ADA Tejas (LCA) News and Discussions

[WARREN SS]

Please post source for both to support your claim.

http://www.f-16.net/fleet-reports_article10.html

 

[shiphone]

recently LM claimed even much longer 'life' after a 28000 hours Durability Testing

------------
older news at 27000 hours of last Nov...

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/ne...pletes-f-16-durability-testing-milestone.html

Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) completed more than 27,000 hours of simulated flight time on an F-16C Block 50 aircraft and is now analyzing the data to determine the durability of the aircraft beyond its original design service life of 8,000 hours.

The durability test results will be used to help design and verify Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) structural modifications for post-Block 40 F-16s and to support F-16 service life certification to at least 12,000 EFH. The SLEP aims to extend the service life of up to 300 F-16C/D Block 40-52 aircraft.

 

[garg_bharat]

I doubt LCA has a airframe life of 1000 hours. Never heard a CAG report mentioning such a lifespan.

Test airframes may have been discarded after less use but that may have nothing to do with standardized production models.

I think this 1000h is speculation.

 

[Indx TechStyle]

1000 hours is not only low, it's tiny!
Can somebody get any official figure on the thread?

 

[aditya10r]

Report Mentioned It Is 1000 hours that Pretty Low

you gotta be shitting
such low service is like super small
and please post the link of the report

 

[abingdonboy]

What is Service Life of LCA air frame.CAG Report Mentioned It Is 1000 hours that Pretty Low

1000 hours? That's an utter fabrication brother. Considering the F404 engine has a total life of 4000h, is 1 engine is going to serve 4 airframes in its life?

This just isn't anything close to reality especially consdiering composites (that make up much of the LCA's airframe) are longer lasting than steel used in previous generations.

 

[WARREN SS]

I doubt LCA has a airframe life of 1000 hours. Never heard a CAG report mentioning such a lifespan.

Test airframes may have been discarded after less use but that may have nothing to do with standardized production models.

I think this 1000h is speculation.

I was Just Viewing PDF a Mod Posted It there

 

[WARREN SS]

1000 hours? That's an utter fabrication brother. Considering the F404 engine has a total life of 4000h, is 1 engine is going to serve 4 airframes in its life?

This just isn't anything close to reality especially consdiering composites (that make up much of the LCA's airframe) are longer lasting than steel used in previous generations.

Just Check CAG Audit Report

 

[aditya10r]

public's money well wasted
now i am worried about amca

 

[garg_bharat]

The CAG does not say that aircraft life is 1000 hours. It only says that fatigue test is not performed, so aircraft usage is limited to 1000 hours as a precaution.

This situation may be tolerable for test units. However this test may have been performed subsequent to this audit.

It is needed for foc.

It is well known that HAL was going slow on Tejas project, and current government has pushed hard. If this fighter reaches production it will be purely due to effort of current defence minister.

There are powerful lobbies involving serving and retired IAF officers, and including HAL senior officers who have vested interest in continued imports of fighters.

 

[HariPrasad-1]

@ersakthivel sir is it possible to bring the weight of LCA MK1a in its current form to 3.5 tons which is now 5.5 if we increase the composites to 70%?

No since the composite forms surface only which may weigh 1 to 1.5 tons/ You may save at the most 100 kg by applying more composite in surface. main weight reduction should come from slashing landing gear and other over engineered LRUs. Merging of ore LRUs is also planned to reduce the parts and so as the weight.

 

[garg_bharat]

What is the Service Life if Airframe LCA ???

My guess is design figure should be 6000h. We should know for sure when FOC documents come out.

 

[Kunal Biswas]

The very early prototypes are here at question, Not Limited Production Variants or Latest ones ..

 

[Chinmoy]

Is this been posted earlier???

http://www.tejas.gov.in/featured_articles/air_marshal_rajkumar/page_01.html


4 January 2001
I woke up at 5:30 a.m. with a feeling which was a strange mixture of anticipation, confidence and a vague fear of the unknown. A lot was at stake for Indian aeronautics that day. It was the day the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), Technology Demonstrator-1 (TD-1) was to take to the air for the first time, and I, as the man in charge of the flight test programme, was responsible for the safety of the test flight. The telephone rang at 6:30 a.m. It was Dr Kota Harinarayana, the Programme Director, confirming that the aircraft had completed its pre-flight checks and was being towed to the flight line. Though the planned take-off was at 10 a.m., the flight briefing was to start at 8 a.m. I raced to the National Flight Test Centre (NFTC) located at the HAL airport, Bengaluru.


Shortly after I got there, Dr V.K. Aatre, Scientific Adviser to the Raksha Mantri and Director-General, Aeronautical Development Agency, Dr Kota, and Mr K. Nagraj, Chief Executive of the Centre for Military Airworthiness and Certification arrived. I had requested the Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), Air Chief Marshal Anil Tipnis, to be at NFTC by 7:45 a.m. for the briefing as he was going to pilot one of the two Mirage 2000 chase aircraft. He arrived five minutes early, and after a quick pre-flight medical conducted by Sqn. Ldr. Anjali Alam of the Institute of Aerospace Medicine, for the five pilots involved in the day's flying, we assembled in the briefing room.


42 year-old Wg. Cdr. Rajiv Kothiyal (Kothi), a graduate of the United States Air Force Test Pilots School, was the pilot chosen for the hazardous mission. Hazardous, not because of negligence on any one's part, but because of the many new technologies in the aircraft, especially the quadruplex digital fly-by-wire Flight Control System (FCS) and the 'glass' cockpit, both of which had been developed indigenously for the first time.


The briefing began and Kothi did not show any sign of nervousness. In fact, he exuded an air of quiet confidence as he described the flight profile and told the crew of the two chase aircraft, what exactly he expected of them in the event of an in-flight emergency. We ran through an elaborate list of emergencies that could occur and discussed the action to be taken for each eventuality. Two helicopter crews were also present; one was to be on airborne standby with a doctor on board and one on the ground. The weather was fine with cloudless skies and light winds. Ideal conditions for the first flight of a prototype.


I went with Kothi to the flight line where the aircraft was parked. It was all white as prototype aircraft are usually painted in a high visibility paint scheme for ease of optical tracking. It looked beautiful and had IAF roundels on its wings and the tricolour flash on the tail fin. The tail number was KH 2001 in honour of Dr Kota Harinarayana and the year of the first flight.


Though no official announcement of the first flight had been made, HAL and ADA personnel had thronged vantage points on the roofs of surrounding buildings not wanting to miss watching Indian aviation history being made. Kothi finished his walk around inspection of the aircraft and I said 'Kothi, we have done our homework well. The flight controls and all systems have behaved perfectly during the ground tests and high speed taxi runs. You shouldn't have a problem. Best of luck.' Of course my heart was in my mouth as I spoke but I did not let my feelings show. Dr Kota also came and wished Kothiyal the very best. A number of VIPs who were not present at the briefing had gone straight to the viewing point by the side of the runway.


I rushed back to the telemetry monitoring control room and positioned myself next to Wg. Cdr. Raveendran (Ravi), the test director who was in front of the master monitoring console. Ravi was a Flight Test Engineer who had graduated from the Ecole du Personnel Navigant d'Essais et de Reception (EPNER) France and had spent six years in the LCA programme. He had profound knowledge of every system on the aircraft. The prototype was extensively instrumented with 400 parameters being acquired from critical systems and telemetered in real time to the ground station. A further 800 parameters were being acquired and stored in a tape recorder on board. We had 16 monitoring consoles in the room, each console manned by a systems specialist keeping a watchful eye on the performance of his or her system. The engine, fuel, hydraulics, electrics, environmental control, brakes, flight control system, vibrations and strains at critical locations on the airframe were being monitored for the flight. Video cameras located with the telemetry antenna gave the test director a good view of the aircraft on the flight line as well as the runway in use and the approach funnel. None of the other specialists could see the video screen and all the curtains were drawn to permit them to concentrate on monitoring the performance of their system, and to report immediately any anomaly noticed to the test director on the intercom.
Air Marshal J. S. Rai, the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Training Command, IAF walked into the room and sat down next to me. I ordered the door to be closed and looked at my watch. It was 9:15 a.m. The radio crackled to life and Kothi's voice came over the air asking Ravi to start the pre-flight checks. Shortly thereafter he started the GE F 404 engine and all the monitoring consoles came alive with system indications. The two Mirage 2000 chase aircraft, the primary chase aircraft piloted by Wg. Cdr. Raghunathan Nambiar (Nambi), also started up. The after-start checks, radio checks with the chase aircraft and the Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower went through without a hitch, but took 30 minutes. Only the final hurdle remained.

All aircraft fitted with fly-by-wire flight control systems have to perform an automatic Pilot (initiated) Built In Test (PBIT) of the system after engine start. This required a button to be pressed by the pilot after which the flight control computer took over and ran through a pre-programmed sequence of tests at the end of which a green GO lamp flashed in the cockpit. In an aircraft in service it took about a minute. In a prototype it was more elaborate and took 10-12 minutes. When Kothi initiated the test, I kept my fingers crossed as we had had test failures in the past. A first time failure of the PBIT to pass would call for a repeat of the test. A second-time failure would require the test flight to be aborted for the day. The airfield had been closed only for an hour from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. and it was already 9:47 a.m. The minutes went by with agonizing slowness and after what seemed an eternity, to my great elation I saw the green GO lamp shining on the aircraft's main instrument console. Kothi asked for taxi instructions from the ATC tower. It was exactly 10 a.m.

On the video screen I saw the two Mirages move out of the parking area and enter the taxi track. The LCA followed them. The east-facing Runway 09 was in use and Kothi headed for the line up point. It was a glorious sight to behold! Blue skies, bright sunshine and the LCA in gleaming white, majestically rolling down the taxi track with thousands of people watching from the rooftops of every building in sight. As the aircraft neared the runway the brake specialist called out a failure in one of the two control lanes available in the brake by wire system. Ravi looked at me for a decision and I flashed him a thumbs up sign as I was aware of the redundancies available to bring the aircraft to a stop on the landing roll. After a final check of the aircraft by the wheels and tyres check team, Kothiyal took permission and entered the live runway.

The two Mirages were airborne by this time, but Kothi could roll only when Nambi gave him a radio call to do so, indicating that he was correctly positioned to quickly join up with the prototype after it got airborne.

Kothi opened full power on the engine and did a final check of the flight controls. All 16 specialists confirmed to Ravi that all systems were 'GO' and Ravi cleared Kothi to roll. Nambi's call came and Kothi released brakes. I saw the aircraft accelerate rapidly down the runway. Kothi called 'Rotating' and raised the nose wheel. Seconds later the LCA lifted off gracefully. It was 10:18 a.m. The next few seconds would tell us whether the years of toil Team LCA had put in developing the FCS would come to naught or not. Kothi's call 'And climbing' set those fears at rest as we now knew the FCS was working as it should.

I was just about to begin breathing normally when the telemetry auto tracking system failed and all 16 screens started showing erroneous readings. There was no way of knowing what was happening in the innards of the aircraft! Ravi asked, 'Shall I call him back?' Chase aircraft are provided to enable the test team to cope with such eventualities. I said 'Tell Nambi to move into close formation and check the aircraft for fuel and hydraulic leaks or other signs of abnormal behaviour'. Kothi said that his cockpit readings were fine and the aircraft was flying normally. Nambi reported no sign of any abnormality. I decided to continue with the planned flight profile and told Ravi to inform the pilot of my decision. Kothi agreed with me and continued with the flight. I aged a lot in those few seconds!

The flight profile called for a climb to 3 km (10000 ft), a slow down to approach speed, a practice circuit at that height, some gentle turns and a return to base. The wheels were left in the down and locked position throughout as aircraft wheels are the only known objects in the physical world which do not obey Newton's law of gravitation! Sometimes they go up and don't come down and we did not want that kind of excitement on the first flight!!

Kothi flew the planned profile and said the aircraft was behaving more or less in the same way as it did in the simulator on which he had practiced the profile over and over again for the past few weeks. Soon it was time to land and Kothi positioned himself on a 10 km long straight-in approach to Runway 09. When he was about three minutes away on approach, the telemetry antenna locked on to the aircraft and data reappeared on the screens. Ravi asked the systems specialists to confirm that all was normal, and to my great relief and everyone else's they reported all systems were GO.

We saw the LCA with the two Mirages escorting it appear on the video screen. It was a sight which will remain etched in my memory for the rest of my life. Everyone tensed up as the crucial first landing was about to take place. Kothi's voice remained calm when he asked ATC for landing instructions. He flew a steady approach, flared the aircraft over the runway and executed a flawless touch down on the main wheels. He lowered the nose wheel on to the runway and deployed the tail chute. The Mirages came down low and did a go around. As the aircraft slowed down to taxiing speed, he jettisoned the chute and turned off the live runway. The time was 10:36 a.m. The first flight had lasted only 18 minutes but heralded a renaissance of Indian aeronautics that will enable this country to assume its rightful place amongst the aeronautical powers of the world in the years to come.

As Kothi parked the aircraft and switched off the engine, there were wild scenes of jubilation amongst the HAL and ADA personnel. Someone even held the Tricolour aloft symbolizing a moment of national pride. When Kothi came down the ladder he was mobbed by the workers and carried on their shoulders for some distance. A huge gathering of VIPs thrust their way forward, each one intent on marking his presence in the photographs which were being shot by the hundreds. After considerable effort I was able to go up to Kothi and shake his hand!

At the debriefing session the room was crowded with the who's who of Indian aeronautics. Kothi was congratulated by the Raksha Mantri George Fernandes and the CAS. We looked at the video camera footage shot from the chase aircraft and the data captured on the telemetry screens during the all important take-off and landing phases of flight. Every system on board the aircraft had worked perfectly. It is a mandatory requirement in test flying to list out all anomalies noticed, from engine start to shut down to enable the designers and technicians to take remedial action and clear the aircraft for the next test flight. When Kothi filled in the snag sheet he wrote 'Nil snags'. There could have been no more fitting tribute to the professionalism, industry and dedication of Team LCA and it was my privilege to have been part of that team.

After the debriefing was over, Dr Kota told me that ADA personnel were waiting for Kothi and me to go to ADA. When we drove to the ADA entrance gate, a huge crowd of ADA personnel, both men and women were waiting for us with garlands. As we got out of the car, crackers went off and both Kothi and I were carried on the shoulders of excited men all the way from the gate to the porch which was a distance of about 75 yards. It was an unforgettable experience!
Later that day I ordered an investigation into the telemetry problem. It turned out that a software technology park in Bengaluru had been using the precise frequency on which the LCA telemetry signal was being transmitted. The telemetry auto track antenna had locked on to the signal, as it was stronger than that of the LCA. We were blissfully unaware of this misuse of our frequency!

After Kothi had flown the first six flights, I sent in his nomination for the prestigious Iven C. Kincheloe Award to the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP) in the USA. The SETP gives this award every year for the most significant achievement in experimental test flying during the year under consideration. Very few in India seemed to have realized the significance of the achievement of safely flying a prototype with so many new technologies on board. However, the SETP awards committee which consisted of a group of very experienced test pilots who had seen many programmes worldwide thought differently and had no hesitation in giving the Iven Kinchloe Award for the year 2001 to Rajiv Kothiyal. I was very happy that Team LCA's monumental effort had. been recognized by a bunch of hard-nosed professionals.

No Indian test pilot has ever received this award in the past. Without exaggeration, the Iven Kinchloe Award can be called the 'Oscar' for experimental test flying. In the finest traditions of the IAF, Wg. Cdr. Rajiv Kothiyal had truly touched the skies with glory.

*The above is an extract from Air Marshal Rajkumar's book 'The Tejas Story'

 

[Chinmoy]

Another good read.....

http://www.tejas.gov.in/featured_articles/dr_kota_harinarayana/page_01.html

 

[Chinmoy]

For people who crib too much on the delay faced by Tejas.........

http://www.tejas.gov.in/featured_articles/dr_kota_harinarayana/page_01.html

http://www.tejas.gov.in/featured_articles/air_marshal_msd_wollen/page_01.html

 

[Chinmoy]

Just Check CAG Audit Report
View attachment 8409

Lets do a small maths regarding the flight time of Tejas. The internal fuel capacity of Tejas is that of 3000ltr or 3000kg. Now the GE F404 engine does use 82.6kg of fuel per kn h i.e to produce 1kn of force for 1 hr it would require 82.6 kg of fuel. This too is military thrust and not the thrust we get in after burner. At this rate in 1 hr of flight time with a Dry Thrust of 48.9 Kn (which F404 produces) it would consume 4000lts of fuel. So it is safe to assume that per day one Tejas would see a sortie of max 30 mins in normal condition.

Now assuming this normal condition where one Tejas would undertake one sortie in clean configuration per day, we could say that it would not be more then 30 mins. It means it would complete 1 hr of flight time in 2 days. Now lets assume that it takes one sortie per day daily for a whole day (very unlikely), then in 365 days it would clock a total flight time of 182.5 hrs. That means in order to complete the afore mentioned 1000 hrs of flight time it would have to fly daily for 30 mins continuously for 5+ years.

Now in the link which I've posted

http://www.tejas.gov.in/featured_articles/air_marshal_msd_wollen/page_01.html

it is clearly mentioned that to get IOC Tejas had to clock 2000 flight hrs and doing this in 4 years is nearly impossible as per Air Marshal Wollen. So we could assume from the above calculation that 1000 flight hrs means a service life of atleast 10 years.

Now again this 1000 hrs is what ADA and HAL had given based on their untested models for the sake of their own safety. Given the amount of composites used in comparison to metal, in the airframe, an assumption of 2000 flight hrs as per me would not be something improbable. It means we could safely assume a life cycle of 15-20 yrs per Tejas without any major overhauling. 15/20 yrs for a first time fighter is not bad if not exceptional.

Corrections are most welcome.......

 

[Zebra]

Just Check CAG Audit Report
View attachment 8409

If they can't "determind" the life of airframe at this stage , does it make any difference in actual life of Tejas airframe...........!

The moment they gonna figure it out , they will correct it again.

And we all will know actual airframe life.

No big deal in it.

 

[BON PLAN]

No since the composite forms surface only which may weigh 1 to 1.5 tons/ You may save at the most 100 kg by applying more composite in surface. main weight reduction should come from slashing landing gear and other over engineered LRUs. Merging of ore LRUs is also planned to reduce the parts and so as the weight.

You can thank Eurofighter's specialist who helped you to studied LCA ! Nice job.

 

[Abhishek Shrivastava]

NLCA was in full testing mode this month,

NP1: 61 total test flight

NP2: 27 total test flight