Hulver's site || Merely a front for the hole

Diaries
Everything
Who's Online?
FAQ / Help

So I'm sitting in a chair rigged with enough explosives...

Working life

By kwsNI (Mon Jan 15, 2007 at 10:39:25 AM EST) Things that go boom (all tags)

...to make me a smear on the ceiling 60' above, and it occurs to me I didn't see that part in the job description.

So I've spent most of the last two weeks sitting in the cockpit of the first EA-18G test aircraft doing EW-type stuffs in an anechoic chamber. If you're not familiar with the EA-18G, it's an Electronic Attack derivative of the F/A-18F that should be deployed by 2009. There are currently 2 test aircraft doing developmental flight test at the naval test facility in Maryland.

So yeah, works actually been pretty damned cool lately. Been fun learning how to actually turn all the systems on, align the INS, load the libraries, turn on the transmitters, etc. I can even lay claim to being the first person to detect a signal and jam it in an EA-18.

So there's all the excitement in my life. Post this bitch so I can go to lunch.

P.S.: With all the pilots and other stuff we have on this site, why the hell is there no "Planes" topic? How do Furries rate a topic but no planes?

< what a dull dull life i lead | BBC White season: 'Rivers of Blood' >

Login

Poll

Votes: 5
Results	\|	Other Polls

Related Links

- EA-18G
- kwsNI's Diary

Google

Comment Controls

So I'm sitting in a chair rigged with enough explosives... | 8 comments (8 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback

pretty cool. by garlic (4.00 / 1) #1 Mon Jan 15, 2007 at 10:43:15 AM EST

I'm pretty happy just testing our systems in the lab, especially since I don't have to travel that way.

I've done my share of lab test by kwsNI (2.00 / 0) #5 Mon Jan 15, 2007 at 12:55:41 PM EST

It's just not the same. Besides all of the problems that don't happen in the lab until you put it on a real aircraft with real aircraft power, cooling, wiring, nav systems, etc... it's the environment that's radically different for me.

Not sure if you've ever been in an anechoic chamber, but it's very eerie. It's a HUGE hangar (large enough for a C-17 or to hang two F/A-18s from the ceiling). The floor, walls, ceiling, everything is covered in anechoic spikes that not only absorb all RF but most sound as well. There's no echoes, you typically can't hear a person talking to you if they aren't looking at you, even from a few feet away.

The really disconcerting part is when you go out to test. Since we're actually radiating high-powered jammers, there's no one in the chamber at all. You step into it alone and press the seal buttons on all the doors. These giant metal doors fly into place and pressurize behind you. Then you walk along the small foam path to the aircraft, ascend the little ladder that drops from the leading edge of the wing, climb into the cockpit, jack in your headset, put in the mission card, settle in and power everything up. Then you shut the canopy around you and you're locked in an aircraft in a sealed hangar that looks like a spiked room you'd find in a martial arts death match movie. Then you fill the chamber with deadly quantities of RF radiation.

In all honesty, I don't feel the danger in doing it. The scariest part of the job is finding the top step of the ladder 15' off the deck while you're hanging on outside the cockpit with your notes and a headset in your hands. It's more a sureal feeling of "how the hell did I get this job?" that gets to me every time. That and being in sole control of a hundred-million dollar weapon...

[ Parent ]

: we have an anechoic chamber on site by garlic (2.00 / 0) #7 Mon Jan 15, 2007 at 01:44:24 PM EST

for antenna testing, and they obviously have been doing anechoic testing for our plane. Being the hardware guy instead of the systems guys means I don't have a lot to do with that. Certainly a cool thing, but I prefer the airforce coming here and running the tests here. The biggest danger I run into day to day is that I'll drop a signal generator or spectrum analyzer on my foot if I'm moving it by myself.

[ Parent ]

Not in the job description... by wiredog (4.00 / 1) #2 Mon Jan 15, 2007 at 10:47:12 AM EST

About, oh, 10 years ago, when I was debugging an automated hoist in a plating shop in Oklahoma (where the wind goes whistlin' down the plains), in August during a heat wave, by hanging from the hoist with a variety of test equipment while it was parked over a tank of acid, I thought to myself: "Hmmm. Somehow my college professors never mentioned that programming could involve this."

That was a fun job.

Earth First!
_{(We can strip mine the rest later.)}

: Yeah by kwsNI (2.00 / 0) #6 Mon Jan 15, 2007 at 12:57:45 PM EST

I don't think it ever really occured to me that doing this type of job could ever be considered exciting. It's damned fun, just not something you really think you'll do in college.

[ Parent ]

8 or so years ago by sasquatchan (4.00 / 1) #3 Mon Jan 15, 2007 at 11:29:13 AM EST

I worked as a contractor at NASA, and did Boeing 757 simulator coding. Since I wasn't an aerospace engineer, I got the task of making all the controls, dials and gauges in the simulator working. Thus, I was always in the simulator flying. Great fun. Since the work I did was well before the video/visuals were in place, I can say proudly I could fly (takeoff, land, fly a course) a 757 blindfolded (well, almost...).. Alas, I left before the video and motion base were setup.

In the same facility (and same team), there was a dual f something (14? 15?) domed fighter setup, but I never got to fly those. There was another 757 cockpit with video and radically different controls that I was able to fly some. And the F something RPV -- remote piloted vehicle, or as we called, the drop model -- where they'd try lots of crazy maneuvers that they would never do with a real pilot and real plane.

: Before this by kwsNI (4.00 / 1) #4 Mon Jan 15, 2007 at 12:32:27 PM EST

I was actually doing the integration work for the main situational awareness displays and the comm EW gear, so part of my job was designing the operator interface. We'd bring in aircrew to test it in our flight sim, so I spent hundreds of hours working with the sim coders on making the flight sim work just like the real system. It also involved me spending hundreds of hours flying the flight sim models around making sure things behaved properly. Most of that was in one of the big dome flight sims. I've also made a few dozen sim carrier traps in the domes.

[ Parent ]

Mmmm, Furries by Phage (2.00 / 0) #8 Tue Jan 16, 2007 at 03:41:19 AM EST

I thought it was a rocket engine rather than a simple charge ? Not that it would make any difference to the end result if you set it off in a hangar.

Founder member Golgafrinchan 'B' Ark

So I'm sitting in a chair rigged with enough explosives... | 8 comments (8 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback