Dave Gledhill on the Tornado Mission Simulator 

What's amazing about all Tornado variants is there diversity within and between roles. For example, the GR1 was a Cold War Interdiction platform designed to fly low and fast in the vallies, hills and mountains of Europe to deploy its respective payload (including nuclear weapons prior to Trident assuming the UK deterrent role) and to then extricate from the area very quickly. Now, the first Persian Gulf oil war (Op Granby) highlighted the dangers of low level flying in more challenging theaters so the aircraft took on new roles and was reequiped with updated avionincs and systems to undertake new roles and redesignated (GR4 for example) performing well in various roles it may not have been ultimately designed for despite the MRCA designation. With the F3, it was primarily a flying weapons platform designed to defend airspace and to engage targets from some distance away but also in later years performed more of a intercept role despite the fact that it lacked the agility of a fighter. The RAF says goodbye to the Tornado now as the Typhoon and F35 mark a new era for the Royal Air Force. The Service and the country certainly got it's money's worth for the 30 plus years in which they flew. Whilst I only painted them, I am sure they are leaving the Service at the top of their game. I spent 20 years of my life clambering over these machines and, for me, their retirement feels like a berivment and I'm sure many other former service members who earned a living working on them, flying them may well feel the same way. Thank you, Tornado, you will be missed.

The bulk of my career related to this platform. I was a supplier. nice to see all those components and LRUs once again.

best tornado interview yet...awesome job

„It never told you they were hostile, just not friendly“.... that‘s a very british IFF system😂

What a wonderful place to visit. I am from Scunthorpe and have relatives that live in Rauceby so know the area well. I live in South Carolina, USA now following a 20 year RAF career ( first as a resident of Goose Bay and later relocating to the US and never would have imagined that) and miss the UK a lot and have not really fell into another career or stable and meaningful job since my departure from the RAF in 2006. I know the Tornado variants like the back of my hand as painter and finisher NCO and feel sad to see the Tornado (GR4) finally retired from service as the Typhoon and problematic F35 spearhead the front line. If I ever come back to UK for a visit, I will be sure to visit. Maybe I could open a virtual reality aircraft refurbishment simmulator😁. Thanks for a great upload. I flew in an F3 during my time at Mount Pleasant and will always be greatly appreciative of that privileged experience. Thanks again and have a beer or 3 in the equally wonderful (and refurbished) Bustard Inn! Cheers. Garry Harriman, South Carolina.

a dream comming true, finaly seeing the displays up close and in action. awesome video (again)

Amazing video! The F3 was the dream plane I wanted to fly in the RAF when I was going through air cadets

Great job. Love to know what happened to the GR1 full mission Redifon simulators I was a techie instructor on at Honington. No visual simulation but still fun to fly and just press ‘reset’ if I crashed it!

Absolutely brilliant interview and great tour, Dave is a real Gent!

AMAZING VIDEO !!! thank you for sharing this !

Thanks for posting this. Very interesting.

I fly the GR4 in VR...Heavy old girl but I love it.

Great video. Lucky guy to have flown both the RAF Phantom and the Tornado F2/F3.

Would love to sit in that Tornado F-3 front cockpit and say ''speak to me Goose, speak to me''. I wonder If I'd be told to leave and never invited back? ;-) Seriously, a very well delivered presentation. Learned quite a bit about a pretty underated machine.

Another excellent interview with the redoubtable Dave. Many thanks.

Great work on this one guys! Great video too!

Nice setup I’m doing a real buccaneer with interfacing the real controls it’s easy to do . Regards Dave from Scotland

Excellent video, thank you.

loved it thanks

Interesting video, thanks for posting.

Excellent,thanks

Fantastic.

Excellent cockpit tour!!! Running Prepar3D at the end?

Awesome

Was there any significant differences between the Tornado F2 to the Tornado F3?

its funny, the Jaguar guys seem to think that they were the first to have HUD as primary instrument and the steam gauges were standby....

You can still tell the designers really weren't embracing the whole ergonomics idea. They definitely weren't thinking the Tornado was going to be used in an interceptor role or anything that would have involved dogfighting. The forward view is constrained by both the layout of the HUD and its framework as well as the frame that holds the flat pane of the forward part of the canopy. Try playing any simulator or combat game that has an accurate reproduction of this cockpit (other others with similar canopy layouts like the F-4 and F-14) and you'll see what I mean. The advantage of a flat plane of glass forward? Optical distortion is close to zero and you can actually manufacture that glass (or plastic?) to be stronger than a curved piece -- in other words, greater strength against bird strikes with the canopy. The F-14 is similar in this way, too, although it was intended from the beginning to be a dogfighter contrary to revisionist/anti-fanboy views. Oddly enough, they (Grumman) DID plan for an upgrade to the F-14 (had it stayed in production and gotten funding for a QuickStrike model) to replace the entire front screen with a wrap-a-around canopy similar to what the F-15, F-16, and F-18. I'm guessing some of the equipment for the forward canopy in the Tomcat was a holdover from the F-4 (which was designed with a complete interceptor mentality and just barely mediocre dogfighting ability) just as aspects of the landing gear and intake ducts were adapted from the A-6 Intruder to save money. I've always felt the cockpit view forward was one of the weakest points of the F-14 (ANY model; the D-model sure didn't have the most advanced cockpit layout when it debuted! It's hardly different from the A- or B-models!!) aside from the P&W TF30 engines in the A-models. They definitely got the cockpit layout and view right in the F-18 (A-model) first! Everything that's followed has pretty much emulated or evolved from that design including the E-model of the F-15 which is leaps beyond and way better than the cockpit of the F-15 A-D models. They have put in new equipment in the F-15 cockpits since they've done upgrades (AESA radar retrofits) but most of the improvements (minor changes to the stick and throttle; equipment adapted from the in-production F-15E derivatives) are invisible to the average eye. It's more like the Luftwaffe upgrades of their F-4s where they replaced the old APQ radar sets with APG-65s. The only major piece of new equipment they installed in their F-4 cockpits were the HUD's (which the original Phantoms did NOT have. The first military jets with HUDs were Buccaneers. Earliest fighter I'm aware of with a HUD was the F-14). I believe the APG-65 was adapted to interface and work with the old existing radar equipment of the Luftwaffe F-4Fs; they did NOT replace the old radar displays and steam gauges with F-18 cockpit equipment.

Camera handling could have been better but great info!

Could it be flown from the backseat?

my father is commander of boeing 747 and he is a pilot of helicopter, and my sister is commander of airbus a330 and she's a agricultural pilot!!

And yet it was phased out soon after... Because the engines were inadequate at higher altitude. Typical of poor British administration/governance!