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August 25, 2006 Vol. 77, no.
2F
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| HOTSEAT: ME senior Ryan Youtsey in the cockpit an F/A-18 Hornet during his Navy ROTC training. PHOTO PROVIDED BY RYAN YOUTSEY
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Not your typical summer job
A column about the engineering life penned by and for students
Below is a column in an occasional student essay series on the engineering life. Not your typical summer job is written by ME senior Ryan Youtsey, a midshipman in Berkeley’s Navy ROTC (NROTC) program. Every summer midshipmen participate in some kind of training.
Most engineering students spend their summer interning. My summer was different: I spent a month attached to an F/A-18 Hornet squad-ron, the VFA-125 “Rough Raiders.”
My first assignment was in Norfolk, Virginia, aboard the USS Roosevelt. This Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is 1,100 feet long with a crew of 5,000+ when fully loaded. I spent most of the time working in our squadron’s “Ready Room,” recording landing passes, preparing the board that displays the flight plans to the pilots, filling out air plans at the end of the day and hearing the planes constantly pound over our heads (we were located right below the flight deck). My reward for working 12-hour days was the opportunity to fly in the backseat with one of the flight instructors.
A carrier isn’t long enough for planes to take off or land, so for takeoff, it utilizes a variable force, steam-driven catapult to accelerate the aircraft. F/A-18s are catapulted from 0 to 185 mph in 2.3 seconds. During landing, the plane drops its tailhook to catch one of four wires, each connected to a forty-foot-wide arresting gear. We brought the plane to full power upon touchdown in case we missed the wires and had to take off again. Fortunately we caught one, throwing us forward in the seats as we decelerated from 160 to 0 mph in two seconds. It was the most extreme ride of my life.
In Lemoore, California on my next assignment, I got to fly in the backseat on three flights: a strike (bombing) mission and two Low Altitude Training (LAT) sorties. On the strike, we selected our targets, then rolled in, inverted, to a 70-degree dive. After dropping our practice bombs, which exploded with a small puff of smoke, we pulled up at 7 G’s and hit the afterburners to get back up to altitude, using over 40,000 pounds of thrust. On the LATs, we flew 485 mph at 200 feet over the desert, twisting inside canyons and ravines until we got to the flatland, where we executed high-G evasive maneuvers right off the floor. When we returned, we were drenched in sweat from the intense heat in the cockpit and from flexing our lower bodies to prevent ourselves from blacking out.
As engineers, we learn about turbines, thrust, and acceleration, but to be in a jet and feel the power as the afterburners ignite and feel the strain while pulling G’s was an incredible experience. I gained a new respect for the aircraft’s design and the Hornet pilots. After all those years of watching “Top Gun,” I finally got to experience a little bit of the real thing. It was unforgettable.
—Have a comment? Write to Youtsey at ryoutsey@berkeley.edu
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