Tanker Ops

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Alisoncc
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Re: Tanker Ops

#21 Post by Alisoncc » Sat Oct 06, 2018 11:16 pm

Good thread guys, most enjoyable. None of our Vulcans had inflight refueling, that came later, but jeez, they must have taken up a lot. Would imagine on Black Butt they must have been connected for "hours".

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Re: Tanker Ops

#22 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Sun Oct 07, 2018 12:03 am

Fuel flow rate max from a Victor centre hose was about 1,000 kg/min, IIRC. Assuming the Vulcan could take it at that rate, then hours would be correct, in total.
Remember one is burning it at the same time.

Refueling high with big jugs on (and at the lower rate for fighters from wing hoses), I've been plugged in for nearly half an hour once. The percentage weight change is considerable, over 30%, so one is gradually changing angle of attack and power to stay plugged in. This became quite disorientating when night or IMC tanking, and I found the last 10 minutes very hard work because of this, as did most others.
And of course the tanker is losing weight, so they have some flying to do to stay a stable platform, which is pretty important. Ben There is our Tanker pilot.

I like the opening sequence to Dr Strangelove, which is AAR, set to the tune of 'Try a little tenderness' ;)))


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Re: Tanker Ops

#23 Post by Alisoncc » Sun Oct 07, 2018 1:01 am

Fox3WheresMyBanana wrote:
Sun Oct 07, 2018 12:03 am
Fuel flow rate max from a Victor centre hose was about 1,000 kg/min, IIRC. Assuming the Vulcan could take it at that rate, then hours would be correct, in total. Remember one is burning it at the same time.
Doesn't surprise me. IIRC doing a full refuel for one of our birds returning from a Goose Bay nav exercise could easily take four bowsers and quite a while. Don't really think of the effect of the weight transfer on the flying characteristics, for both the receiver and the donor. Even more for an FJ going from nearly empty to full whilst maintaining the connection. Well done guys.

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Re: Tanker Ops

#24 Post by Cacophonix » Sun Oct 07, 2018 5:27 am

Alisoncc wrote:
Sun Oct 07, 2018 1:01 am
Fox3WheresMyBanana wrote:
Sun Oct 07, 2018 12:03 am
Fuel flow rate max from a Victor centre hose was about 1,000 kg/min, IIRC. Assuming the Vulcan could take it at that rate, then hours would be correct, in total. Remember one is burning it at the same time.
Doesn't surprise me. IIRC doing a full refuel for one of our birds returning from a Goose Bay nav exercise could easily take four bowsers and quite a while. Don't really think of the effect of the weight transfer on the flying characteristics, for both the receiver and the donor. Even more for an FJ going from nearly empty to full whilst maintaining the connection. Well done guys.

Alison
A lot to think about here it seems...

See pages 4, 5, 6 of this paper for some interesting, albeit academic, gen. on the wake turbulence profiles and modelling, downwash and upwash, c of g changes and the effects of the drogue and/or boom on both aircraft as well etc...

http://people.bath.ac.uk/jldb20/pubs/Th ... sinair.pdf

Refueling Wake Vortex.JPG
Refueling Wake Vortex.JPG (29.32 KiB) Viewed 933 times
Also see for gen. on boom versus drogue modelling therein as well.

Boom via a vis drogue.JPG
Boom via a vis drogue.JPG (27.35 KiB) Viewed 933 times
Typical Procedure.JPG
Typical Procedure.JPG (26.17 KiB) Viewed 933 times

The nouvelle vague of AAR is AAAR (Autonomous Air to Air Refuelling) as ian16th hinted at. Of course the aim of the game is to supress radio magnetic radiation emissions, by using radio silence, radar suppression , "quiet" communications, lidar, inertial nav. systems and so on, (vide. how cagey, the usually very detailed, Fox3 was about techniques used today, as some in use are certainly still classified), the tanker and aircraft to be refuelled need to find each other..!

An autonomous system for air to air refuelling must be capable of measurements primarily of a spatial nature for both tracking and station-keeping tasks. The closer the receiver approaches the tanker, the greater the requirements of a sensor system for either of these tasks will become. Current technologies that have been solutions for similar situations have been:

1. Global navigation satellites. 2. Machine vision. 3. Radar. 4. Electro-optical (laser).
GPS is very useful but is easily suppressed and area denial is the name of the game so other techniques are being perfected. Again see the paper for some inkling as to what is going on in this field

Caco

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Re: Tanker Ops

#25 Post by Cacophonix » Sun Oct 07, 2018 5:37 am

A little more on actively controlled drogues with canards that auto stabilise to make the mid air connection a little less fraught, particularly in turbulence.

4 Gust Test conditions
- Vertical Single gust
- Horizontal Single gust
- Vertical continuous gust
- Horizontal continuous gust



This Durham University video on an actively controlled drogue is fascinating too (although it clearly doesn't work yet).




More on the boom here...



One thing is clear here, any air force that is not on top of the Tanker Ops game and technology will not be able to project global power.

Caco

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Re: Tanker Ops

#26 Post by Boac » Sun Oct 07, 2018 7:11 am

No doubt Fox will have done it, but tanking from a basketed 135 was always a gamble. If the intial pentration was a little too rough a 'ripple' would run up the short length of hose and back down again before you could escape and neatly remove the tip of the Lightning's longish probe. The walls of the 135 crewrooms were decorated with wall-mounted trophies.

One more little story - the probe tip was 'out-of-scan' in the Lightning when you were looking out the front (as you do..). We had an Irish pilot on the squadron who, on his first AAR sortie spent a few seconds with his port Firestreak missile attempting to take on fuel, firmly engaged in the basket. :))

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Re: Tanker Ops

#27 Post by Cacophonix » Sun Oct 07, 2018 8:23 am

Boac wrote:
Sun Oct 07, 2018 7:11 am
No doubt Fox will have done it, but tanking from a basketed 135 was always a gamble. If the intial pentration was a little too rough a 'ripple' would run up the short length of hose and back down again before you could escape and neatly remove the tip of the Lightning's longish probe. The walls of the 135 crewrooms were decorated with wall-mounted trophies.

One more little story - the probe tip was 'out-of-scan' in the Lightning when you were looking out the front (as you do..). We had an Irish pilot on the squadron who, on his first AAR sortie spent a few seconds with his port Firestreak missile attempting to take on fuel, firmly engaged in the basket. :))
You really should write you memoirs Boac and publish them. I would certainly buy the book, as I would any book by FD2, C16 and any physics text book or technical manual by Fox3. :)

The soupcon of humour makes all the difference, whereas any evidence of a mathematical formula or Mach table, braking action or lapse rate graph means instant sales death as they say! Except where I am the buyer, as I am such a nerd that I lap manuals up with a spoon =))

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Re: Tanker Ops

#28 Post by CharlieOneSix » Sun Oct 07, 2018 8:24 am

Even rotary people sometimes have a go........
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Re: Tanker Ops

#29 Post by Cacophonix » Sun Oct 07, 2018 8:28 am

Look how long they have to make that probe to keep it out of the prop wash!

I assume that helicopter tankers are usually turboprop aircraft? Are there any helicopter tankers C16?

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Re: Tanker Ops

#30 Post by Boac » Sun Oct 07, 2018 8:45 am

The fascinating thing about that footage is that the disk can tilt that far down. I would imagine the subsequent vibration was something!

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Re: Tanker Ops

#31 Post by Cacophonix » Sun Oct 07, 2018 9:12 am

Boac wrote:
Sun Oct 07, 2018 8:45 am
The fascinating thing about that footage is that the disk can tilt that far down. I would imagine the subsequent vibration was something!
I assume the probes are frangible lest they damage the rotor blades in such accidents.

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Re: Tanker Ops

#32 Post by Undried Plum » Sun Oct 07, 2018 9:15 am

Here's a NATO AAR Manual.

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Re: Tanker Ops

#33 Post by Cacophonix » Sun Oct 07, 2018 9:17 am

Undried Plum wrote:
Sun Oct 07, 2018 9:15 am
Here's a NATO AAR Manual.
That's shut me up for the next hour or two! ;)))

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Re: Tanker Ops

#34 Post by CharlieOneSix » Sun Oct 07, 2018 9:25 am

Cacophonix wrote:
Sun Oct 07, 2018 8:28 am
I assume that helicopter tankers are usually turboprop aircraft? Are there any helicopter tankers C16?
Caco - no helicopter tankers as far as I know. I can't see the need for them.

The video caption on that incident says that footage was taken from a KC-135 which surprises me - I wouldn't have thought it would have been happy to fly that slow. C130 Hercules are normally used as shown here - from 2:30 onwards - with these more successful CH-53 refuellings by day and night.
.

.
The Brits don't have this capability. The only refuelling in flight I've done was on a trials unit in 67 when the Wessex HAS3 was fitted with a refuelling point near the cabin. It was to allow you to refuel from a ship such as a frigate which did not have a large enough helideck for the type of helicopter. This is a RAN Sea King doing it - look from 1:50 onwards.
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Re: Tanker Ops

#35 Post by Cacophonix » Sun Oct 07, 2018 9:42 am

Most interesting to see how they hoist the fuel line up. I note that the Sea King is an Aussi machine.

This accident occurred because the weather made it impossible to hook up with the C130 and the US Coast Guard heli was on bingo fuel.

viewtopic.php?f=25&t=3279&p=129976&hili ... rd#p129976

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Re: Tanker Ops

#36 Post by ian16th » Sun Oct 07, 2018 9:48 am

Boac wrote:
Sun Oct 07, 2018 7:11 am
No doubt Fox will have done it, but tanking from a basketed 135 was always a gamble. If the intial pentration was a little too rough a 'ripple' would run up the short length of hose and back down again before you could escape and neatly remove the tip of the Lightning's longish probe. The walls of the 135 crewrooms were decorated with wall-mounted trophies.
214 had a vast collection.

They were found stuck in the drougue when the tanker landed.

An expensive lump of brass.
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Re: Tanker Ops

#37 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Sun Oct 07, 2018 10:30 am

Never tanked off a 135. Tornado wasn't initially cleared, then when Saddam decided to take his summer holiday in Kuwait all sorts of programs were suddenly rushed forward. I got knobbled at some point to fly down, to Alconbury I think, and do the ground positioning checks, which involved putting the jet behind the basket on the boom whilst assorted types took measurements and scratched heads. There was so much to be done that all the test pilots were overwhelmed, and so lots of minor stuff got dished out to junior crews, with those having engineering degrees being knobbled first, and that was me. I did the Havequick Radio trial also, one afternoon, among other things.

Learning AAR on the F3, the long version.

I was on the first ab-initio long course on the F3, and to meet NATO declaration dates we were kicked off to the Squadron without doing AAR on the OCU. As such, our initial training was done by the Squadron navs who done a lot of it, but were not qualified to teach it. The comedy of errors which resulted meant we were the first and last who did not do AAR on the OCU. The recommended technique involved being about 10 foot back, stabilised, with basket quite close to the pointy end, then picking references on the tanker, accelerating to 2 kts overtake, and waiting for the clunk. The basket started off in scan, but then moved up and out due to the big nose and the last 4 feet were outside your fovea. This was similar to the Phantom, but the motion was much bigger. Any attempt to glance across and focus on the probe/basket almost guaranteed you would screw up, and the big movement meant the nav couldn't see the basket till the last couple of feet, at which time a smooth correction was not possible. I had one spokes contact, fortunately no damage, but several guys managed to hit the basket rim hard enough to knock off the dayglow lights which aided night tanking, with one needing an engine change when the light went down the intake. The best was, inevitably, managed by a guy called Crisis. He lost sight of the basket around the nose, but the nav told him to keep moving in anyway, and it would reappear. They noticed there was a problem when the altimeters started filling up with liquid. They'd prodded with the pitot probe on the tip of the nose! It became a standard joke on the Squadron as the alternative fuel gauge; "Head for the tanker, then when your altimeter reaches full.....". The probe and basket were both scrapped, then presented to him on a very nice wooden base at the next Squadron dinner. It certainly wasn't easy, our creamy QFI was the first to break the probe tip off. After a few goes, I started pausing the approach with about 2-3 feet to go, readjusting to put the probe lined up with the inside of the basket rim at about the 10 o'clock position, getting new references on the tanker, then driving in on those. The basket would shift up and out the last bit, and you wouldn't have to look at it. I did the pause by accident the first time after letting the overtake drop off, but after it worked, I did it every time. The only problem (and the reason this technique was originally rejected, I later discovered) was that it was difficult to get the jet to accelerate to 2 kts overtake in only 2 feet. In fact, it couldn't be done smoothly, you needed a lump of throttle to get the beastie moving, then remove the lump a bit quite quickly. Being agricultural, this is my normal throttle technique anyway, so no worries ;)))
A soft contact was more likely to happen. Below about 1 kt overtake, the probe and drogue coupling would only partially engage, which usually resulted in a failure for fuel to flow (so you would just back out and have another go), although occasionally someone would get a stream of fuel over the aircraft. Time to back out sharpish.
The advantage was it was nearly impossible to get a hard contact. Most of the guys ended up using the same technique as me. In all my subsequent tanking I think I only missed first time twice, getting it on the second, and that was in lumpy weather.

This little video has the odd bit of AAR, including the nav's view at 3:11


This next video has quite a bit more
1:52 My style AAR, with a pause at 3 feet. Note the dude centres the basket-probe at 3 foot to go, so it ends up low right but slides in. Lining up as I described above with the probe inside the rim at 10 o'clock puts it dead centre on contact.
3:48 More in contact
5:06 What happens if you do the long approach technique, and glance across in the last moments!


Sisemen

Re: Tanker Ops

#38 Post by Sisemen » Sun Oct 07, 2018 11:45 am

“At the risk of sounding impertinent I must ask Sisemen if he was Fighter/Radar Controller in this whole setup. He always hides his light under a bushel or under his RAF hat.

None of those I’m afraid - Admin Sec :) However, I always took a very keen interest in operational and engineering matters and held a couple of war appointments which put me at the cutting edge of things. That all gave me a certain kudos with the non-Admin guys as they recognised that I was not the usual “handbrake house” material :D

Once I left I found myself head hunted for a job where the hook was to pay for me for flying training and the rest is history!

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Re: Tanker Ops

#39 Post by Undried Plum » Sun Oct 07, 2018 11:45 am

Ah! So that's how it's done.

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Re: Tanker Ops

#40 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Sun Oct 07, 2018 12:00 pm

I thought someone would spot that!

Actually, I think that may have been an in-joke, as one of the pilots, possibly the one driving in this clip, used to be a F3 backseater (one of mine, in fact), so all his comments about pilots being useless without navs being there to do everything were now being repeated back to him.

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