Viggen Flight Academy - Nov 20 and 21, 1999
I wish to thank Saab-USA, Road Atlanta, and all the folks I took the Flight Academy with for helping to make it a wonderful friendly event. I learned a lot there, met some nice people, and learned that I wasn't pushing my Viggen anywhere near its limits.In my 88 900T, it took me about 24,000 miles to really figure out what the car would be able to do. If it took me that long on the Viggen, it would be 2/3 done with the lease. I learned what the Viggen can do in a weekend. It was a weekend of perma-grin. Perma-grin is what the 16 other participants shared the whole weekend.
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We were greeted and pointed in the right direction to the meeting place and classroom at Road Atlanta by a nice black 2000 Viggen. This has a black interior also.
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Another closeup for those that are interested. There are also two Viggens in the background which people drove to the class. I had never seen more than one Viggen (my own) at a time until I woke up and looked outside the window at my motel that morning. At the Lodge at Chateau Elan, three other flight academy students had driven in with their Viggens.
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Another view. The gentleman in red is from Saab-USA. He took the course and was able to help others with certain features of the car electronics some people hadn't figured out yet.
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This is inside the Road Atlanta Classroom where we registered, got name tag pins, and spent a few minutes meeting each other and learning some of the phyics of Viggens in motion.
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Another view of the classroom from my perspective. The instructors were very courteous, experienced drivers, smart teachers, and mixed humorous stories in with the classroom work.
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The first exercise was the Skid Pad. This is not a Viggen. It is a 9-3 SE configured with Viggen wheels and tires. It taught us why Viggen seats are preferable over normal car seats when having fun on a wild car ride. The reason the 9-3 SE was used is because it's an automatic (ew) and we wouldn't accidentally leave a manual viggen engaged in a forward gear while the car moves backwards which could be damaging to the transmission. Not being concerned with this in an automatic, we were free to practice the techniques of correcting from understeer and oversteer while going around a circle as fast as the car would let us. An instructor took us out a few at a time to show how it was to be done, then one-on-one for individual practice.
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Probably the instructor just yanked on the emergency brake as the rear end starts to slingshot around. The car will be spinning quite rapidly in less than a second. The drivers job is to quickly correct, pause, and recover so that the car continues on it's intended course.
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This is at a later in the day Skid Pad excise where we follow cones into a left turn across the skid pad and the instructor pulls the emergency brake and we have to correct for it.
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That's a silver Viggen in the background.
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I panned with the car for some motion blur. This car is recovering from an instructor-induced oversteer after a sharp wet left turn.
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This slalom exercise taught us to be smooth with the steering wheel under conditions where traction and control are important, and that coming out of a turn fast is more important than going into a turn fast. Those blue Viggens sure are pretty aren't they.
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Viggens, Porsches, Road Atlanta. I don't have the thousand words this picture is worth.
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All around us while we practiced were sports cars of every variety on the main track. Here is an NSX (or possibly a Ferarri) being followed by a BWM, a Porsche, and another BMW. Some of the cars had wild exhaust notes and contributed to a Euphoric environment which kept the permagrin on our faces all day long.
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Here three Porsches come out of a corner and come down hard on the throttle. During lunch there was an accident which took out a Mustang and a Porsche I think. I heard 2 seconds of screeching, and then two little thuds.
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Here are two absolutely gorgeous yellow Viggens waiting for Heel and Toe downshifting practice in the pit area of the race track.
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Looking nice... These cars are waiting to go down a straightaway to gather speed, then go through a row of cones where an instructor will use lights to signal the driver which lane to change into very very quickly. Then the driver has to come to a complete stop instantly on a dime after changing into a particular lane. You have to be real quick with the steering wheel, then trust ABS.
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I think I have a small salivation problem.
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Some more Skid Pad excersise. Such a nice photo.
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This is a wet and dry auto-cross dril where we have to do laps around a specially designed couse which incorpates handling and performance skills from all the other drills.
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More wet and dry auto-cross fun.
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Silver Viggen. Pretty nice looking. Makes a nice wallpaper picture. This one has velcro on the hood. It is for attaching a salad bowl.
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With the salad bowl on the hood, the instructor placed a tennis ball in the bowl, and we had to get around the course as fast as possible AND as smoothly as possible. Letting up on the throttle too quickly, turning quickly, or braking hard would cause the ball to jump out of the bowl.
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More salad bowl drills. I was good at this because these skills are very important when driving in the snow. Nothing erratic and smooth power and brakes will ensure a swift and safe drive.
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This is the auto-cross practice which we ended our two days with. This was unbridled Viggen driving put to the test. The instructor did the course in 29.something seconds and the students did the course in 30.something to 32.something seconds, so we are all pretty close in terms of our ability to make the Viggen really move.
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Hot hot hot.
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Nice Viggen with a sweet Corvette racing in the background.
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Here's a Viggen leaning hard into a sharp left turn. Decellerating, braking or otherwise getting the nose down will provide more downward force on the wheels which do the steering, thus promoting more traction and a faster turn.
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Fun
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This is my favorite photo in the two rolls of film I shot during spare moments while participating in the flight academy. What a nice shot. This is computer wallpaper material.
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The Viggen seats help hold you in, but make sure your seatbelt is pulled tight as well. I felt like I'd been on a boat all day due to all the motions I experienced. Not seasick, just I felt like I was still moving when I took a shower at the end of the day.
Unfortunately, I did not bring my camera to the fine dinner Saab provided us at the winery at Chateau Elan. They had a perfect Saab 92 with suicide doors and everything, they also had a Sonett, a really sharp red SPG, a blue Viggen, and a 9-5 Aero for us to all inspect, enjoy, and discuss before heading in for dinner. We were treated like million-dollar business associates as well as like friends by the Saab executives who treated. They had as many questions for us as we did for them.
Links
Jason Philbrook
jp@midcoast.com
All photos taken Nov 20 and 21, 1999 with a Nikon F4s camera, 18mm and 80-200mm lenses, Fujichrome velvia, and scanned with the Nikon Coolscan-III.