Experience the Power and Manoeuvrability of Eurofighter Typhoon

What's it like to fly a jet at one of the largest airshows in the world? Recently I had the chance to find out when talking to Noble at the Royal International Air Tattoo. Noble is a pilot of TLG-74, that's Taktische Luftwaffengeschwader 74, of the Luftwaffe and he is basically the unofficial display pilot for Germany. He flies the Eurofighter, or Typhoon if you're British. Airshows are not just a great place to see dramatic flight displays, but they also function as a way to show off piloting skills and the capabilities of fighter jets. In fact, during the Cold War many technological leaps were shown off during public displays at one of the main shows, making these appearances as political as they are about entertainment. While displays always focus heavily on manoeuvrability, nowadays we once again see more and more displays with loaded stores, to show the performance on the simulated combat loads. To find out more, Noble took us behind the scenes to talk about Eurofighter and his display, which you will get to see from the cockpit perspective. So we are here at RIAT with Noble from TLG-74. Now TLG-74, first of all, who are you and what is TLG-74? I'm Constantin Noble, I'm in the German Air Force, I rank as a captain. The TLG-74 is our fighter wing, we are stationed in Neuburg, so in southern Germany, Bavaria and this is our plane we are going to fly today at the RIAT for, sadly, the last display. It's Sunday, but you had a display on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Friday was glorious with the sunny sky. Exactly, perfect weather. Yesterday we had the bad weather option. Today looks not too bad. So what's cloud level today? It should be around 5,000 feet. So you can do some vertical verticality as well? Will do, absolutely. Awesome, I'm looking forward to it. Now you have a Typhoon or Eurofighter for the Germans, of course, in the background. Which Eurofighter is this exactly? It's one of the new ones actually, it's a Tranche 2 and we got the latest software update there. So for us it's kind of a nice update because we got now the integration of air-to-ground, air-to-air, so a nice mix out of it. And you are stationed in Neuburg, which is in Bavaria. Now I heard that this is the smallest NATO Air Force base, is that correct? It is, it looks like an aircraft carrier. If you look from above, yeah, you got the shelters where the aircraft are in there. We got the tower, looks like a big, big aircraft carrier from outside. And you do QRA there for Germany? Exactly, that's the QRA for the southern part of Germany, meaning we have four aircraft there, fully armed, normally two pilots there, just waiting for the alarm. And do you have any sort of, this year did you go to any sort of NATO exercises? We do, yeah, absolutely. So for 10 months we are in Lithuania for the air policing, so we have a game out. Then the NATO, they're asking, hey, can you guys help us out? And we do that now for 10 months. And besides that, we also went to the NATO Tiger Meet, as you can see with our chat in the background. A big exercise for us every year, which was in Germany this year. And the NATO Tigers, who are those exactly? It's a combined partnership between different wings, and everybody has like a kind of animal on the tail, you know. It's a tiger, it's a panther, whatever. And so we got a big combination of aircraft, and we are flying together, fighting together, and obviously also having some social events. Awesome, awesome. Now let's talk a little bit more about the Eurofighter as we're doing the walkaround for your pre-flight check. What would you do, first of all, as you're going to approach the aircraft? First of all, checking the aircraft also. Is it in a good condition? I mean, I rely on my maintenance 100%. Nevertheless, for us pilots, it's a thing we like to do prior to our flight, to just do a little check around if everything is okay. And we're starting at the nose. We got the captor radar in there. Just go to the outside here. Absolutely. We got the captor radar in there, which is really nice for us, because we got this place in the cockpit where we can do the targeting for air-to-air. And the radar also does air-to-ground? Not. Not this one, but that's going to be the AESA? It's going to be in the future, yeah. And that would be with the AESA radar coming with transfer 3 and 4? Exactly. What I'm checking out next is the ADTs, meaning this is where I get my information from, meaning my airspeed, my altitude, all the good stuff. So all the information is going in those four little ADTs and showing me, after processing by many computers, what I need as information in the cockpit. Okay. Now, the next thing I see are these wing-looking devices, the canards. What do they do? They are stabilizing the aircraft in the air. And, of course, they are the control surfaces when I'm flying the display or flying any sort. Yeah. They stabilize. In the air, you can see they're just doing little movements at high speeds. It looks really fancy. If you look outside the cockpit, if you've got two seconds in the air, they can relax and just check out those things, and they are all managed by the computer, meaning I do the inputs, and those guys are managing by their flight control system the stabilization in the air. That's because Typhoon is relaxed stability, right? Exactly. And, I mean, how is it now for you as a pilot? Because we think always the pilot has to manage everything in terms of flying. How is that with Eurofighter then? Quite easy, quite easy. So, as you can see, it's a single-seater. Yeah. Meaning we are alone in the cockpit. We have to manage a lot of data, which is coming in, share and distribute the information to the other guys in the formation. Yeah. So, it must be easy for us to fly, and it really is with the flight control system. Okay. Fantastic. Now, as we move further, then, we have the intakes for the engine. Exactly. Which engine do you have then? We've got two engines in there. EJ200, they are called, made by NTU in close to Munich. Yeah. Maximum thrust, what I will use today, is 2 times 90 kilonewton in the afterburner. Okay. So, there's a lot of power coming out of there. And I will check the intakes now. Yeah, sure. Go ahead. Just to see if something is in there. Next thing I'm going to check is the tire. Yeah. If you've got anything down there, the tire looks good. And looking at the wheel bay, which is also good, so I'm checking out if there are any hydraulic fluids in there. If the doors are latched, then it looks fine. Okay, good. And we can continue. We have these mounting points here. What are those? Absolutely. We've got those mounting points for the AMRAAMs and the Meteors, meaning on the fuselage itself, we can store four long-range missiles, medium-range missiles. And on the outside, you'll see later on, the launchers for the short-range missiles, the IRIS-T in our case. And then on the wing, do you have maneuvering flaps on them? Exactly. Also managed by the flight control system, so I don't have to put any switches, trims, whatever. The only thing I have to manage is the landing gear prior to the landing. And then everything is done automatically by the aircraft, depending on airspeed, your position. Exactly. Okay, cool. So I'm going to walk down there. Yeah, absolutely. Checking out the tire again for the main wheels. I've got a brake indicator down there. Brake looks good as well. And then in the bay, looking for loose parts, looking for hydraulic. Everything looks fine. Landing light is good. Landing light as well. Exactly. And I saw these little holes in that little pylon there. What are those? Here we go. Those are the flares. They help us to protect ourselves. If we have incoming short-range missiles, we can pop those flares and survive, hopefully. Are those the IR missiles? Exactly. And are those pyrotechnic charges or are those like metal strip bundles? No, this is the pyro. I will show you the other thing. This is called the chaff. First of all, here we've got the launcher for the IRST. One on each side. And what is this fairing then here? Also a system for us to survive, meaning we have the dust system in there. Defensive aid subsystem. Okay. As well, as you can see here on the back, there's those little two things where we can put out our device, which is on a cable, to help to survive. So that's like a tow decoy. Exactly. And it creates a secondary position of where the aircraft is and the missile doesn't know where to go and goes off. Here we go. This is the chaff. Now it's fully to the back side. Normally we get our stuff in there and we've got a lot of applications to get those little metal stripes into the air and distract the other radar. So that's against radar-homing missiles and the other one was against IR-homing missiles. Okay. Then the controls here. I mean, you don't have ailerons, you have ailerons. Exactly. And they're moving again with the FCS, so everything I do as an input, it's transferred to the computers. They manage me or manage the aircraft and then I can do whatever I want as input. Awesome. And then as we come towards the tail, we obviously have the variable outlet and those change depending on how much thrust you give on the engine. Here we go. So if I'm going for max reheat, they're closing, so we get more thrust out of there. You see those little ignitions or igniters around there. As you can see, it's little engines. They're really, really small, but nevertheless they're super powerful. It's like 40,000 pounds of thrust in pounds, yeah. Yeah. What we got here, you see the red flag? Yes. This is our drag shield. I've never seen that used on a Eurofighter. I actually did a bunch of times because if you go to a short runway, you're using this for safety reasons. Of course. If you jump down here, you can see the hook. Oh, you have one of those as well. It's not hydraulically operated, meaning for us it's just for emergencies. So if you want to go into the cable, get the hook down, and then the aircraft is gone for a while because they have to recheck all the systems if you have any damage on the engines or engine base. This is an emergency hook. No hydraulic hook to use on the carrier. Mechanical release and that's it. There we go. What is this little fairing there? Also part of the defensive system. On the tail, do you have any antennas for communication? No, the communications are on the fuselage. One is on the upper side, one is on the lower side. We can do the communication, so not for us. What we got here is probably a little bit bad, but nevertheless we got the light stripes for night flying, meaning they are green-lighted so it's comfortable for the eyes and also for the NVGs so we can manage the distance to the other aircraft in the night flying. And those are not just there but also on other areas of the aircraft. You can see on the front right next to the tail number, there's this little stripe here. I see that. It's exactly the same. Now here the dust looks a little bit different. Exactly. We don't have the tow decoys. It's working in the same direction as the other side, meaning we can use it with us and use it as a decoy for the other guys. And I guess this is the cooling intake for the hull. Exactly. And as we're going to the port wing then, how much fuel do you have in the aircraft? At this point I got about 4.8 tons for the display, meaning we have a clean configuration of what we can do as well as I get up to three external tanks on there. Other configurations are that we're using a laser designator pod, which would be in the middle, where we get the third tank in case of. Then we can get GBU-48 bombs, we can get AMRAAM Smithers, as we have spoken before, we can get the IRIS-T on there. So it's a bunch of loadout we can get on this little aircraft. Okay, awesome. It's quite small. The ram air turbine there, what's that for? It's a cooling system actually. You can see it up here. And the second one, if you go to the main engine bay, that's the second one. So cooling the oil, cooling the fuel, internal systems. And another cool thing is what you see up there. Is that the APU? That's the APU, exactly. We've got a little ledge down there which is going to open when I'm turning the APU on. It closes automatically and then we are good to go with power to power up the engines. Okay, and the APU is always used to power up the engines before because you do it onboard of the aircraft and not with ground power. We can do external as well. Okay. Nevertheless, we are always trying to get the APU. Okay. As we then come towards the cockpit, on your final check, I mean, I can see a couple of hatches here. Do you check these yourself or is that also your ground crew? That is the ground crew. This panel is for the ground crew as well as this one, checking the maintenance data if the system is working correct. Here we've got the hose for the refueling, so meaning pressure refueling. And this little device here is going to be used when we want to get rid of the cockpit from the ground, meaning unconsciousness in the cockpit, so they can fire up the canopy and the canopy blows away. And can the ground maintainers, when they want to check the aircraft and the system, can they also hook in their computers and download information and check everything from their systems? Exactly. They can get really every data. Awesome. So they will see what I'm doing today on the display. They see all the cheese I'm going to experience. We'll see how that goes, what the record is going to be for today. Awesome. Well, I wish you all the best. Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to the display. Same. And yeah, now I'll let you get into your little machine. See you later. See you. Take care. While Novel is going through his final preparations, a big thank you to him and TLG74 for hosting us and providing the additional commentary to the upcoming display. A big thank you also to all channel supporters for making videos such as this one 100% community funded. For more information on how to support and what you get out of it, check out the links in the description. And now it's time for a display. So at the moment we're sitting in our cockpit. I'm just doing my final checks. So if my ejection seat is hot and chopping already the power in, so going to max speed. What we feel now is acceleration, of course, with 2 times 90 kilonewtons. So it's a lot of power coming out of there. And I'm going to accelerate to about 400 to 450 knots. And at the end of the runway when I'm parallel to the display line, meaning there's always a safe line, let's call it this way, I'm just going to pull up what you're seeing at the moment in the video, which is about a 5 to 6 G's pull up. And then in the next second I'm going to spiral up just to show the massive power of the Typhoon that it can climb vertical. Over the top we are now, I'm facing down again, concentrating myself on the display line, meaning where is the line where I'm going to be in respect to the spectators and to the audience. And on the way down you can see again there's another 4 to 5 G pull turn. And setting myself up for the first aileron run, which is now. And then after each maneuver there's going to be a reposition maneuver, what you can see now, meaning at this point I'm going to bring myself back to the display line, meaning that I'm always parallel to the runway or the display line in this case to be close to the spectators, but always have a safety line. Right now we're going to accelerate again and going for the next vertical maneuver is going to be a Q8, so two loopings with a roll in between. What you can see now, here we pull the max G's, so getting the stick full backwards. And at this point we have about 500 knots for the in of the Q8 and then for the pull up it's 9 G's. On the way down you can see the roll and then going down to 500 feet again for the altitude and getting the next pull up with some nice vapor trails here. Next pull up is about 7 to 8 G's and then setting myself up for the way down. On the way down you can see obviously not the degrees, but in the cockpit it was about 70 degrees nose low, so quite impressive. And then also for the pull out again to be level at 500 feet it's another 6 to 7 G's I would say. What we can see next is another repo maneuver. Coming back to the display line, getting some speed again and for the next maneuver we got a 90 degree turn away from the spectators so they can see the afterburner slit. Just waiting here a second, get some speed. Looking where the point is, the center point, and here we go, 9 G's. You can see it in the eyes, so eyes are really dripping down. 9 G's away, 90 degrees, and then a pull up vertical again in respect to the display line. Over the top we reach about 3,500 feet HGL, so that's quite a good number for the Typhoon to always have a safe distance to the ground which also is my gap, meaning I'm working with gaps looking for a specific altitude where I know I can pull through and not hitting the ground obviously. For the display I've done it now the third year meaning my body already knows what's going to happen next meaning if I'm going to scratch the corner going 90 degrees off of 9 G's, my body already knows it's coming up, G's are coming up so the G's itself is working a lot meaning always if I'm hitting the stick for positive G's it's going to inflate. Nevertheless also my body and also my brain needs to be on that point to be sharp and then work against the G's. It's not that complicated after three years because the body already knows nevertheless you always have to be 100% for sure what is coming up next and then work against the G's because they work against you, meaning the blood will flow down. On the other side the G suit is going to pump up the blood again so you always have a clear mind and can build up your mind or mindset for the next maneuver already. It's like a 10 minute sport program so you're getting out of the cockpit, you're sweaty of course normally it's during the summer time so when the AC is shut down it's getting really really warm in the cockpit meaning we have about 40-50 degrees Celsius in there if you stay quite a while on the ramp and then when you get out of the cockpit the first thing you have to do is drink something because it was just 10 minutes of high intensity sport program let's call it this way. So what we got up next is going back to the display line as you can see already I'm slowing down what we got next is the slow flight something special about the Typhoon it has a system in there which says at a certain point that the aircraft is going to recover itself because it says the pilot isn't in control anymore so it takes over and at this point you're just a passenger in the cockpit meaning you cannot override the system and that is the reason why we have to fly at a certain speed for the slow pass it's about 120-130 knots at this point what you can see here so close to the ground at low speeds you have to be fully concentrated at this maneuver because otherwise the system will take over that is also the reason for us why we're taking 1,000 feet here not 500 feet because when the system is taking over it just bumps the nose and then you're so close to the ground so that's the reason for the 1,000 feet what we have next I'm plugging the power again for the max reheat and going for vertical climb so you can see as a spectator from the ground what the two EG200 engines can obviously perform a lot of power in there so we can climb out vertical coming back to the ground setting myself up for 500 feet and then going for the next reposition maneuver to come back to the display line here we go right around the corner again we got about 7 G's at this point speeding up again and what we can see next is a flat QM8 meaning in 500 feet and on the next corner you can see, here we go 9 G's all the way and I think you can see pretty clear through the visor in the eyes that there's a lot of pressure on the body and as well on the system so going back to the display line not scratching it and then putting another 7 to 8 G's back to the line just to show how the Eurofighter can perform in low altitude with that power so here we go for the next line up using 1000 feet again for a slow aileron roll meaning at about 300 knots I'm just getting my nose a little bit up because the longitudinal axis of the Typhoon is slightly different to other aircraft and then rolling through the aileron roll and coming back for the next reposition maneuver and then we're going into the last maneuver so already on our way in here we are at 500 feet looking for 500 knots now and what you can see up next is the vertical climb up with a spiral and then coming back for the landing here we go just sending out greetings to the spectators and then you can see the vertical climb up at this point we're about at 3 km altitude 10.000 feet setting myself up for the way down using the same as for the way up just spiraling down having a little bit of fun there and then checking out the altitude where I have to recover to be at a safe altitude again for my landing here we go, last maneuver complete so now back to normal business getting the clearance for the landing setting myself up for the landing the only thing we have to do in the Typhoon is really easy, we have to put our landing gear down so we don't have to use any flaps, slats, whatever so no trim everything is done automatically by the aircraft and then coming back home for a safe landing landing speed is about 160 knots at this point and then quite easy to land on the Typhoon here we go, as you can see, big runway at Riyadh so quite easy and then using our brakes for the full stop Riyadh has a big runway so we don't have to use the brake chute way of room to stop the aircraft on the runway and that was it it was a 9 to 10 minutes powerful demonstration I think a lot of vertical stuff a lot of stuff close to the spectators because the Distler is based to a little field in Switzerland where you have the mountains on each side so we have to be close you have to give the respect to the mountains because obviously the mountains never forgive and that is the reason why our German display is so close to the spectators and has a lot of vertical maneuvers in there so Nobel, congratulations last display here at Riyadh it's as if when you took off the clouds parted and gave you a blue sky right over the airfield exactly how I love it really it was a nice whole upside so how did this differ then from yesterday because yesterday you did a flat display exactly because the ceiling was lower it was about 1700-1800 feet so you can only do flat maneuvers the cool thing is you have a nice background for the photographers nevertheless the fun is way bigger at a big display if you fly it a little bit cloudy skies today we saw you cloud surfing a little bit going in and out, that was very nice that was so much fun today how is it for you then as a pilot for the G-forces, up to which G-forces are you going? plus 9 I have to work against it but I guess I have enough experience that my body already knows now the next corner is coming up with G-forces he's just doing his thing actually it's just your job that's a point to be swiss for anybody but how is it then as you go into these G-maneuvers to recuperate, because you do give your body a bit of rest between the maneuvers exactly, that's what you see when I'm doing the repositions along the runway, there is no high G-forces so I have a break for about 5 seconds and then the next maneuver is coming up so I have to be fit again and as you put the display together what is your thinking behind it because you show a slow pass, high pass maneuvers, rollings high maneuvers, high speed passes slow maneuvers then what you probably see after you slope the vertical maneuvering, the climbing which is typical for the Eurofighter because we have a lot of power so you can go from from really low speeds to a vertical climb and that's what the engines do they are perfect for it so it's also not just to give a good show but also to show off what the aircraft can actually do in a situation where you have to use that power actually it's a mix out of two things what the aircraft can do and what the body of the human can do because there are a lot of forces for both of us in this moment well this was excellent I hope that the people also get to see you once in real life and I'm sure the people here at RIAD appreciated the show, thanks again enjoy the show, thanks a lot if you have any questions or comments please put them below, perhaps I can even pass them on to Novo, so feel free to ask anything and who knows, in the future there may be a follow up for now, thanks for watching and the support have a great day and see you in the sky