posted on Sep, 22 2004 @ 04:13 PM
This is remembered from a long gone issue of Air International, but the issue was flight low control gains dramatically and with no blend in point of
action made the pitch rate of the aircraft in degrees per second 3 or more times quicker in gear up position compared to gear down, he was in the
process of lighting the afterburners, raising the gear and pitching up. The laws when gear down said just a few degrees per second as the gear might
be damaged or the aircraft stall. But as soon as that switch was turned it went to full pitch for the same stick pressure as what was needed
subjectively for that moderate climb it leaped nose up forcing the pilot to automatically try to correct for that. Because of the was an equally high
pitch down control at gear up the thing naturally went down quick, forching the control system to mix max sorface movement per second, but he still
managed to get it down so he could belly land it safely. A good pilot can do that, and Tom Morgenfeld had been around a lot of years, including a
harrowing no nosewheel landing in a prototype F-117 at Groom Lake.
It was a software glitch, he was exonerated from causing the accident.