Curious about the HUD- are there a lot of HUD failures in the T-6B fleet? I've heard students aren't "allowed" to use the HUD for a portion of the syllabus as well.
Here's more than what you ever wanted to know about the T-6 HUD.
They were hit and miss for actually working a few years ago. One or two of the aerobatic flights were supposed to be emphasis on using the HUD for high work and for pattern work, but if you ended up in an airplane with a non working HUD then it wasn't a mandatory syllabus requirement.
Most of what I'd do for the high work was to explain the conceptual difference between the flight path marker/velocity vector and a pipper, to imagine the pitch ladder like being inside a giant hamster wheel, and of course to keep the basics in your scan (airspeed, altitude). Oh, and to have fun... duh.
Pattern work I'd mostly use the HUD's AoA indexer (the "E" next to the VV) and how it responded to pitch and power changes.
We didn't really have what you'd call a "robust" way of teaching AoA approaches in Primary. Even with all the jet guys who got orders to be primary instructors, during the last ~10 years as the T-6B came online and then a generation who'd flown it as students came back to instruct in it, the FTI and the IP tribal knowledge of dos and don'ts didn't improve much from the T-34 days. For example, putting the VV on your runway aimpoint and why that is a huge no-no for a carrier approach, I learned that indirectly from posts here on AW (mostly posts about the "deliberate practice" guy who was putting out bad gouge at the F-18 RAG)... nobody in the FITU or the squadron really talked about that and the FTI certainly failed to mention it (CNATRA's job to ensure once they started beating up AoA and HUD more in the syllabus guide). Or the simple gouge of putting a "bug spot" on your windshield using the stick on your aimpoint and using the throttle to maintain the AoA indexer in the donut- again, picked that one up on here instead of around the ready room. Or techniques like leading a bit with the green V as you roll out of your approach turn into the groove, or why the T-6 pitches up a little when you add power but the T-45 goes straight or pitches slightly down (correct me if I'm wrong), or....
The layout and symbology is the same as the F-18. There is also an F-16 setting but the avionics people have to change it from one to the other, it's not a switch the pilot can reach. I think I heard the T-38 HUDs have the same two choices, which is pretty smart.
On cross countries a lot of guys would have their students turn the HUD on. Other than those times, you were either supposed to leave it off or it just didn't got used much.
Going back several years now, when the T-6B was still fairly new a lot of aircraft had a weird problem with the HUD in that it would turn on full bright at random times, day (mildly annoying) and night (quite bright). You couldn't turn it off and the bright-dim knob didn't seem to be connected to anything on those fault airplanes. The only way to turn it off was with the avionics master since there was no dedicated circuit breaker. NAVAIR farted around with this problem for what seemed like a year or more (
shocking), claimed it would require an airframe change to disconnect the cannon plug and zip-tie it off back there and that would be just way too much paperwork. Eventually the problem quietly went away. In the meantime guys got tired of getting randomly blinded on night flights and we would just lay an approach plate on top of the projector- it fit almost perfectly. The other weird problem with the HUDs is some of them were way out of focus- some were blurry all the time and others would start out sharp (yay!!) and become fuzzy halfway through the flight (f---!!).
I think a new collimator is like $10 or 20k, maybe even more who knows.
@PMPT , you can input IFR and VFR named fixes in the T-6 FMS and you can input radial-DME cuts from navaids too. I can't remember if there is a way to hand jam lat-long (you'd think there would be, but I just don't remember ever needing to do it).