when performing in hot and high
environments is that the aircraft
bleeds speed much quicker in the
loaded roll, so the airspeed and alpha
need to be much more precise.
“You get to your ‘numbers’ a lot
quicker. Whereas, down in Wanaka
where the air is much thicker and
colder, the aircraft is going to roll
quicker and it’s going to have a lot
more G available, so that’s going to
look much more impressive in the
display.”
Traylz says he flies the routine
using a combination of watching the
‘numbers’, visual cues, and seat of the
pants ‘feel’.
“I’ve got the numbers in my head,”
he explained. “So ‘gates’ as I call
them, I get to a gate, then I have to
start recovering from an altitude, for
instance.
“At other times I’m using visual
features, features on the ground for
my display line, or features on the
ground for where I’m offsetting to.
A good example of that is (at the
recent Supercars race) in Newcastle,
the Hunter River was the perfect 60
degrees off the display line which I
was using as my visual feature.
“And then, feel, that’s particularly
important in the loaded roll. Feel for
when the alpha is on the jet and I
need to maintain 25 (degrees) alpha
through that, that’s all based on feel. I
back that up by looking into the HUD
at times and making sure what I’m
feeling is correlating to the alpha I’m
meant to be pulling. So, it’s a mixture
really.”
A lot of the routine, while designed
to display the Hornet in a positive
light, also has real-world applications
in basic fighter manoeuvres (BFM).
“A lot of the feel that I described,
in the loaded roll for example, that
feel is directly applicable to how we
would fight in training, say if we’re in a
dogfight for instance.
“So the feel and the sounds that
we’re hearing with the jet, the stick
movement, the coordination that we’re
using, that is directly applicable to
how we fight the jet in BFM. The high
G manoeuvres, the high-speed pass
into the reversal, the brake away, that
is all very similar to how we do a brake
turn, for instance.
“All those hands and feet are just
like the way we fight the Hornet at
altitude. But we incorporate that into
the display at low level and with a
crowd line and obstacles.”
All those
hands and
feet are just
like the way
we fight the
Hornet.
FLTLT MATTHEW TRAYLINGTraylz pulling G under
power over the Newcastle
waterfront at November’s
Supercars event.MARK JESSOP