by Eric Larson, LT USN January 10th, 2000

  At the break I chopped the throttle, cranked the jet over and popped the boards... or so I thought. I must have keyed the radio or put it in dogfight mode because, truth be told, I missed the speed break button! :D Ah, well, I was a little hot on the downwind so I just compensated with a longer final. With the jet slowing through 300kts out came the gear.

Oh, here's a little trivia for F-16 fans. The gear lever is merely a "request permission to"-type of control. The jet won't let you lower the gear if you're over 300kts. Kind of like the weapons release button: You're only giving consent, you don't actually command the release pulse. Now, if you're taking off and forget to raise the gear - that's another story and YOU can answer for that. The jet can't help you there, buddy! :D

DI F/A 18 Super Hornet

It wasn't hard to get lined up on the runway. I had turned a little early out of the base leg so my final was a slanting approach. Not to worry. All the while I had to keep an eye on the glideslope which was easily controlled with the throttle (VV low? Increase throttle and it raises. And vice versa for a high approach). I might say "very" easy to control. The engines were very responsive and gave me no problems on approach. Quick spool up time yielded stable vertical control of the velocity vector.

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Jane's F/A 18E

Line up was surprisingly easy as well. After apparent difficulties with fine control behind the tanker, for some reason approach to landing was cake. The flare, however, wasn't executed with as much success. I ballooned a little, reduced throttle, settled back down - a little hard, bounced it, settled, bounced (again! Yes, this was getting embarrassing! :D) and finally got the bird down. Chop the throttle, feet to the tops of the rudder pedals for brakes and pull back on the stick for aerobraking. And wait... This thing took a little while to get slowed down, guys - we were all waiting with baited breath to see if I'd overrun the runway. I didn't.

With that, I was officially finished. Having learned a lot about the F-16, I walked away a satisfied customer. And a very impressed customer, at that. The -16 is one smooth jet. But, in talking with other civilians-turned-simulator-veterans standing around, we all shared one impression: The controls were *heavy.* No doubt about it.

Next installment - Boeing's F/A-18C simulator and compare/contrast the big ticket simulators with Jane's F/A-18E.

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