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Harvard Heaven Flying aerobatics in a WWII classic AT-6 Harvard April 26, 1998. A lifelong dream is fulfilled today. I flew aerobatics in a real WWII aircraft. No, it wasn't a Spitfire or P-51 Mustang or F4U Corsair. It was an AT-6 Harvard (we call them Harvards in Canada; they're referred to as Texans in the US). Ever since I was a kid, I've loved the Harvard. The distinctive growl of the huge 9-foot prop has always stood out. Watching some of the great Harvard pilots like Bud Granley handle this piece of Canadian aviation history was one of the major influences that inspired me to fly. This aircraft was the backbone of the training regimen for aviators throughout the Second World War and long after, especially for the Royal Canadian Air Force. Handling the controls of a real one and taking it through loops, rolls, and Cuban Eights was the experience of a lifetime for me. The sky was clearing up, with a cloud ceiling of about 5,000 feet by the time I checked into "Air Combat Experience" at Boundary Bay airport near Vancouver. ACE has two of the Harvards, beautifully restored with radar weapons for air combat, a propane-powered simulated Browning machine gun on the starboard wing, and two cameras. The one I flew, a Mark II model, was dubbed "Dream Weaver," bearing an ident of Fox Victor Charlie Juliette. Dream Weaver's aircraft number is AJ958. It was put into service January 17, 1942. All alone up front Briefings were especially important. Unlike the Marchetti trainers used by most air combat centers, the Harvard does not have the pilots sitting side by side. You're all alone in the front cockpit, with the instructor pilot behind you. Not only is his visibility seriously limited, but he does not have access to several vital controls such as gear lever, carb heat, transponder, radio, trim tabs, or even fuel mixture lockouts. The aircraft even has to be started from the front seat! A half-hour classroom lecture covered such things as radio frequencies and usage of the front-only controls, as well as some maneuvering and aircraft handling issues. Like all trainers, the Harvard is rather underpowered for its size. The 2.5-ton aircraft is powered by a Pratt & Whitney 600hp radial engine with gravity-based carberator. Do the maneuvers wrong and the engine immediately dies from fuel starvation. Next came a half hour cockpit orientation after a walkaround inspection. My instructor, Don Richardson, went over the controls in detail. I buckled up and he walked me through the procedure for starting the aircraft. After several minutes warming up the plane, we called for ATIS info, then ground control, then I dialed up the tower frequency. The Harvard is a tail dragger, so you can't see the runway in front of you. Don's view was even more limited than mine. We wove towards the flight line, waited for traffic, then lined up on runway 120 for the takeoff roll. Canopies were pulled closed and Don poured on full throttle. About one third of the way down the runway the tail started coming up and I had some forward visibility. Before long we were airborne. Don called "Wheels Up!" and I unlocked the gear lever on my left side. We went feet wet to perform our maneuvers in a relatively clear patch of sky over the Juan de Fuca Stait. Don announced, "The aircraft is yours." For the first time in my life, I was controlling a WWII aircraft.
This is no flight simulator! It took me quite some time to get used to the aircraft. The Harvard is large and heavy--a far cry from the light Piper Cherokee I took up on my very first flight. While the stick is much more responsive than the Cherokee's yoke, It takes a lot of effort to move the aircraft around up there. Even responding to wind variances was quite a bit harder. I set the elevator trim, and still the aircraft required constant work; you could never really relax like you can with a more modern aircraft. I made some gentle turns then pulled some much higher-G turns to about 60 degrees angle of bank. I immediately noticed how hard it was to keep the nose up during these turns. You have to apply a surprising amount of back pressure to the stick to keep the nose from dropping, almost putting it in your lap. The G-forces are an element you can't experience in a simulator! The next thing that got my attention was the age of the instruments. They were old, and response time on the vertical velocity indicator and the magnetic compass rendered them virtually useless. Don told me that he had turned the gyros off because there is no point to using those old analog instruments anyway. We were exceeding the parameters of these instruments and the only reliable instrument for aerobatics was the Mark I Eyeball. Nevertheless, I was so used to flying by instruments through hundreds of hours of flight simulator time that I found the habit very hard to break! Aerobatics Time Don walked me through a loop, then it was my turn. The Harvard requires just over 180 knots for a loop, and since you can't get there flying level, you have to drop the nose 20 degrees to gain speed before you start the loop. Nose down. Watch airspeed and altitude. 185, still above 3500 feet. Nose level, then pull back, hard. Keep the stick back, keep it back while grunting through the Gees. Check horizon out the side, but don't forget to keep it level by watching over your head. When inverted ease back just a little, then when the nose drops pull back and feel those Gees build once again. The engine coughs and sputters at the top and I know I eased back a little too much, trying to avoid an egg-shaped loop. This is hard work! My respect for Bud Granley begins to rise several orders of magnitude. Watching the instruments instead of the horizon I came out at a different heading. This was harder than I had expected. Even the G forces--somewhere between three and four gees, were a unique experience, quite unlike anything I had ever felt before. With all these issues to think about at once, it took me several attempts before I learned to use visual cues and finally made an acceptable loop. Flying by instruments kept blowing my loops. One of them even converted to a snap roll at the top and Don quickly took the controls to avoid a more serious spin. I was filled with emotions. Joy. Nervousness. Excitement. My brain trying to assimilate everything at once: technique, heading, altitude, speed, watching for other aircraft, clouds which might cause carberator icing. Although I knew Don was thinking about those things and more, I felt responsible all alone in that front cockpit, and it filled me with elation, wonder, and a kind of fear at the same time. After I more or less perfected the loop (still far from perfect, but certainly an 80% rating), we tried rolls. These I mastered very quickly and easily. Unlike flight simulators, you cannot fly a roll in a real aircraft without losing altitude. What you do is compensate by banking up about 25 degrees then neutralizing the controls and then slamming the stick all the way to the left stop and holding it there. When you come out you are banked down about 10 degrees and bring the nose up, ideally at the same altitude you were at when you started. Rolls were easy. Don wanted me to try a barrel roll. He showed me two of them, but they were so disorienting that I didn't feel comfortable trying one on my own. So we moved on to a Cuban Eight and Reverse Cuban Eight. The Reverse was again quite easy and I did mine almost perfectly. The standard Cuban Eight was harder for some reason.
High speed break By this time I was glad that I'd signed up for an entire hour, because I realized it took half that time just to get rid of flight simulator based instrument flying and learn to read the horizon. Only the last few maneuvers were decent ones. I did a couple more loops to assure myself that I knew what I was doing, and it was time to head in. Don directed me back to the approach pattern. Since traffic was light, the tower gave permission for a high speed break maneuver which Don flew at 1000 feet just to the right of the runway. After seeing for myself how hard it was to keep the nose up during hard turns, I could not believe how well Don controlled the aircraft at this speed and altitude. In the turn I dropped the gear to help reduce speed and we quickly arrived back on the landing approach for a beautiful touchdown. I switched back to ground control which gave us taxi instructions. Don let me taxi back to the parking space, and again I found the Harvard a heavy beast requiring a surprising amount of rudder pressure to weave back and forth over the dotted line. It was hard to come home. |
the joy of flying |
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