The pre-flight inspection, taxiing and takeoff of the EF-18 Hornet of a Spanish female pilot

@DefAviation ES 3·09·2024 · 20:24 0

The EF-18 Hornet is the best combat aircraft that Spain has had (along with the Eurofighter) and it is also longer: it has been active since 1986.

The landing of a Spanish EF-18 Hornet fighter in Getafe using its arresting hook
The characteristics of the helmets and flight equipment of the Spanish EF-18 fighter pilots

Although the process of replacing the oldest EF-18 of the Spanish Air Force has already begun, quite a few are still active in three units: the 12th Wing in Torrejón, 15th Wing in Zaragoza and 46th Wing in Gando, in the Canary Islands. Today Fly By Wire Aviation (a YouTube channel that I recommend you follow, since it is publishing very interesting content) has published a video in which he shows us one of the EF-18M of the 12th Wing, the C.15-44 (12-02), piloted by Captain Nuria Moral, which many will know since has more than 12,000 followers on Instagram, where she publishes some spectacular photos.

In the video, recorded at the Getafe Air Base (probably the same day of landing with arrest hook that we saw here this same week), we see Captain Moral doing the pre-flight inspection that all pilots do before getting on their planes, and after switching on, we see the taxiing of the EF-18 along the runway and its takeoff:

You can see here some screenshots of the video with some notes. Here we see Captain Moral inspecting the arresting hook that I told you about the other day, located between the nozzles of the plane and which is used to hook the braking cable both on runways on dry land and on flight decks of large aircraft carriers.

In this image we see a BGT AIM-2000 IRIS-T medium-range air-to-air missile on the marginal support of the port wing. It is a European-made missile that has been replacing the AIM-9 Sidewinder short-range missiles in the Spanish Air Force since 2008.

Finally, this image shows us one of the new Scorpion helmets that the Air Force is incorporating into the EF-18. I already told you about these helmets here last year. As a curiosity, this helmet is personalized for each pilot. As we see in the video, Captain Moral's helmet has the same decoration as her old HGU-55 helmet (we saw it here in 2021), with snowflakes and the small footprint of a dog