ORIGINAL: bevar
John,
I beg to differ with your beg to differ. My old room mate, who I talked to more this afternoon was an original 117 test pilot back when ''there was no such thing as the 117''. He was one of the guys who was dual qualified as an A-7 pilot as a smoke screen to explain why they flew so many night missions.
He has hundreds of hours logged flying the F-117 and clearly described the vertical surfaces as ''fins''. He went on in depth to explain why they were called ''fins'' instead of rudders, ruddervators, elevons ETC. Since he actually flew them I would think he would know what he is talking about. He said that due to the designed dynamic instability in pitch and roll...the FCCs would send primary yaw and secondary roll inputs to the fins and primary pitch and roll inputs to the 4 elevons. He said that when the pilot made a control input, the FCCs would first query the fuel system to check the CG at that moment in time and then make combined deflections to best fulfill what the pilot was asking for.
Beave
ORIGINAL: John Redman
I would beg to differ on the ''fins'' of the 117. They were rudders is all accounts. Rigged , removed, and reinstalled those for a good many years and never were they ever referred to as fins; by Lockheed, tech manuals, or those that lived with them. They were rudders only and only provided yaw control. At least that is what we rigged them and operationaly checked them for. All roll control came from the (4) elevons. Either way, that new bird does look pretty awesome!
I would also agree totally with the comment on the RCS, unless they have figured out a way to change the laws of physics.
Haha, this is the classic, "drivers" think they know the systems vs the guys how actually have to know how it works to fix them..
I used to work for this guy who was an ex F/A-18 driver, and I was just starting out in my trade, He was interested and so i showed him some of the text books we were learning from and his response was "oh, they train you guys up to almost the same level as us.." to my response, "ha, no. You guys are almost trained to our level" he wasn't impressed
All they have to know is to read the figure off the dial and when you push left, it goes left... how it actually works??? that was always our problem.
Thanks
dave