Ski-jump take-off for light combat aircraft Tejas

The Naval Air Station in Goa is quietly readying a first-of-its-kind facility in India for flight tests on the light combat aircraft (LCA) Tejas naval variant.

The shore-based test facility (SBTF), when fully-operational, will be the third such test facility in the world after the US and Ukrainian navies. “After the initial flight tests, we will shift all action to SBTF.

The ramp for the take-off area will be ready by the last quarter of 2011 and the landing area in 2012. A full-fledged telemetry unit is also coming up in Goa,” sources in the Indian Navy told DNA.

The sources said the SBTF simulates an aircraft carrier with ski-jump take-off and arrested recovery landing wherein the incoming aircraft is brought to a standstill after touchdown when a hook attached to its underbelly engages a taut arrester wire placed across the landing path.

“It’s recreating a ship on the shore. The one that’s coming up in Goa is based on the Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC) that’s being built at Cochin Shipyard. The SBTF is constructed with the same measurements of IAC,” sources said. All the specialised equipment for the facility is being supplied by the Russians, while the steel structure is being made by Goa Shipyard and civil engineering work by R&D Establishment (Engineers) in Pune.

You need to be       honest while playing this game

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“It was fun for us,” pioneer Joel Silver told an interviewer, “We thought we were all so hip and so smart and so with it, that we used the frisbee as kind of a symbol of running against everything else.” Ultimate has since grown into a world sport, with European and world championships, although in India it is barely three years old.
Its pioneer in India was Bryan Plymale, a teacher at Kodai International School.
The Ultimate community in India consists of around a dozen teams, in Chennai, Kodaikanal, Ahmedabad, Pondicherry, New Delhi and Bangalore. The earliest national tournament was the ‘Flybaba’ in 2008 in Kodaikanal; since 2009, Chennai has hosted two editions of ‘Chennai Heat’ on the Besant Nagar beach. Bangalore’s playing community consisted of two teams, ‘Learning to Fly’ and ‘Disc-O-Deewane’, that played the disc, but that version did not conform to the rules of Ultimate. Disc-O-Deewane consisted of rock-climbers who used to play after climbing sessions at Turhalli on the outskirts of the city. It was only in December 2007 that Venkatesh M, an avid rock climber, got to hear of the sport and researched the rules online.
“The beauty of Ultimate is that you need to be honest while playing because it’s self-refereed,” says Ravindra GB, one of the organisers. “Also, there are six or seven ways of throwing the disc, and you need to be able to control its trajectory – it’s not as predictable as a ball.”
The sport has grown over the last year in Bangalore, and there are around 50 active players who turn up on Saturdays and Sundays at National College grounds, GKVK in Hebbal, or at Loyola School near Bannerghatta Road.
It’s a pat for Tejas

Insiders said the SBTF is a huge pat for the Tejas programme as the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) had already envisioned the funding for this facility. In addition, a new landing gear drop test facility has been created at HAL to handle testing of larger naval gear loads. A hardware-in-loop simulation for flight control system testing called ‘Iron-bird’ has also been set up and is in operation supporting the Tejas Navy programme.

DNA has learnt that all initial flight tests leading to the carrier-suitability test (CST) will be done at HAL airport in Bangalore.
The SBTF is coming up even as the Aeronautical Development Agency and Aircraft Research and Development Centre of HAL are undertaking the structural integration and last-minute end-to-end tests on Tejas naval variant (NP-1) for the historic July 6 roll-out in Bangalore.