Fighter Pilot Breaks Down Every Button in an F-15 Cockpit | Ars Technica

Video from the channel Ars Technica about McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 14:14. Language: English. Video type: Onboard.

Andrea Themely, a U.S. Air Force pilot for 23 years with 1,100 hours in the F-15, walks through the cockpit of an F-15C. She organizes it by sections: most-used controls, emergency controls, weapons and defense, pilot settings, navigation and communications, and backup systems. At the end she explains the engine start sequence. The recording was made with the California Air National Guard and the 144th Fighter Wing.

The cockpit has more than 250 controls. Those with yellow and black stripes are for emergencies: the ejection seat, jettisoning of external stores and the canopy, and the tailhook for runway arresting cables. The VMAX switch is sealed; it would let the engine run 22 degrees hotter and 2% faster. The HOTAS system concentrates radar and weapons controls on the stick and throttle, including the pickle switch, the castle switch and the gun trigger, with 940 20mm rounds at around 6,000 rounds per minute. Also shown are the HUD, the color multifunction display, backup instruments, three independent hydraulic systems, and the JFS starter, which disengages at around 50% rpm.

The pilot credits the F-15 with 104 air-to-air kills without losses. She recalls that the aircraft entered service in 1976 and that many indicators are still the original ones, because funding has not stretched to modernizing everything. The large screens appear switched off because their information is classified.