Inside The Cockpit - JA 37 Viggen
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- čas přidán 18. 06. 2024
- The Saab JA 37 Viggen is an indigenous Swedish fighter jet used in a variety of roles. With only Sweden using this aircraft, join Chris as he explains the ins-and-outs of this powerhouse. Finally jump into the cockpit to have an exclusive look at the inner life of Viggen. This JA 37 Di Viggen was also used as a test bed for systems installed into JAS 39 Gripen.
- Museum -
Visit the Swedish Air Force Museum: flygvapenmuseum.se/en/start/
- Check out my books -
Ju 87 Stuka - stukabook.com
STG-44 Assault Platoon - sturmzug.com
German Panzer Company 1941 - www.hdv470-7.com/
Achtung Panzer? Zur Panzerwaffe der Wehrmacht - panzerkonferenz.de/
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- Sources -
Thumbnail Image: Alan Wilson /wikicommons
- Timecodes -
00:00 - Intro
01:04 - Walkaround
08:13 - Weaponry
11:19 - Cockpit
- Audio -
Music and Sfx from Epidemic Sound
*When visiting Sweden, the Swedish Air Force museum is one place you can not miss! Check it out here* flygvapenmuseum.se/en/start/
I was working (remote) for 1 1/2 years in Linköping and I only visited 10 times. (Thursday late open). So it is not even a monthly visit. I must admit that the UK Royal Airforce Museum in London is more everything (except Swedish airplanes).
A tip is F10 outside Ängelholm in Skåne. Small museum, more of a "gubbdagis" (old man kindergarten) to be honest, but worth the visit if you need a food stop. Surprisingly big collection considering the small size. They have, or had at least, a functioning Draken cockpit simulator. Real electromechanical Frankenstein of a thing. Oh yes. If you're lucky you might see a Koenigsegg test driving as they are built next door...
I have this as #1 lol!
I have been in that hangar, the J-29 with UN markings have bullet holes from operations in Congo
Dotn forget that the museum is right beside an active military airfield. So if youre luck you can see some Gripen or SK60 in action ;)
A former RAF pilot writing about when he got to fly with the Viggen:
“‘The first to go up in the Viggen was our boss, Hilton Moses. I remember going out with him to the aeroplane and seeing him laughing and smiling, and then seeing him getting out and coming back to the crewroom looking like he’d just been put through some kind of crazy combination between a fairground ride and a washing machine. Then I went flying in the afternoon, and it changed my life.
‘They would fly around at Mach 0.95, 650kt give or take a bit, and they trained at 10m. We flew through firebreaks in trees, we flew all over northern Sweden at 30ft, and we never went below 600kt. All of this, I should add, was done under about a 150 to 200ft overcast with no breaks. In the RAF, anybody who wanted to get old would not have flown in that weather. After about 40 minutes, we pulled up into cloud, and the pilot then flew a 4-degree hands-off approach with his hands on his head into a remote airstrip, landed, reversed into a parking bay, did an engine-running refuel without any communication with the people on the ground except hand signals, taxied out and took off in the direction that we’d landed in. Wind direction just wasn’t factored.
Then we did some approaches onto roadways, flying at 15 or 20ft to clear the cars and warn them that there were going to be some aeroplane movements before doing practice approaches. And the aerobatics beggared belief.
‘The next day, it was time to take the Swedish pilots flying in the Jaguar. I was at a bit of a loss as to how I was going to explain to this guy that we flew at 420kt when they flew
at 620kt. So I decided that the way ahead was to leave the part-throttle reheat in, accelerate to 620kt and then give him the aeroplane. That’s what I did - I took off, and gave him control at 620kt and about 150ft. He pushed the nose down, took the Jaguar down to 30ft and proceeded to fly it at about 30 to 40ft and 600kt-plus quite happily. It knocked all the myths about who’s got the best aeroplanes, who’s got the best-trained pilots and so on. The Swedish Air Force had aeroplanes that were light years ahead of anything the RAF had, or was going to get, or has got now, and their pilots were in a totally different league to us. This was not just an individual - I flew with three of them, and all three were like that. Each of them was able to fly the Jaguar faster and lower from the back seat than I could from the front seat.”
I thought the Swedish low-level flying to be a boasting myth until I visited F 21 in Luleå and noticed the scratched paint jobs on the aircraft bellies. Tree-top flying literally meant just that.
What's the source? Wanna look it up😊
Book name?
You fight as you train.
We also lost, on average, at least one Swedish airforce pilot a week to low altitude accidents, mistakes or malfunctions throughout most of the cold war...
Lost, as in dead or crippled beyond ever recovering flying capability.
As a totally objective Swede, this is the 2:nd best looking airplane ever built, with Gripen as number 1, and Draken as number 3.
I think your order is wrong, but no matter, Sweden has some really good and innovative designers. The only machine which looks a little pedestrian to me was Lansen, but everything else from J-21 onwards: just wow.
Totally objective!😉. No kidding, though, Sweden makes some kickass aircraft
I don't know, I think that this one's just a little bit more curvy than the Griffin
Sorry it's not even as good looking as a.WW2 Spitfire. 😊
The J32 Lansen is IMO the best looking of the Trans-sonic jet fighters
A pair of Viggens suddenly appearing at tree top height and passing by with that amazing ground shaking noise, thats the soundtrack to my 1980's childhood summers.
I love the little cheat-sheet on the right at 16:16. It tells you to check if the aircraft is on fire. If the answer is yes, you should jump out.
:) Swedish health and safety for you right there.
One of my fondest childhood memories are when I was out with our small boat in the archipelago and a pair of JA37s passed a couple hundered meters away from me, quite close to the water (guessing around 20m high).
That sound... The 10 year old me inside me still giggles when thinking of it.
Needless to say, I dropped the oars in an instant and put my fingers in my ears.
*What an absolutely fantastic piece of Swedish engineering.* Imagine all the superpowers of the time having budgets of billions and billions of dollars, still Sweden with its comparably quite modest means managed to come up with this beast that in many aspects was clearly ahead of its time. It's mindboggling how Sweden *time and again* invented military master piece after master piece, which quite often even outperformed the equipment of the military behemoths of the cold war.
Well yeah, its kind of cheaper to develop a jet when you bring stuff like the entire engine from abroad, and the missiles, and large parts of the avionics, and sensors. I wonder how much swedish is actually in there?
@@castor3020 Someone has a chip on their shoulders
Sweden got a headstart in the jet race by quite early realising that jet aircraft were the future and put all their effort into jet aircraft, while other air forces still developed new propeller aircraft.
If Sweden had more money for Defense they would have MORE expensive planes...and MORE of them....
@@castor3020
It wouldn't be a stretch to classify you as a hall of fame epic retard. Your learning disability obviously prevented you from listening to what's said in the video. NEWSFLASH: *Volvo is the engine manufacturer.* Also, try squeeze the following common knowledge into your pea-brain that even the F-35 is *PACKED* with components and systems from foreign suppliers like e.g. BAE Systems.
Hats off to Sweden for creating such outstanding fighter jets despite being a relatively small country. 👏🏻
small? 5th biggest by area in Europe
@@dnsleu The German population is 8 times the population of Sweden, most of our country is forest, we are also neutral or have been at least since we are joining NATO so in comparison to say the US we are quite a small country and yet we developed quite advanced aircraft and avionics for the era.
@@christerjackson9589 welcome to Nato!
@@anandmorris Thank you, well once we are accepted which will hopefully be soon
@@christerjackson9589 militarily non-aligned*.
The "visit your local air museum" bit got me hard, as one of the nearby ones closed several years ago. Do as the man says, go patronize your local avation museum!
The Viggen is the coolest looking Cold War jet. No, you can't change my mind
Draken and Viggen 😻
No need to, the Viggen is amazing. It looks even cooler in person.
Hey, everybody is allowed to be wrong, especially on subjective subjects such as looks. 😊
They are simply not as good looking as multiple Dassault fighters or F-15. None of which look as gorgeous as a Spitfire.
@@TLTeo And it sounds even cooler at full thrust in person!
@@stevewhite3424 you can't compare a fighter jet with a warbird
A few additions on the outside in the compartment for the ram air turbine. 10:00
1. The funny looking tube with a small red funnel, on the left, is the fire extinguisher port for the starter turbine. It was not common but it happned that you could get a bad start which resulted in a fuel fire in the starter turbine. There is a red light above it that indicated fire. You then emptied the fire extinguisher in to the pipe to get to the turbine.
The test buttons for the fire light had a funny "feature". If the pilot pressed the varning planel test button in the cockpit, the fire light in the RAT compartment would also turn on. A less experienced mechanic would then empty the fire extinguisher in to the starter turbine thinking there was a fire.
Vice versa if the mechanic pressed the test button next to the fire light, the pilot got a fire indication on his panel... well you can imagine the rest 😅
2. On the right you have ports for oxygen (for the pilot) and nitrogen (brake preassure etc.) with a pressure indicator for each.
3. The socket on the right side that looks like a hydraulic jack, is exactly that. It's used for manually pumping up the brake pressure so you could use the brakes without the electrical system on. Used primarily when towing.
Viggen has many small design details to enable it to work with no or very limited ground support. The pilot can start without ground support. With only one mechanic you could do all ground operations if necessary.
The turnaround time (re-fuel,re-arm), with a full ground crew, was between 7-10 min depending on weapon load, in the field, taking off from a road.
All to make it as hard as possible for our not so friendly neighbor in the east 😉
Great video! Thanks!
@15:20 below the anemomachmeter is also a set of three lights which indicate the selected afterburner stage (1,2,3)
Good work describing the cockpit of the JA37. I worked on it but never flew it, but as far as I could see, you got just about everything correct. The tactical display was very important for its efficiency. For the first time, the JA37 could operate effectively without constant GCI support. Behind this were a good Pulse Doppler radar (MPD) and the first implementation of the fighter datalink that was further developed to the Gripen (also called TAU=Tactical Air Unit link). It meant JA37 formations could operate without visual contact with each other but still as a tactical unit. When the JA37 got the AIM-120 (which should be this late version), it got very lethal due to the MPD radar, TAU link, and TI display with electronic map+real time tactical information, all combined with a Fox-3 missile.
Btw, it was funny to learn that earlier swedish jets like Draken and Viggen operated relying on GCI. Thought that was mostly a soviet thing, compared to the american philosophy of giving pilots a bit more space.
Big problem for JA37 was fuel gulping - 39 much more economical.
I wasn't expecting a vertical stabilizer that folded at its base! Very novel! Thanks for the video!
You're welcome!
Yo how did you see the vid 4 weeks from upload?
@@depilot2035 Probably a Patreon backer with early access.
@@depilot2035 as Jeff B. suggests, I'm a Patreon supporter, so get early access to some/most videos.
@@SkyhawkSteve oh ok
Swedish aviation is like the Australia of eco-systems. It is as if it branched off early and developed in a completely different way. Some brilliant innovation for sure. What a masterpiece of cold war jet fighter. Great video... I almost feel like I can service a JA-37 now. 😁
I grew up with Viggens regularly flying over my house, that was neat.
Just want to let you guys know that there is a Viggen simulator in the museum at Skavsta. It's a production aircraft cockpit that's flown, but has been converted into a simulator, using fresnel lens displays. Unfortunately the cockpit instruments and lighting is not operational in it, and Viggen has a fantastic night lighting setup, but if you pay a small amount you can fly the sim and check out the cockpit. Plus the museum is staffed by old pilots and aircraft nerds who are fascinating to talk to. Highly recommended, its a much smaller museum than linkoping, but absolutely worth a visit!!
Had no idea the Viggen had so many innovative features. A beautiful and unique aircraft!
Love that one-take celebration!
Except that he forgot the main undercarriage
You’re the Golden Child for real Chris!!!! The greatest human being to ever live!!!!
Olav: "Did you see that?! That jet fighter just landed on the highway, backed up, and did a 3-point turn!"
Sven: "Sure Olav - I believe you! Haha!"
Olav: "and now the rudder is waving at me!"
Sven: ""Stop drinking Olav - you're seeing things again!"
What an amazing airplane - always one of my favorite cold war airplanes!
If your converstation was meant to be two swedish people then Olof would be a more realistic name. Olav is more russian...
“Of course” again & again😰
As an American that worked with many Aerospace companies I always was impressed with the Swedish p
Great Review. In the past I owned several Saab cars & everything was always so perfectly placed, with a slight curve so further away controls were still easy to reach. Easy to fantasise (When much younger) that I was in a "Ground Cockpit" 😁
These walk arounds and cockpit views are wonderful. So much is revealed about an aircraft in this process.
07:00 A note, the BAS 90 system called for one main runway of 2 000 - 2 300 meters, and then auxiliary runways - _some_ of which could be on roads - that were 800 meters.
I visited the museum last year while it was in renovations so didn't get to see the full inventory. Def recommend visiting, the town where the museum is located is also very nice!
Before the advent of glass cockpits the Viggen was a masterclass in Cockpit ergonomics.
As someone who grew up close to a Draken base (not in sweden) when i saw the Viggen the first time on an airshow in 1994 i was excited to see the successor of what i was familiar to see every day. And when the pilot did the J turn on the runway mid display and the chins of the crowd dropped i liked it even more. It has stayed a favorite for me. (sure nothing can replace the Draken in my heart, but it comes close)
And on later airshows i actually started watching the crowd more during the J turn. As it was quite fun to see those who knew what was comming being excited for it, and those who did not looking in awe.
(The only other aircraft i have seen surprising people as much on an airshow was the Harrier when most of the crowd didn't know it could start and land vertically, hoover and actually go backwards. In the only Harrierdisplay i wittnessed live, the pilot started conventional, did a circle to the right and slowed down approaching the runway and stopped mid runway turning sideways, "bowing his head", and going backwards.
Not even the Mig29 and SU27 with the cobras surprised the crowds as much on the airshows i visited as advertizing meant people knew about it beforehand)
Excellent review of the aircraft. I think it was a outstanding aircraft of its time with some very innovative features. The Oerlikon KCA 30mm cannon was the same round used by the A-10 Warthog. I read somewhere that the Viggen had a feature that it could use computers and the autopilot to link to the gun in pitch to provide better accuracy in air to air mode. I believe the Viggen was the most under rated fighter aircraft of its time.
Radar took over the flight to aim the aircraft for extreme range shooting, against for example Il-76 dropping paratroopers
Hello Chris. During the 80s, you could see at air shows how the Viggen landed and took off on very short run ways. It was a mighty sight. Thanks for your interesting videos. Greetings from Sweden
Can't fool me, that's the interior of a TIE fighter!
Great video, amazing amount of info in one take before climbing in! I was lucky to see an AJ37 last summer at Sola airshow in Norway (ENZV). That and a Draken. What machines, hats off to Sweden.
A good walkaround of the only fighter jet that can pull off a three point turn. Good stuff Chris.
Props for saying Linköping correctly
Tack
@@MilitaryAviationHistory varsågod!
Props to Sweden for going their own way in military aviation over many decades. Many innovative designs. I would find it difficult to believe they aren’t working on a 5th generation project these days after having been trounced by F-35 so many times in recent years.
Saab did work on stealth designs quite some time ago, but so far it's not seen that much interest from SwAF, which is their main customer. They do have limited technological cooperation with the Tempest project though.
Fastest biplane ever built! --very positive stagger to the planes! Clever how they did it without struts. ;-)
I always thought these aircraft looked badass. Not in a stealth/futuristic way, but looking quite brutal in a beautiful way.
Funny how you upload this the day I get the Viggen in War Thunder
I did my internship there just a couple months ago. It's awesome to see it getting recognized more on this platform!
Such an amazing plane, seeing them fly is just stunning
Dunkle Cockpits in dunklen Hallen/Hangars sind nicht ganz einfach. Da hatte ich auch schon so meine Probleme. Große LED Scheinwerfer auf der Kamera montiert sind wahrscheinlich der einzige Weg um das ordentlich einzufangen ohne den "Keller Charakter" zu erzeugen. Sehr informatives video, wie immer top!
Die hatten wir sogar aber hier war die Kamera das Bottleneck.
The 3 point turn of the Viggen is so incongruous 🤣🤣🤣
Superb video as usual. Very educational. Bravo.
Great video, Chris...👍
Gorgeous plane! I always like how Swedish engineers put their own details on everything they make (planes, cars/trucks, ships, etc).
IIRC the wing inboard of the landing gear was originally intended to have the same wingbsweep as the wing outboard of the landing gear. However, there were problems with the interacts of airflow over the wing caused by the canard and its flap and to cure it they changed the wingsweep of the 8nner wing panel.
The first cockpit I had the pleasure to climb up and chill in belonged to a JA37 out of the F 21 Air Force Wing in Luleå back in 1990. I was 15 years old at the time and it was in for maintenance. I spent a week with the maintenance crew at F 21 sort of helping out with the maintenance as best as a kid could do. I remember the best part was when I was sitting in the cockpit and was instructed to move the stick in various directions with the hydraulic system in operation and watching the flight control surfaces move.
The cockpit looks so pristine
Such a great video, I truly admire how you go into all the details!
Regarding the spine of the plane, if you compare the prototype aircraft with the production ones, you notice that the latter have sort of a "bulge" on top (compare with the stock footage you have of the prototype where it has a "non-bulge" black panel instead). This came to be as the aircraft was shown to have a poor cross section area which caused buffeting when entering M1 speeds. Saab "locked" their engineers in a house in the village of Rimforsa outside of Linköping until they solved the problem, and hence the bulge came to be known as rimforsabulan.
At least, that's the legend as far as I remember it.
This was excellent... as usual!
So much different than the AJS-37 we all know and love. It's so funny to see the differences. It's still the same aircraft, but a different role (and 30 years of development) caused it to have all these little (and big) differences
I liked your mention of the Viggen's ECM capabilities.
I always watch the full video before I, eventually, like it, but this time I clicked that thumb up as soon as the video started; as a child of the early 80s, Viggen has always been a favorite of mine.
Then ofcourse, as there are no working day tomorrow I hade to take a drink everytime Chris said ofcourse. Tomorrow will be an other day.
There are a few select channels where I simply hit the Like-button per default. This is one of them.
Very nice Video thx.
"Reflector Stripes"? These are Formation Lights I would say... (@11:10)
Correct. Electroluminescence strips used during formation flying at night.
Cool video!
Great job!
That was neat! Thank you.
Wonderful warplane!...sensible, totally practical design and uniquely good looking. Well thought out design. 👍Nordic Warrior!✊✊✊
Thanks for this post. Awesome aircraft 👌💪🇸🇪💪🇸🇪
Gotta love the Vig always one of my favourite planes just looks menacing sitting there could they not have turned the lights on for you so we could see this beautiful aircraft in all its glory
Excellent! Soooo, we can look forward to Lansen and Tunnan too, maybe?
Chris says at one part that he has "couple of videos coming out" about the Lansen.
YUS :)
Wow, you did your homework! I enjoyed that tour.
Love the draken , love the gripen , shame the Ace combat series did not include the viggen so we could try all of the great swedish planes
There's a AJS37 in DCS, it's entirely different to Ace combat though.
Cool. A fighter that can parallel park!
*Brilliant & fascianting as usual*
And confirmation if ever I needed it that any attempt on my part to fly a warplane should be confined to lobbing bricks out of a microlight
Chris, as always... great work.
Have you thought of doing a comparison video of the J-21A and the J-21R?
The differences in the cockpit layout would be very interesting.
Great video, thank you. Now I feel the urge to go to DCS :)
In the late 80s and throughout the 90s we had the Swedish/Finnish comic "Achilles Wiggen" (written and drawn by Finnish author Kari Leppänen, though I think primarily published in Sweden), about a Viggen pilot that gets transported to another planet with his plane and engages in dogfights with aliens.
Kinda wish we'd see a movie or game adaption of that story.
wonderful flying machine
Lovely plane :)
Right!
To quote RAF Jaguar pilot Mike Rondot after flying backseat in Sk37 with Peter Lindén; ”Peter, when viggen accelerates, the foreskin gets pulled back”
So my only experience with the Viggen is a couple hundred hours in DCS, which has a different variant, but at a glance I'm not certain the navigational system is an INS. At least, the nav panels look almost identical to the attack variant I'm used to and that one only has a Doppler nav system. I wonder which one of these is the control panel for the datalink, supposedly the interceptor Viggens had a really advanced system for the time.
edit: also I'm jealous of the variants that could carry ECM pods on the outboard stations, all I get are outdated Sidewinders :(
The drawback of flying a ~20 year older attacker variant ;)
My SAAB 95 interior looks exactly the same ;)
4th fighter wing! My father used to work with those planes! Many great stories!
You are to jets what Lindybeige is to armies and tanks. I love it, wonder what a conversation between you two would look like.
Wonderful presentation of an aircraft that doesn't get the credit it deserves.
One take! Nice 😎👍🏼
Looove the Viggen! Such a brute cold war warrior bad ass! A real heavy local bar " beerdrinker" unlike the way too boring , small and sensitive cafe latte drinking jet set Gripen😁
So Beautiful
@14:18 - I may be wrong but there were a lot of various pods on Viggens, I suppose these were designed "to rule them all"?
@15:08 - wasn't that D49 ground-pressure calibration altimeter?
AMAZING video, as always! Thank you!
The Viggen requires emergency power from the RAT only if it's desirable to get the plane back onto the ground in a condition where it's flyable afterward; admittedly, it's a much more cost-effective option to bring a damaged plane back to be repaired rather than requiring a new one to be issued. Certainly a significant reduction in paperwork.
@11:10 those are formation strip lights , they are used to fly in formation at night
During peak cold war the squadrons would have a pair of these on standby with running engines 24/7.
Unknown source
Swedish engineers should of course be proud of this achievement. That being said you also have to acknowledge a bunch of German Aero engineers coming to SAAB post 1945. Also making this system the cutting edge air war machine was the US computer system that was traded in the Swedish-US nuke scrapping deal. (Sweden was the 4th! nation to develop nuclear bomb capability but lacked the nuke delivering system until the development of JA37. The deal also gave Sweden a place under the US nuke umbrella).
okay, *now this is epic* *puts on aviators ready to nerd out
At about 11 minutes in, you mention "reflector stripes" under the canard, just before climbing into the cockpit. I think those are actually formation lights, to help other Viggens during formation flying in the dark. So they are not reflecting light, they are light sources in themselves. A faint, spooky green light. Formation flying in the dark would only be done when on a ground attack mission, I suppose, but the JA37 does have a ground attack capability, so those lights make sense.
The "reflector strips" are actually formation light strips. They are low intensity, usually a luminescent green color, that allow night form flying.
This is such a good looking aircraft! Perhaps not graceful and sleek, but beautiful anyway, and massively brutal!
Thanks! Always liked the Viggen, such a special aircraft. PS: that's a lot of "of course" ;-)
You should take a look at the Viggen in Digital Combat Simulator! Very nice to be able to fly it!
The Drakken next please. ❤
Viggen... my beloved
No one builds jets like saab❤
I’m not sure if this is unique to Swedish aircraft, but has anyone noticed that a lot of the instrument glass is coated in the gorgeous blue tint? Reminds me of a fancy watch.
When it is the same as with watches then it is to reduce glare. (which would make sense)
Hello, I was wondering if perhaps there is a way you could make a video discussing the evolution of Japanese aircraft camouflage, I have notice that the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy have a variety of wacky camouflage patterns and it is an interesting topic, I have also seen discussion on Japanese aircraft paint quality so I would like to hear a discussion on it as a whole, thank you😁
Fantastic and versatile plane.
Made the Tornado and Jaguar look very generic...
That the cockpit layout is intelligent and practical is normal, as can be seen in older Volvo's and SAAB cars.
YES YES YES YES YEEEEEEEEEEESS
Used to have Viggen & Draken's fly over every week at the same time, these days I hardly see any jet at all :(
Fantastic, unique and very deadly aircraft. What a history Sweden has in its military (particularly the Air Force). Gave the Migs a run for their money many times, no doubt.