're coming down in Star Wars
and following this road all the way to the Moffat. Steve using 250 MSD all
around the aircraft, it's not just the height of the ground, it's also the
height above the valley walls again maintaining seven miles a minute at
low level which is 420 knots, 450 knots for a very small period if we're on an attack
run. Okay, looking ahead then, Moffat is going to come out on the right-hand side
so the weather itself is looking very benign which is nice, fuels burning away
or quite good at this stage we've probably used about half the fuel for
the sortie, so for about 1600 we've got about 800 kilograms of fuel and we're
gonna need around back at Valley with about 200 kilograms so we're constantly
doing some maths to work out whether we can make that from the planning of course
we know we can, if we start avoiding the weather then that starts to
eat into our fuel plan takes a lot of mental calculations. At this point,
according to the map, to get home from here from pulling up with no
restrictions on airspace and we are under some airspace at the moment from
Prestwick Zone and that airspace is at 5,500 feet if it wasn't there we could
climb through it unrestricted then we need about 500 kilograms according to
the map to get home and that'll be at a height of 31 thousand feet as it starts 140
miles away at the moment is Valley. Ok turning right now, all turns in a Hawk are at
4G at low level and that really is just tensing that arm there, getting
that blood, tensing their legs and getting the blood out of the legs back
into the upper torso and the brain but stop yourself becoming unconscious.
Here's the A74, you've got power lines running down the right-hand side I think
according to the map you might have a train line, yes you do, running down the left hand side.
Steve's going to follow this road all the way up until it gets to some wind farms and he
is looking for these obviously and he's got a map that he can refer to but the
the kit the moving map for him is telling him where his next waypoint is
it gives him a range to the next Waypoint and also gives him a steering
carrot in the head-up display so you know exactly where he's going. He's
talking to me front to back now about his hopes and dreams, no he's not, he's
talking about the weather, he's talking about the fuel, he's talking
about his plan for any target run that we're going to be on and if he was on an
evasion sorted right now than he would obviously be looking out behind his
wingman which is Steve's lookout sector today if you
had a wingman which he doesn't making sure that the hostile aircraft is not
intending to come down and shoot that guy in the six. Lookout is very
important, especially for trucks - luckily we missed that one, and we are
constantly scanning around the back of the airplane to make sure that we are
not conflicting with any other aircraft. The aircraft will see at low level, the
Typhoon's, Tornados, F-15s other ones as well from
Lakenheath so we're making sure that we are looking for those. Okay, I
think the left-hand turn now if I've got this right, he's going to come around onto
a heading of two zero eight on the map here and so looking out into the turn,
4G around, he's going to roll out and check dead wing make sure that's clear
good look out to the right hand side - good. Okay, flowing across then to the west of
Scotland, Prestwick Zone now is probably about thirty miles out to the right-hand
side and if you had a bird strike from this height we can probably zoom climb
about 9 or 10 thousand feet just with energy that you have. So a birdstrike
that stops the engine on a catastrophic, catastrophic uncontained failure and
lots of fire, like something we could, as long as it went out, we could glide this
aircraft probably about twice the height that we attained, so we know now really
if we did have an engine failure we probably haven't got much of a hope of
going anywhere so we've just literally put up to thirty degrees nose-up, as
required, leave the throttle where it was if we hit a bird and then we just have a look
what engine was doing. It's got Full Authority Digital Engine Control on this
engine which is FADEC, it's called and it will attempt to relight itself
which is very generous of it, but it should allow us to get ourselves pretty
much up to about 9 or 10 thousand feet again that's going to give us about
twenty mile gliding range as we progress further west then Prestwick
will be a priority for us and that should allow us, as we progress over it
might allow us into a forced landing into Prestwick which is quite a dynamic
procedure in the Hawk as I'm sure you can imagine. Now, look at the clouds there
the weather is opening up so any profiles that we had which would be loft
profiles so Paveway 4 which takes it up to about three thousand feet would
be available to us today including a strafe (gun) profile,
that again is a climbing profile. Okay, so pressing over to the west then
here we are again right now then we are just about south of Prestwick by about 15
miles and now we're starting to look into the territory where we could
actually fly a PFL (Practised Forced Landing) if we needed to, we'd be talking about that here, again
if we did pull up, we'd be pulling straight up into controlled airspace for
Prestwick Zone and we'd be squawking emergency immediately and we're Victor Mike
(not in cloud), we just make sure we avoid the airliners if that happened, either way we're
be putting ourselves in a position back at 190 knots to glide the aircraft into
Prestwick hopefully to get on the deck there because these aircraft are quite
expensive, don't necessarily want to drop them in a field.
Steve's going to progress over to the west end and he's going to come right he's
going to start climbing relatively soon, that climb is going to
take us out, out of the low-level environment, so what he's going
to start talking about now is his plan for this and he will be saying to me
right I'm going to climb out we're going to have this much fuel I'm going to
speak to Scottish on Stud 9, let them know where we are and it's going to be near
Newton, the town of Newton Stewart, so he'll say 'I'm at Newton Stewart, Hawk T2,
climbing out, looking for a RADAR Service or Traffic Service for an RTB Valley and
the aircraft climbs we climb the aircraft to twice the range really for
our BINGO recovery with some little kind of public maths we do which is the most
complicated but it does allow us to work out what our fuel burn is going to be so
here we pretty much know we're going to be about 100 miles north of Valley and
the kit will tell us that, we are north of the Isle of Man when we pull out and we
will actually be flying over the Isle of Man so it's pretty good if we were to
have an issue with fuel, which we don't, the Isle of Man would be somewhere that we could
dip into for fuel but it's not something that happens on a regular occurrence
because we have planned what fuel we need to have when we reach
our low level exit point in this case it is going to be, Borough Head
as I said I think it's about, do the maths, it's about a hundred miles north of
Valley which allows us to work out the fuel that we require - there's some Danger
Areas as well that we have to avoid which are very important to us, so we'll
make sure we do avoid those and we will ask air traffic if they are active as we
climb out and if they are then we will obviously steer ourselves around those
Danger Areas.
Okay, so it's only gonna be a thin layer as we climb up - we're happy to penetrate
thin layers of cloud we've got TCAS, to make sure we're clear above so we are
pretty much a Victor Mike (clear weather) air force, we kinda like to fight not in cloud, no one
likes fighting in clouds so as we climb out we were looking for a small gap in those
clouds to be able to maintain Visual Met Conditions (VMC) to remain
outside of cloud as you can see there we are climbing up - we're now going to be
doing a lot of things in the aircraft, will be undoing the checks we did on the
way in so we're getting rid of the RADALT in the HUD, we're resetting the
Warner so it doesn't go off when we land the airplane. We'll be putting the
latest Regional Pressure Setting on, we'll be putting Stud 9 ready to go we're
not going to be able to pick up Scottish (ATC) at this height, we need to get about five or six
thousand feet before anyone is able to pick us up and then when we do call, as I said,
we're asking for a traffic service and we will be asking for a RADAR pick up
to RTB Valley, so I hope you got something out of this - it's a narrated video
obviously, I know it's 15 minutes of your life you're never going to get back but
hopefully you picked something up useful. If there's anything you want to ask then Twitter
is the great place for it and I'll drop my Twitter handle down the bottom of
this video and just by all means wack me a question or go to fastjetperformance.com
and ask me there - Tim Davies, thanks very much.