Love flying the mean machine: Tejas test pilot

[Anony]

He dazzled the audience with twists, turns and somersaults from the cockpit of the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas. With Group Capt Suneet Krishna at the controls of the aircraft, delays by its manufacturing agencies were forgotten.

The man who flew the Tejas on the first day of Aero India 2013 on Wednesday, Suneet has been a fighter pilot with the Indian Air Force for 23 years. He recently joined the ADA as a test pilot.

“The LCA Tejas is a very different aircraft from most others used by the Indian Air Force. Years of flying it gives me tremendous confidence now. And yes, I love my job,” said Suneet, one of the six test pilots for the LCA in the country.

Suneet first flew an LCA in 2002, barely a year after the project took shape. A lot has changed since then, he said. “We practiced flying the LCA using simulators for years. And as the aircraft developed, data from the flights were transferred to the stimulators, which equipped us better to fly the plane,” said the pilot who has flown over 300 hours on the LCA.

The technology used in the plane can’t be described as anything but state-of-the-art, he said.

“It has a full glass cockpit and comes with modern avionics and seven displays. It also has a sophisticated computer with Helmet Mounted Display System which allows pilots to access all the information on their visors,” Suneet said.

Then there are other cool features that come in the latest edition of the LCA Tejas, like Russian air-to-air missile as well as conventional bombs.

“Everything is a test till the system is perfected,” said Suneet, about the recent failure of the LCA in high-altitude tests. “We didn’t fail but we found faults and now we can make the system better,” he added.

The former fighter pilot said the ground pressure refuelling system has been integrated in the latest models of the LCA since 2012, which allows the fuel tank of the plane to be filled in about five minutes, unlike the older models which took more than 30 minutes to fill up fuel on ground.

“It’s a great plane and I love flying it,” he added.

The LCA Tejas is set to get IOC 2 clearance by the end of 2013. Air Force officials expect the plane to be integrated into its fleet by 2015.

 

[Ayush]

Good wine takes time and tastes better too.