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Contact:
Rick Sanford |
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Contact:
Rick Sanford |
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
97-84
TUCSON, Ariz., April 11, 1997 -- After nearly 19 years in storage in the Arizona desert, the McDonnell Douglas (NYSE: MD) YC-15 transport aircraft made its first flight since 1978 from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base here to begin a new role as an advanced technology demonstrator.
The flight lasted two hours and one minute and flew to a maximum altitude of 10,000 feet at speeds up to 250 knots. The crew for the flight was Chuck Walls, pilot; Ray Narleski, co-pilot; Charlie Jackson, loadmaster; and Mike Fahrney, data recorder.
McDonnell Douglas Military Transport Aircraft will operate the YC-15 from its headquarters in Long Beach, Calif. The aircraft will be flown to Long Beach from Tucson next week.
Refurbishment of the YC-15 was conducted at the Air Force's Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center (AMARC) at Davis-Monthan. Crews from AMARC, under a contract with McDonnell Douglas, worked with McDonnell Douglas crews for several months to refurbish the aircraft and ready it for flight. The aircraft is registered with the Federal Aviation Administration under an experimental research and development certificate.
The YC-15 will provide a testbed for a variety of advanced technologies, according to YC-15 program managers Lt. Col. Wayne Cottrell and Joe Saad of the Air Force and McDonnell Douglas, respectively. These technologies include active core exhaust control, autonomous landing, advanced inerting, enhanced defensive systems, open architecture avionics and autonomous cargo handling. The aircraft is operating under an eight-year lease from the U.S. Air Force under the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986. It is the first Air Force developmental aircraft leased back to a contractor under a cooperative research and development agreement.
Using the YC-15 will reduce the span time for developing and demonstrating new aircraft technologies, benefitting both the Air Force and McDonnell Douglas. Some of the technologies will be directly related to the U.S. Air Force/McDonnell Douglas C-17 Globemaster III aircraft and some may be used on future advanced airlift aircraft.
When the YC-15 flew in the 1970s, it was part of the Air Force's Advanced Medium Short-takeoff-and-landing Transport program to develop a possible follow-on tactical transport to the turbo-prop C-130. Although production was never approved, many of the technologies demonstrated on the YC-15 were incorporated into the C-17 aircraft, including the short-field landing capability.
The YC-15 is 124 feet long with a wingspan of 132 feet. It is powered by four Pratt & Whitney JT8D-15A engines, each producing 15,500 pounds of thrust. Other engines may be used later in the test program.