Test pilot recalls Tejas maiden flight

Wg Com Rajiv Kothiyal, now retired, was to fly a technology demonstrator aircraft of Tejas, India’s light combat aircraft (LCA). It was the first flight of the all-Indian fighter.

The Wing Command flew the technology demonstrator well, although the telemetry auto tracking system failed a few minutes after take-off and all 16 screens in the  monitoring control room started showing erroneous readings.

“I knew she (Tejas) was doing good and we continued...” Kothiyal recalls.

Ten years later, Kothiyal is a pilot with Kingfisher Airlines. He is still a flyer, although he won’t be part of the celebrations when Tejas is inducted into IAF next week.

As everybody involved with project Tejas gears up for the initial operation clearance (IOC) scheduled on January 10, the former test pilot is going through newspapers diligently, learning of all developments on the project that had “taken off” with significant help from him.

Cut to 2001: Kothiyal had completed the flight briefing, which had begun at 8 am, where he had described the flight profile and put it bluntly to the crew of the two chase aircraft what was expected of them in case of an emergency. He then walked to the runway.

With the take-off scheduled at 10 am, Rajiv was in the aircraft by 9.15 am, mentally going over the flight manoeuvre he had to carry out which he had learnt during the hundreds of hours spent in the Mirage simulator.

The GE F 404 engine powering the little aircraft was started shortly and so were the two Mirage 2000 chase aircraft, but the after-start checks, radio checks with the chase aircraft and the Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower took another 30 minutes.

It was past 9.40 am by then and it was time for a 12-minute automatic built-in test where the flight control computer would run through a pre-programmed sequence of tests. In case of a service aircraft, it would take about a minute.

Finally, the ‘GO’ signal appeared and India’s dream, at the able hands of ‘Kothi’ as he was known to his friends, took off exactly at 10.18 am for the 18-minute flight.

Recalling the day, Kothiyal said: “Today the LCA already has a time-tested technology.

The day I flew it, it was a tough choice especially because it was the first time India was using fly by wire control systems, the first time we used indigenous composites, the first time we flew such a high software-intense aircraft and the first time in a long time we tried making anything like this by ourselves.”

The last indigenous fighter craft India had made was HAL’s Marut in the ’60s.

Having put in 23 years of service and 10 years in test flying, he terms that day nine years ago as the most memorable part of his career. And why not? Besides making him the proud pilot who took Tejas off the runway, it also fetched him the prestigious Iven
Kincheloe Award by the Society of Experimental Pilots (SETP) in the US.

A quiet celebration for them

As the nation inches closer to the formal induction of Tejas into the Indian Air Force, two men, H R Sudarshan Prasad and A Mohan, who worked closely with the project since the ’80s and are now retired, rejoice quietly.

Prasad recalled the first flight: “The take-off and landing confirmed that all the work my team and I had put into the project was foolproof.”

Prasad led a 60-member strong team in the avionics and electronics section that played a vital role in the systems integration of Tejas.

For Mohan, his most memorable moment was “when we tested the wing design, created indigenously and it stood the test”.