Cpt. Hak's FA-18 Training, Part 1

PIREP: Cpt. Hak's FA-18 Training, Part 1

Fellow nomads. I arranged to get my first real flight training in one of those nice but dangerous hell sleds, called FA-18 Hornet. Since I was a bit anxious, I urged the instructor to not have the first training happen on Cold Lake but Edmonton Intl. On the very first attempt to take off, we
crashed badly because of a missing airfoil. Looks like the mechanics of the Hornet were dringin all night again... :-) The culprit was the "F-104 vstab2.afl" which we substituted by "fa 18 hstab.afl". Ok, this might or might not made the subsequent trials a bit harder than expected... I am looking forward to ride an unaltered Hornet on my 2nd training. Anyway - the flight went ok so far. I was able to land and still walk away from the aircraft without being shot or detained by the Canadian military police. I'd call that a pure success! Here are a couple pictures taken from the flight.:

Take off from Edmonton shortly before midday. We arranged to get the air free of slow iron birds, so to not put anyone except my instructor and me in danger...	Take off was acording to the instructions from Cpt. DW - and after getting to safe speed and altitude, I began the 90° turn while climbing to 5000ft and later on to FL100.	When reaching FL100, we accelerated to 420kts ias, while I tried to maintain a steady course and altitude. Hmmm - the Waterpipe is MUCH more forgiving...
16nm outbound of Edmonton Rwy 30/12, we lowered the speed and prepared for the next 90° turn, and the descent to 5000ft.	Once we were aligned, I prepared the hot shot bird for the landing. I was slightly surprised from the big effect the flaps have on this bird. But I managed to get it into stable mood before having to call a "going missed".	I had a hell of a time keeping the Hornet on course while watching the altitude and speed. This all is going five times faster than on my trusty ol AN-2...
Touch down was a bit hard, but safe. I confess, I was hapy to leave this bird after the first training, and I arranged to have a short flight with a Cessna 172 for mental compensation... this was necessary because I knew there would be a second flight later this day.	We left Edmonton late in the evening to fly the very same pattern as we did in the morning. Here's a picture the instructor took from the night view of Edmonton. The second flight went smoother - although I'm still not used to the quick and immediate response to all stick movements. What a "nervous" plane compared to my Waterpipe... but, I also have to confess that I am , in the same time, impressed with the roll rate.	The second landing was ok too. I had to put the Hornet on ground hard, and it took revenge with jerking around like crazy. Luckily, the instructor helped me stabilizing the plane.
I still have lot of work to do, before I can say I'm getting used to this jet. But I am getting more and more impressed with the abilities of the plane - and I am sure that I will fall in love, once it actually does what I want him to do... but as I said: until then - much work to do, much training to perform... Anyway - thanks much to Cpt. DW to arrange such exciting flying experience to our company members! Clear sky! Hak