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Spent the day at RAF Cosford today with a few other squadrons as part of a air cadet Air Experience Flight trip.

The weather this morning was terrible... very heavy rain and probably <1mile visibility. Though we arrived at about 8ish and flying usually starts at about 9 or 10 or so... they had to put it off for a bit and the first flights, for the newbies, happened at about 11ish.

Thankfully at about lunch time it stopped raining and then by the time my flight came along, at about 2ish, it had really cleared up. A few clouds, but plenty of sun and really good visibility.



We took off and then flew parallel to the runway with me taking the controls climing to about 4000ft at 80knots. From here we descended a little and then I flew us in between the clouds. Usually when flying AEF you don't have to use the controls to their full extend, but here I was flying around banking fully right then fully left just weaving through clouds. An amazing view... I couldn't take my camera with me as I didn't want to damage it for the following reasons:

We then flew straight at a large cloud and I was told to pull up when I couldn't see anything. I pulled up to about 40 degrees pitch breaking through the clouds again, and then I was told to push forwards fairly hard on the controls to level out. I managed to pull -0.5g on that, and it was an incredible feel.

Shortly after I flew us into a massive clearing in the clouds and we did a little aerobatic fun. We started with a loop, pulling about 4.5g or so... then we did an aileron roll, and then combined the two into a full barrel roll! Just looking at the ground when upside down was a bizzare but great experience. We then did a half cuban turn and to finish off the aerobatics a stall turn which was really fun to do.

Heading back to the airfield I gained a chance to do the good ol' fashioned glove trick. I took off one of my gloves and placed it in my hand. The pilot gained some height and then pushed over pulling pretty much a constant 0g for a few seconds. Not quite like in space, but I was able to just leave the glove there and tap it and it would spin around a bit. We levelled off and I took control again. Descending from about 3000 to 1000 going over one of the checkpoints for finals. I then lined up to the runway at 800ft and then he took control for the last 1 or 2 miles before doing a crosswind landing.



All that... in 20 minutes. Absolutely amazing. Weighing around 300kg and then going into negative gs was such an incredible feeling. I got to do a bit of hands on and navigate around, but I was glad that the weather turned for the better and that he could show me what flying in an aerobatic aircraft was all about.


Phew.

Thanks for reading. It was certainly better than my usual Sunday stuck inside!


Cheers

Sounds like an awesome flight. 8-)

Zero-G is great - unless you have a dirty, cluttered cockpit. (<- not winking, getting dirt out of my eye...)

Sounds like an awesome flight. 8-)

Zero-G is great - unless you have a dirty, cluttered cockpit. (<- not winking, getting dirt out of my eye...)

Haha it was indeed awsome. Totally caught me by suprise when I had to push over myself. My feet were floating off the floor then the pilot told me we were in negative.

<--- Me with my face sucked back on the loops.

Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good flight!  ;)

[quote]Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good flight!

Cool! I take it you where in the Eurofighter?

Cool! I take it you where in the Eurofighter?

I wish, and I love how they advertise everything to do with cadet flying with the Typhoon... but... like they say in the brief... "Your flight might not be quite as spectacular as these.."

Hehe.

Grob Tutor T1

Few hundred miles an hour slower than the Typhoon, but for what we did it was very good.



edit: If you look in the photography section you will see a thread by EGNX. That aircraft is very similar to what we fly... it is the D115 Heron, not the G115 Tutor which we fly. Main difference is that the Tutor has 3 blades not 2 and the dashboard is a little different too. Not sure how technically different they are though.

Main difference is that the Tutor has 3 blades not 2 and the dashboard is a little different too. Not sure how technically different they are though.

Yup.... it has less horses under the cowling, no wobbly prop, can't pull as many G's and some other tiny quirks. Still handles pretty much the same though.

Roughly how many flying slots does your squadron get?
Ours gets 4 every 4 months. Not good with 40+ cadets.