![]() To help pilots cope with the airplane’s 9-G capability, the seat reclined 30 degrees, and the side-mounted control stick had a rest to support the pilot’s arm when it weighed many times normal. What the YF-16 had that was all its own was an unstable, and therefore highly maneuverable, airframe that could withstand 9 Gs and, to manage its fly-by-wire flight control system, four computers, without which the airplane could not have maintained controlled flight. It picked up existing components from other aircraft, including landing gear tires from a Convair B-58 bomber. One of two entries in the Air Force’s Lightweight Fighter (LWF) technology demonstration program (the other was the Northrop YF-17), the YF-16 used Pratt & Whitney F100 engines from the McDonnell Douglas F-15. He concluded that it “resulted from flying an antiquated flight test technique that didn’t work for a fly-by-wire system.” It would be one of many lessons taught by the new arrival.Ī bulked-up United Arab Emirates F-16E alights at Red Flag exercises in Nevada in 2009. Retired Colonel Bob Ettinger, a YF-16 test pilot, was assigned to investigate the cause of the incident. The short flight and landing were uneventful, no one got fired, and General Dynamics scheduled the first official flight for February 2. The test director, retired Colonel Jim Rider, remembers being “up in the control tower, watching my career go down the tubes.” After struggling with the aircraft, Oestricher decided it would be safer to take off. ![]() The YF-16 oscillated wildly, banging the right elevator on the runway. The simulator Oestricher had flown didn’t adequately portray the stick forces, so he hadn’t learned to judge how much aileron he was commanding. Instead, it measured the pressures exerted by the pilot’s hand and relayed that data, via electronic sensors, to hydraulic actuators in a newfangled fly-by-wire control system. However, in response to the pilot’s input, the control stick in the YF-16, mounted on the right instead of the customary center, didn’t actually move. On January 20, 1974, during a high-speed taxi test, General Dynamics test pilot Phil Oestricher applied what he thought were small control-stick inputs in the standard method used to check the airplane’s roll response. After the ceremony, the airplane was flown on a C-5 to Edwards Air Force Base in California to prepare for its first flight. At a rollout ceremony on December 13, 1973, in Fort Worth, Texas, the YF-16 faced its skeptics and a few champions with a gaudy red, white, and blue paint job. The younger brother, the F-16, was born prematurely, with no name, and scrambled to catch up. Air Force-nurtured him and quickly forgave minor transgressions. The older brother, the F-15 Eagle, entered the world fully formed, and his doting parents-the U.S. This is the story of two brothers, who happen to be airplanes.
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