BLESSED EXCESS: THE KAWASAKI ZX-11D3 and the McDonnell/Douglas FA-18 Hornet
REVIEW BY STEVE NATT (Streetbike Newsmagazine)
Two F/A-18 Hornets screamed through the sky over Irvine, California
as I dropped the world's fastest and quickest production motorcycle into
gear, took a deep breath, released the clutch and [simply] LEAPT from
0 - 50 in what felt like exactly no time at all.
Oh my God.
I had just come off a month with a very potent 600cc sportbike, but this
thing had completely retooled my space/time continuum before I got into
second gear. I was thirty miles an hour over the national limit before I
reached for third, and I never even came within 2000 rpm of red line.
The ZX's massive torque punch left me in a daze -- a mix of shock and terror
and joy all stirred up with a fat shot of adrenaline that went straight to
my heart. I let the throttle spring back, pulled in the clutch, mashed the
brakes and felt my brain return from the back of my head. I remembered to
breathe just as I realized I hadn't yet left the Kawasaki parking lot.
Oh my God.
That was the message I left on my friend Pete's machine when I got home
that day, literally shaking from having spent the last two hours mustering
every bit of maturity I had to keep the ZX-11 from seducing me into triple
digit speeds on crowded public roads. I felt a fresh, unspoken camaraderie
with the Marine Corps jet jockeys who cruised above -- surely they must
know the same joy of insane acceleration from their jump to afterburners,
as well as the frustration of having to "behave" in crowded Southern
California airspace. I'll admit that I envy them their jobs -- I always
thought I had the grades, the reflexes and the je ne sais quois needed to
be a fighter pilot. Unfortunately I also have 20-100 vision, so I was
relegated to wearing contacts and racing motorcycles. Not a bad life
actually, but I still get a wistful pang every time I see a fighter jet in
action.
Later that night with the key to the ZX-11 burning a hole in my pocket,
I was thinking that surely this time I was in their league. Sure, they
could strafe and bomb and dive and roll and do lots of cool stuff I couldn't,
but what would happen if we were to go at it side by side, mano a mano, Ninja
vs. Hornet, on parallel runways? I figured they'd have to be airborne to get
past me, and it'd take at least a mile for them to do it. So being the
intrepid reporter you've come to count on, my first call was to John Malovich,
the McDonnell/Douglas representative at MCAS El Toro. He told me that the
twin GE engines produce 17,700 pounds of thrust each, and that at an average
airspeed, air temperature (and some other factors) are pumping out the
equivalent of 35,000 horsepower a piece. Of course the machine loaded with
4000 pounds of fuel at takeoff would weigh in at 32,000 pounds. So how would
all this stack up against the Ninja's 120+ horsepower with Ram-Air intake?
Well, government regulations (don't you hate those?) mandated that we do this
drag race on paper. The ZX-11 has been clocked by other magazines at just
over 10 seconds in the quarter mile (1320 feet) with a trap speed of around
135 mph.
According to John Malovich, the F/A-18 can hit 160 mph by the 1100 foot
marker in around just over ten seconds, and in full afterburner would pass
400 mph by the end of the 8000 foot runway, an event that would come another
ten seconds later. So even though the ZX is dusted by the quarter mile,
bear in mind that you can hold this $30 million plane off for a thousand
feet, and you can do it for under $10,000 dollars. And compared to the
slug-like vehicles of mere mortals, these two incredibly powerful machines
affect the pilot/rider in similar ways.
To find out just how, I hooked up with Marine Lieutenant Kurt Siglin, who
spoke with me after his very first flight (or "hop" as they call it) in the
driver's seat of the Hornet. Kurt is a lifelong motorcyclist who besides
riding on the street has spent many hours bashing around the New Mexico
desert on venerable enduros like the TT500 (he calls it a "great wheelie
bike" and admits he got to examine the local flora close up when "departed
controlled flight several times.") During the remainder of this article,
I'll be switching back and forth between my interview with Kurt and my
review of the ZX.
S.N. So how was your first hop in the F/A-18 Hornet?
Lt. K.S. It was excellent. My road has been the T-34 Charlie, a single
engine turboprop, the basic trainer, and then the T-2 which is a twin engine
little turbojet basic jet trainer and then the tA-4 meridian, but this is my
first afterburning jet -- the tA4 is basically a combat jet just modified to
be a trainer, it was a neat little airplane -- they call it the scooter
because it has the fastest rollrate of any airplane in the inventory at 720
degrees per second. (pay attention: this means its possible to do two full
lunch-losing rolls in a single second) So it was a really fun jet to fly but
it certainly didn't have the power of the f-18 in terms of thrust to weight
ratio. With a half fuel load in an F-18 you're looking at about a one to one
thrust to weight ratio, so you can basically maintain airspeed going vertical.
S. N. So with that much power you could be going straight ahead or
straight up and you wouldn't have to slow down.
Lt. K.S. Exactly. You could maintain your energy package going straight
vertical.
S.N. Cool.
Lt. K.S. We take off on max afterburner with the throttles all the way up to
the stops and we do that for various reasons. You want to shorten your
landing and takeoff rolls as much as you can. The sooner you're airborne
the better off you are... so we do a max-burner go and Oh it's quite
impressive... you just release the brakes and go smoothly all the way into
burner. And the acceleration just kicks in and it just sits you back in your
seat like a high horsepower car off the line. You're just kind of plastered
back in your seat and you just expect it to let up sooner or later and it
just doesn't -- as long as the throttles are up there you're just stuck back
in that seat. And as soon as we're airborne we'll get the gear up -- it needs
to be up by 250 knots -- and once the gear is up the airplane is a lot
cleaner at that point and it just really wants to scoot out from underneath
you. I was just really amazed -- by far it was the most powerful thing I've
ever been in.
S. N. So how do you do that? You just give it full throttle and hold the
brakes on till its wound up and then let it go? (I'm picturing a tripod
burnout)
Lt. K.S. No if you held the brakes and wound it up you'd probably blow the
tires (laughs)
S.N. You could literally rip it right out of its shoes?
Lt. K.S. Oh yeah. You can hold the brakes and go to standard military rpm...
basically the engines are running at the certain speed they'll run at when
airborne. In an f-18 this means they're running at about 98%. Well when
I hit max afterburner the engines are still gonna be turning at 98%, but the
difference is I'm now injecting raw fuel directly into the exhaust section
and there are some igniters in there that actually ignite the fuel and at
that point it's just like having a rocket added on to the basic jet engine
because you're just exploding that fuel in the exhaust pipe and that's what
gives you the additional thrust. You have a huge increase in fuel
consumption and it doesn't give you the same percentage increase in power
but you do get a lot more power... upwards of 50% increase in thrust.
S.N. I'm trying to figure out how this translates to the boost you get with
the ZX-11s ram air. To the rider, it's less of a kick than an overall
increase in power at higher speeds.
Lt. K.S. Well, the FA-18's top speed is around 1.83 mach, which translates
to around 1100 miles an hour, depending on altitude and air temperature and
all that. But in an FA-18 if your flying along at 200 knots and you go to
max afterburners you're going to be going 350-400 knots in like ten seconds
or so.
S.N. What about the roll-on power of the FA-18. Let's say you're cruising
level at a pleasant 500 miles an hour, and kick in max burners. Is there a
strong rush? How many lateral G's will it add?
Lt. K.S. You're not gonna get probably a full G cause if you're doing 500
knots and you're gonna go supersonic it's gonna take a fair amount of time
and it's gonna be a smooth acceleration all the way up, so you're not gonna
get that real punch in your chest like you will from a dead stop to an
afterburner takeoff.
S.N. What about when you first hit the burners? When I first got on
this bike, there was a different feeling. There was a feeling of power,
of huge potential, an additional rush that comes with it that goes beyond
the physical sensation that this is one of the most impressive powerful
machines of its type in the known universe, and I'M driving it! Does that
occur to you?
Lt. K.S. Oh yeah. I think that's a lot of what attracts people to military
aviation. I mean just realizing the amount of assets that have been
delegated to you at that moment. Like I thought about this the other day in
my flight in the F-18, that I'm at the controls of a 30+ million dollar
airplane that has thousands and thousands of pounds of thrust at my
fingertips, and just to think that I'm gonna go out and "zorch' around at
4 or 500 miles an hour -- I hate to call it an ego trip, but I don't know
exactly how to explain it. I guess it's like being on a hot motorcycle and
realizing what you have sitting beneath you and what it will do for you.
S.N. Was there even a moment in your first flight when you thought,
"I'm only human and this is happening too fast?"
Lt. K.S. You're so busy and you have so many things that you're thinking
about that you don't really have time to reflect on that. I've got about
300 hours in airplanes, with almost 200 hours in training jets and I've
already logged about 50 hours in the in the F-18 simulator, and
I've had a couple back seat rides so I'd had a couple hours actually
in the airplane and our training is so intensive and so thorough and
detailed that you know what you need to do even before you go out and do
it so the actual motion of doing it almost comes second nature just because
you've prepared so well to do it.
S.N. Does all that training get in the way? Is it still fun?
Lt. K.S. Oh it's still a blast! Yeah, it's great! It's so much work that
if it wasn't fun, I don't think anyone would want to do it. For every hour
you spend in the cockpit, especially like where I'm at in training, you
spend several hours in the books... and that takes a little bit of
the fun out of it just because you're working so hard but oh no it's
still a blast, like when you're doing a touch and go, you touchdown and you
run the throttles up and jump back up into the air and turn downwind for the
next landing there's no other way to describe it but fun.
S.N. What does it challenge in you? Physically, emotionally... can your
reflexes keep up with everything that's going on around you when you're
going real fast?
Lt. K.S. I tell you speed is kind of a relative thing. if you're close to
the ground going fast you have a real sensation of speed because you have
"ground rush." If you're up at 10,000 feet and you're going 600 knots, but
it doesn't necessarily feel fast. At that speed though you can roll into an
angle of banking and you can pull 7 G's.
The ZX-11 invites you not only to challenge everything you ever knew
about acceleration and speed, but also to do it for extended periods of
time. Frankly, I never knew breaking the law could be so comfortable.
Now I'm not advocating this, and the other magazines will simply
ignore this fact, but not here. Let's face it: this is a STREETbike,
not a racebike. I am certain that in the history of western civilization,
not even ONE ZX-11 owner has managed to stay within the posted limits at
all times. We are after all human, the vast majority of us are males and
we don't handle temptation very well.
So while it may earn you a point or two on your license, you can find
solace in the fact that it's simultaneously rewarding you ergonomically.
The footpeg-seat-bar geometry is damn near perfect but I'm 5'9" with my
boots on, and I wouldn't have minded if the reach to the bars was a
little shorter. My only other complaint is that designers didn't
leave enough room between the levers and the fairing sides. With winter
gloves on, I kept bumping my fingertips against the fairing as I clutched
and braked -- and I wear a medium glove. Those of you with extra large
paws might have trouble with this.
But no matter how big you are, your butt will be among the happiest
parts of your body. The intelligently sculpted seat puts your weight
where it should be and makes it easy to transition from one knee down to
the other. This all serves to make this sweet handling bike that
much easier to ride quickly. I'm telling you all this because I was
surprised -- this is clearly a big motorcycle -- but once under way it
feels a lot lighter than it looks. Quick transitions that were once near
impossible on liter-class bikes are downright easy on this one.
Size and weight only become a real issue when it comes time to combat
inertia ("stopping" to you non-science types) The ZX-11's 4-pot Tokico
calipers are fine for gentle (aka: legal) riding, but when you combine the
bike's weight with its unparalleled acceleration prowess, they seem
to come up short. Hustling downhill on the gas toward a tight
corner on the ZX-11 is scarier than it oughtta be, even though Tokico
binders never faded -- they just aren't as powerful as I would have liked.
My judgment is most certainly tainted by the fact that I've been to the
promised land of 6-piston calipers with full-floating rotors that stop NOW!
Yamaha's FZR1000 and Suzuki's GSXR1100 both come with great brakes, and these
bikes are both slower and lighter than the ZX-11. Price was clearly an
issue here, and since the ZX-11 wasn't destined for racetrack use, I guess
they felt the Tokicos were plenty strong for street use. It's true there's
nothing [italic]wrong with them, but if it were my bike, I'd want
more stopping power in reserve. (I'm not sure for example how efficient
they'd be after a hot day of spirited 2-up riding, so I recommend you invest
in a set of steel lines and some aftermarket pads and you should be fine).
SN: So Kurt, on a bike as fast as this Ninja, you can get to a point where
there are too many choices to make, too many problems in your face, things
can just be happening too fast, and that's where you can get into trouble.
I mean the human condition is such that you can only handle so much
at one time. How do you deal with that in a fighter?
Lt. K.S. Yeah we kinda jokingly refer to that type situation as a "helmet
fire," you know where there's so much going on that it sets fire to the
inside of your helmet? (He laughs). That happens to people in combat, like
you're getting presented with too many things happening at the same
time and you ask a guy his name and he can't tell you. You
know your brain just starts to do funny things. In a dogfight let's
say you and the bogey are approaching each other and at the merge you each
have 600 knots which is a closure rate of 1200 knots (about 1400 mph) and
you're trying to keep your eye on, "Which way did he turn? How am I going to
best counteract whatever he does? How am I going to get offensive, and at
the same time keep him defensive? How can I best fly this airplane to get
the maximum performance out of it?" You're also watching airspeed, altitude
and so many other things because it's a three dimensional environment, and
time compresses in those situations, too, so to survive you just fall back
on your training and some of those things just become second nature. The
more comfortable you are in the airplane the less you have to think about
the monkey skills of stick, rudder and throttle and the more you can think
about what the other guy is doing, and how you're gonna stay aggressive and
offensive. The minute you get defensive you give up the initiative and
that's to the other guy's advantage. Just like on a motorcycle you wanna be
proactive not reactive... if in a fighter you ever get reactive you're
probably gonna die.
And the parallels to high speed motorcycling whether on the street or on
the track are clear. I ask you to reread what he just said, and replace
"bogey" with "oncoming truck in my lane," adjust the speeds to fit real
world sport riding numbers, and replace "stick, rudder and throttle" with
"bars, brakes and throttle." There is no substitute for training, no
replacement for experience. In a world so filled with dangers for the
motorcyclist, arm yourself as best you can. The importance of this is
magnified many times when you're in control of a motorcycle as potent as the
ZX-11. The last thing you need is a "helmet fire" at 175.
Jeroen de Roos, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Comments to: jdr@iaehv.nl