MOVIE REVIEW BASED ON AIRCRAFT PERFORMANCE.

MOVIE SELECTED: GUNJAN SAXENA, THE KARGIL GIRL.

DIRECTED BY SHARAN SHARMA

CASTING, JHANVI KAPOOR AS LT. GUNJAN SAXENA.

A review by BHARATH KUMAR A -19103029, K DANUSH

DATTHATHIREYAN- 19103016.

REVIEW:
1. OVERVIEW OF THE MOVIE:
To understand our review, reading through the story line would help us a lot.
Below paragraph is the storyline represented:
Beginning in Lucknow, 1984, the story begins with young Gunjan Saxena in a flight along
with her older brother, Anshuman. Gunjan wants to look out of the airplane window, but
Anshuman doesn't let her. A kind air hostess tends to the problem and takes Gunjan to the
cockpit. Looking at the cockpit immediately sparks a desire in her mind to become a pilot as
she feels enthusiastic about the plane's features.
A few years later, Gunjan is congratulated for her academic excellence with her proud
parents, Anup and Kirti, planning to send her to high school. Gunjan, however, wants to drop
out of high school to become a pilot. Anshuman feels that women should not be in the
cockpit, but Anup strongly disagrees. A firm believer of gender equality, he allows Gunjan to
experiment with her desire to become a pilot. Gunjan makes multiple attempts, but these are
thwarted by concerns regarding her educational qualifications and high costs, causing her to
return home dejected each time. While her parents differ in their outlook towards her dream,
with Kirti hoping her daughter would soon be wary and Anup insistent on allowing his
daughter to pursue her dreams relentlessly, an advertisement in a newspaper for acceptance
into the Indian Air Force provides Gunjan just the right opportunity for making an effort to
enter the air force. Anshuman, who is himself serving in the army, completely disapproves
and tells Gunjan that the Air Force isn't a place for women. She, however, ignores him, and
goes ahead with the formalities, later finding out on the day of the results that she is the only
female who got accepted.
During her medical tests, Gunjan learns that she is one centimeter too short and seven
kilograms too much for the Air Force requirements. She is devastated by this, but learns that
she can take a retest in two weeks, and discusses it with Anup, who asks her not to give up,
and together they come up with a workout regime to lose weight. Across the retest, she still
falls short on the height criterion, but the officers conclude that the length of her hands and
legs would compensate for it, and accept her into the force. However, while Anup and Kirti
are unable to contain their pride, Anshuman still remains in denial of his sister's dedication,
but Gunjan decides to ignore his reservations and commences training. During her training,
she finds herself subjected to several harsh realities and inconveniences due to the male-
dominated order of the air force, and contemplates leaving the camp, when a crisis situation
causes her to reconsider when, in 1999, the Kargil war begins, and all Air Force pilots are
needed. Gunjan is determined to take part in the war, and despite Anshuman meeting her and
dissuading her from participation, disregards his reservations yet again. She finds herself
badly needed in a mission and proceeds with it, but is then ordered to abort because the
mission is too difficult for her. She reluctantly resigns to the camp. Suddenly, news of army
soldiers being heavily wounded in the battle arrives, and it is up to her to save them.
Gunjan and another pilot take separate helicopters and go over to aid the injured soldiers.
Back at the camp, army soldiers ask her to abort the mission but regardless of their opinion,
she proceeds. Suddenly, as the other helicopter gets shot down from an RPG attack, Gunjan
rescues the other pilot and the wounded soldiers and successfully completes a risky
maneuver, despite being exposed to bullets herself. After the mission and the war, she is
rewarded for her courage and bravery, with Anup feeling proud of her.

2. given task: a review based on aircraft performance scenes.

Only a few Certain scenes from Gunjan Saxena’s biographical film satisfies the
condition of aircraft performance based scenes.
Scene 1:
In the movie , exactly at 59.35 seconds, ( stream through Netflix ott),
Gunjan Saxena and her senior pilot officer seen to be airborne on an helicopter ,
MI-17. A conversation between them proves how Gunjan Saxena is not a “ bad
pilot”. The flight is now simulated to an engine failure condition, by fuel flow
valve is cut-off towards the engine. Since the fuel flow is reduced, the
helicopter enters into the a dive stage, mean while the pilot Gunjan Saxena
commands “ collectives down , speed 60 knots , select and turn towards the
forced landing field” , “ going towards the forced landing field 12 o clock”
After the senior pilot says “ it’s very easy to land” and commands officer
Gunjan towards a land strip in 8 o clock , it appears to a small strip of land, like
a solo palm tree island.
The aircraft diverts towards the path, and while arriving towards it, the
helicopter enters into a sudden pitch down and pitch up conditions made by the
officer. After a certain time we get to witness an amazing emergency landing
made by the helicopter with the help of its pilot Gunjan Saxena.
terms to be reviewed.
1. collectives
2. forced landing field.
We do now have a curiosity to know why we need to get he collectives down?
In short what do we mean by collectives down.

A collective is a rod where the pitch of a propeller could be changed. During

olden days , the helicopter is only adopted with fixed change of angles , that is
why we have only two terms collectives up and collectives down.
While we get the collectives totally down , the chopper’s blades, are in an angle
of attack where it encounters more lifting and less drag. When you achieve this
we gain more time for an emergency landing .
Next stop, the landing .
We have a lot of procedures while landing, the pilot was given a task of landing
a small strip where there is only small space to make deviation errors while
landing. Since there is an advantage , where the pilot has a large airborne
distance for the small strip landing, the pilot immediately dives in and increase
the velocity of the vehicle, increasing the velocity of vehicle is a smart choice
as, the flight won’t enter into stall due to low airspeed. After reaching the
nearby point , the pilot pitches up to reduce the forward movement. And finally
lands the vehicle very safely.

SCENE 2:

Exactly at 1:02:05 (streaming through Netflix ott) . Ofiicer Gunjan Saxena

seems to get heavy scolding from senior pilot officer. The senior pilot shouts “
what are you staring at?” , “give me the air speed reading” ,” “ASI, quickly” .
She replies “100”. And he shouts “100 what you duffer”, GUNJAN replies “
100 knots sir” then a followed question of a ground speed of 110 knots. She
lowers the collective and gives a right roll to the helicopter, without even
applying a rudder. And she gets a scolding again.

Here, is a situation of a pilot getting trained, who notes down airspeed, ground
speed , and does a normal routine right turn.
Then the scene jumps towards, Gunjan is seen to be cleaning the helicopter.
Well, a good maintenance is a good endurance for an aircraft.

KARGIL WAR SCENE: 1:30:00 (streamed through Netflix ott)

Gunjan Saxena is commanded for a watch over , back up and troop spotting
mission, where she is commanding hawk-2 call signed helicopter. when hawk-1
looks for casualty , and they confirm it. Hawk 1 goes into picking up the
casualty, and orders hawk-2 to position of 12 o clock , A ridge. And commands
them to orbit with the maintained height. When hawk-2 discovers , hawk -1 was
in danger , hawk-2 enters into the battle field, lands safely. And picks up, while
attempting to take off their engines were shot, causing a malfunction which
caused the engines rpm to under perform. And not to mention they too were in a
line of fire. Luckly for them, they had a ridge of the mountain where the
chopper entered into a right roll and a dive to gain rpm and thrust.

When an helicopter enters into a certain height , with the help of its propellers it
could definitely gain rpm. And thus the necessary thrust required for keeping it
in airborne.

Advantage of an helicopter is, using a very small confined space to take off ,
gaining thrust very easily, and could be recovered from stall in seconds of time.
Thus by these performance advantageous of the helicopter , GUNJAN
SAXENA , diverted from an incoming missile attack and successfully flight her
vehicle.