T-38 Special Walkaround EAA Oshkosh 2024

good morning my name is uh Jonathan aof call sign Gremlin we're standing in front of the t38 Charlie here at EA OSH air Venture 2024 uh I've been flying the t38 on and off for about the last 15 years and I got about 14 thou or 1400 hours uh in the aircraft uh pretty unique Livery that this airplane has uh it's a the airplane's owned by the 586 flight test Squadron out of Hollowman Air Force Base uh they have a Heritage going back to World War II and D-Day so when we walk around the airplane you'll notice some of the unique uh things on it including the D-Day invasion Stripes one of the first things I'm always asked about the t38 is honestly the uh the intakes a little bit different shape than what you would have seen on this traditional a model uh or Legacy aircraft uh in the early 2000s we did a program called the pulsion modernization program or PMP what we did was the older intakes came more to a point they were a little smaller intake uh and uh the Air Force decided that they wanted more low altitude performance so we opened up the intakes and we also changed the exhaust a little bit greatly improve improved uh thrust at low altitude but also uh single engine performance in case uh we were to lose an engine uh this little thing sticking out in front of the engine uh that is a boundary layer separator so that we can separate the the turbulent air that's coming AC cross the fuselage and get nice clean air uh into the intake along the side of the airplane uh the crew has a method of getting in and out of the airplane if there aren't uh stairs available so these fold up real nice uh and then once we do a walk around of the airplane I'll actually demo how the pilots get in and out of the aircraft coming along the uh left side uh this is the emblem for the 586 that they used uh during the World War II campaign so again paying homage to uh the service member that have come before us off to the side down in here it's where they can service the locks the liquid oxygen uh it's what the Pilots use for supplemental oxygen uh to make sure that they don't get hypoxic at higher altitude uh nose gear pretty uh standard look uh one B nose gear uh this little extension is kind of a neat thing uh we'll talk about the arresting gear system that some you pilot training bases have uh but this little horn is supposed to catch a cable that'll launch a bigger cable that'll hook onto the landing gear to help slow us down in the case of we lose brakes at the end of the runway uh this tube right here is a temperature probe it allows us to uh compensate the aerodynamics of the airplane uh for our instrumentation based off the outside air temperature uh to the dismay of uh 10-year-olds everywhere I don't have a laser on the nose of the aircraft uh this is actually our pedo boom uh it gives us the ability to know what our uh freest stream velocity is or our air speed uh throughout the flight regime we just keep it covered to keep bugs and critters out from underneath it uh the candy striping on it is just basically to make sure that you Vis can see it and you uh don't hit your head on it one of the cool things about the t38 is it has this uh AOA uh Vein on it most modern airplanes have uh AOA as an indicator to see what you're on if you're on speed for anything from approach uh making sure that you're uh energy neutral during aerobatics or long range uh Cruise or um uh endurance profiles uh so we can teach our uh air crew when they're starting off when they're students that uh AOA is very important and that we don't just fly air speeds off to the side uh in here I won't open up this panel but that's how we can jettison uh the canopies in case of emergency so a ground crew can open this panel pull a handle and get out toward us uh looking underneath the airplane uh you'll see these two big flat plates uh these are the air brakes they're controlled by the both a front and a rear cockpit um and uh one of the questions I always get is how does the t38 differ from uh the F5 and that's going to be the size of those plates what you see under here these are are gear doors these will close once I put Power on the airplane uh we just open them up on Landing uh to make a visual inspection of the area easier and for maintenance Crews to get inside uh and inspect what they need to on the right side uh here's the tire uh one of the questions I always get is hey are you afraid flying with those cords showing and and absolutely not that's totally normal for us on uh the side of the tires it tells us how many cords uh we can be showing uh and that's something we inspect for every time now if you remember at the nose of the airplane I mentioned that little hook for the arresting gear uh this little tab uh is something I always get asked about that is where the bigger cable that's actually going to slow us down hooks onto this um so it's a a resting gear system one of the more important things uh during a walk around on the t38 is actually this panel right here and you can see there's like a little bubble showing uh we actually tap that and what we're listening for is any loose items um that is the where the aileron actuator is and so we want to make sure that uh none of the nuts or bolts have come loose now one of the things I'm always asked about again is the size of the wing uh this Wing is really small uh and Eric if you want to get on the side you can see just how skinny she is um the intent was in the 1950s is that flying high performance aircraft was very difficult specifically airplanes like the f104 uh who had very high Final Approach speeds so the air Air Force asked uh industry to develop an airplane that was can train people specifically for the task of uh flying Sentry series Fighters so they came out with the t38 has a high Final Approach speed somewhere about 160 plus knots depending on her configuration uh with a saw speed somewhere in about 130 um so it was a really good trainer uh when we talked about aircraft like the century series Fighters or uh earlier Fighters uh along the airplane we do have aerons on each side and individual flaps uh the flaps typically have three settings uh up uh 60% and 100% 60% we use for takeoff and generally speaking uh 100% for most Landings uh we can land in the no flap configuration as well but we have to land about 15 to 20 knots faster uh that's how much lift these uh little flaps provide along the side uh we have a visual inspection to see what the the level of the Hydraulics are throughout the aircraft and uh you'll notice here we have uh a way for firefighters to be able to put um uh water into the engine compartment if we need to and then right behind that is our oil filler cap um we check that before we flight to make sure we have enough uh oil to fly the Sorting now the t38 is supersonic capable uh I've taken it over 1.1 mock which is pretty fast for considering she was built in the 1960s uh this is actually a 63 model you can tell by the uh little 63 underneath the AF on the tail uh so being that it's a supersonic fighter uh or fighter type uh the horizontal stabilizer is all moving so this entire uh piece will move and it pivots around this aft uh hinge point one of the nice things about the t38 is uh when we normally fly it we put our feet on the floor uh that's cuz we have such a big vertical stabilizer that we and little skinny wings that adverse y isn't really a thing for us um not only that but the t38 and the gear down configuration we get a lot of Rudder Authority probably more than we need at times uh so as a safety feature as to not overcontrol the rudder most Pilots will fly with their feet on the floor so the rudder movement changes when the gear up and gear down configuration all right the burner cans on the uh we call them the PMP airplanes are the ones that been through the propulsion modernization program um have a different ejector or nozzles than what you would see on your earlier aircraft so uh the prep PMP ones basically had a smooth uh tail section uh they added uh features uh to the tail section to make uh I like I said improve the low altitude performance of the airplane so these uh little flaps are uh completely passive and they uh move with the differential pressure between the outside and the inside of the engine uh probably a pretty good shot you can look through the uh exhaust hands uh the After Burner is pretty effective it almost doubles the thrust output of the engine uh which is quite nice uh and uh we actually take off in full After Burner and then I'll just point out that this part of the After Burner right here that's the variable nozzle so it'll open and close uh to optimize the thrust of the aircraft moving along uh we're going to pop underneath the airplane here um but one of the biggest limitations on the t38 of where we can go is our lack of self-start capability so we normally require a Huffer cart or an air cart to pump air through the engine to get it spinning to start it for us um so that was a design Choice uh in the ' 50s you know uh jet engines were still fairly new and and having that self start capability was going to add a lot of weight um and uh not necessarily the reliability they were looking for so they just elected to always have an external start cart to start us likewise uh we have the ability to connect external power so if we we want to really make sure that we set up our avionics and not burn the little gas that we do have uh we can put external power on the airplane and and start running the avionics before we start the engines uh it's a good time to point out the The Invasion Stripes again pointing out to the the uh Livery of the airplane uh dating back to the 586 time uh during D-Day in World War II what's that scoop for uh the scoop is just for cooling of the engine bay we'll also see on the tail HT uh that's for Hollowman test the airplane is based out of Hollowman Air Force Base uh where the 586 does flight test now they don't necessarily support any one mws or major weapon system uh their job is to support uh uh emerging Technologies and general test and we'll show you some of the neat features of the airplane to do that how how they do that here in a second so anytime we see bright orange on an airplane uh that's normally means it's for flight test and it's not production representative and it is not in a fleet configuration so if you notice underneath the airplane we have this uh orange painted Mal 12 um it's a different uh assembly or mechanism to get onto the airplane or to attach things to the airplane again that's very test specific and hanging underneath that is a a thing we call the agile pod the agile pod is a test specific uh piece of equipment where we're able to fly small emerging Technologies uh before we're ready to integrate them in the airplane so it's a way to reduce the cost and barrier of entry into flight test and put experiments in the flight test environment uh so for example one of the recent programs we did was looking at uh Fiber Optic Cables as a method to use them for measuring strain stress and strain on objects so the way we typically used to do it or how we do it now is we put strain gauges at very discrete points along the fuselage and each one of those straing gauges has to be individually um wired up for power and T with fiber optics we might be able to put one cable out the entire uh swing span or along the span of the aircraft and measure at uh almost an infinite number of points the uh different stresses and strains that the aircraft is going under using in interferometry uh or how much the light wavelengths change uh throughout that uh length of the thing so we just did a a was a successful test with that we were partnered I think with NASA afrl and the 586 on that and test P School uh so without further Ado uh I'll kind of demo how Pilots get in the back seat or back in the front seat and then uh we'll get you looking over the side so uh kind of have to be a little bit of a gymnast to do this in the real world but you step up over and then it's just a hop skip and a jump uh into the aircraft uh getting out likewise uh you can just hop from one peg to the other if you were the student pilot to climb into the t38 so t38 um one of the nice things is the injection seats has been modified this is a Martin Baker uh Mark 16 seat uh so back in the a model days they would have to carry their parachute on their back uh and use a very different system it's a z00 seat it's quite uh reliable and it's a little bit more comfortable than having to have carry the weight of the parachute on your back so with that we were able to integrate a harness um normally would put the harness on outside I just have it here for uh Oshkosh demo walking around the cockpit uh you'll see it looks old in a couple places that's cuz it not everything was updated uh with it but pretty standard we have our throttle quadrant here uh with our flap uh switch here uh you'll see that we have a backup control panel so for example this is for the tackan um we have our flap gauge and then our intercom and all our volume knobs uh pretty standard uh gear configuration uh and then for training U combat aviators right this is not just an airplane we go out and have fun with uh we instill in the students um that they have to maintain their switches in the correct configuration so we have a master arm and uh countermeasures on switch uh the students will typically do that every time they're getting into a the working air space or between uh fights uh when they're doing if and bfm so while we don't carry bombs or missiles on the t38 we want to instill uh those switch that switch discipline from the students veryy on uh standard uh air force uh we call them peanut gauges but uh standby gauges uh so that if we were to lose all our avionics um we can still make it home and even through the weather uh the seam model upgrade uh really boiled down to an avionics upgrade so this piece right here this called the MFD on it you'll have your your kind of your standard six-pack instruments you have your ADI HSI air speed altitude G and AOA so some nice features and then on the bottom we can also pull up a moving map now I can't necessarily overlay like a sectional on it it's lines off of uh that we program in but it's a big improvement over you know having to do Pie in the Sky uh to maintain area orientation above that this is The Upfront control panel the ufcd and uh on it is how we do most of our interaction with the avionic so we have a a full uh keyboard that allows us to type in for example Ikea Way points when we go across country and then it's also how we control our uh weapons our simulat weapons and the uh radios as well and then on the far right um this panel the Eed it's for uh our engine display panel um if you looked at the a model gauges they're very similar uh in display but the big difference is now they're digital uh and we also have digital readouts the hydraulic switches have remained the same and then we have our Master warning caution panel uh as well so that can give us our indicator lights of different failure modes of the airplane um canopy jettison handle uh so if we wanted to just jettison the canopy and not have to jump out of the airplane it's there and then just above those is the backup uh control heads for the uh UHF radio and our navigational system then moving around the right side of the cockpit that looks pretty all normal uh from here a we have some flight test equipment that uh doesn't really apply to the standard t38 but they had a different if mode available for it uh this big black uh handle that's how we open and lower the canopy so uh that's all done manually uh let's see the ejection seat has some neat features um so these are these leg guarders uh will go around in this case this lower one around our ankle and then then we have another one here that goes around our thigh and the idea is that these are going to bring our legs in and tuck them underneath us as we go uh out the top of or excuse me as we uh exit the aircraft so the standard ejection seat position is the legs all the way out and the idea is we're trying to reduce the distance between our femur and the seat itself um to safe and arm the seat we have a lever right here all we do is pinch that guy and bring it down um we currently have the seat saf with a pin so this lever won't move and then uh the actual ejection mechanism is this yellow and black striped handle so just one little handle uh to get us out of the aircraft if we need to so that's basically the t38 so I appreciate you coming along with me for this journey and uh from Oshkosh 2024 have a great day