The Hindu : Tejas completes 100 hours of test flight

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 03, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka

Tejas completes 100 hours of test flight

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, MARCH 2. The indigenously designed and developed supersonic Light Combat Aircraft, `Tejas', today completed 100 hours of test flight with three aircraft — Technology Demonstrator-1 (TD-1), TD-2, and Proto Vehicle-1.

The milestone was achieved on Tuesday during the 16th flight test of the Proto Vehicle-1, which went supersonic. Sqn. Ldr. Suneet Krishna piloted the aircraft, the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) sources said.

Tuesday's test flight sorties included various in-flight manoeuvres, level acceleration, handling quality checks, roller coaster, steady heading side slip, wind up turns at high "g", and high angles of attack. The flight lasted over 42 minutes, the sources said.

Wg. Cdr. (Retd) P.K. Raveendran, Group Director (Flight Test), directed the flight from the telemetry at the National Flight Test Centre, ADA. The aircraft's handling qualities and all the systems' performances were satisfactory.

So far, Tejas TD1, TD2, and Proto Vehicle-1 have completed 167 flights with all the three aircraft crossing the supersonic speed barrier on more than 20 occasions, according to the ADA sources.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Karnataka