Fjordmonkey

It's Laobi humor, but it IS most likely a reveal. There's a few hints in the vid, though. :smilewink:

It's going to be glorious, either way :D Reminds me that I need to learn how to make skins for DCS. There's a horde of Norwegian Viper-skins that needs to be made, even though we don't use the CJ.

That's what we figured anyway :D Besides, the hop was less than 5 minutes long lol. Bone-clean bird, shortfield-takeoff towards the west, sharp left turn out over the sea to accellerate, do a long, loping turn back in, and come in at an EXTREMELY low pass. How low? Well, we saw the top half of the tailfin flash past one of the old F104-shelters before the pilot pulls sharply up and to the right back out to sea again for a VERY short final and landing. The camera-crew and flightline-crew standing at the linehouse above apron C5 looked DOWN into the cockpit as Bicep (the pilot) came thundering past. Fun day working the flightline :D

From what I remember, no. The totalizer went down to single digits, but I have no idea on just how accurate it actually is. I do remember that the crewchief told me to go up into the 'pit and verify his reading before writing it into the AFTO, however. Usually the birds came down with 1000-1100lbs, but the bird in question did a Scramble-launch, shortfield and hilariously low lowpass due to Code One Magazine visiting Bodø MAS back in 2000. Was a lot of fun to launch it with only three out of six green, and to recover it with what's basically vapor in the tanks.

I've seen 634 on the totalizer after shutdown, without it being an emergency :P

From what I can tell from the forums over at F-16.net: no. The CJ's pre-Block52+ lacks both the attachments, the wiring and the plumbing needed, plus the structural modifications needed to fly with them. Source: Plant#4s post on this page: http://www.f-16.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=11015&sid=6d0eb86074e4ac04d912c4790e6ec8d8&start=30 Mind you, I'm no expert on the later-model Vipers, as I only worked on the AM/BM with the MLU M2-upgrade which is said to bring the cockpit and avionics up on par wit the Block 50/52s. There's been other upgrades since then (think we're at M7 at this point), but just what they entail is unknown to me.

We did name some of them, but only between us conscripts. 658 (80-3658) was Bleiebarnet (Diaperchild) or Hangardronninga (Hangar Queen), mostly due to an insane ability to chuck fuel out of the vent-hole under the wing on EVERY goddamn startup for a while before it was taken in for 200-hour maint, or because she spent an insane amount of time in the hangar with minor snags. ECS, Radar, various electrical faults and all the other fun things that comes with the amout of flight-hours she had (4000+). 666 (80-3666) was The Beast for obvious reasons. 279 (78-0279) we called Aircon (ECS-issues on deployment) 659 (80-3659) wasn't named, since that would incur the Wrath of the Crewchief, which wasn't someone you messed with. There were others as well, but we mostly went with the tailnumber. Panels were named, yep. Bathtub and LOX we used, but instead of the Donut (which I take is the ring just before the nozzle) we called Fiseringen (basically sphincter). Apart from that, the only other we named was 2408, which was the panel covering the EPU fueltank. We rarely called it that, and usually went by the connector-number which I can't remember from the top of my head.

That's the F-14D RIO-cockpit, not the B's

Nothing wrong in being really excited. You should have seen my reaction to the Viper-reveal on the tail-end of the 2018 highlights-video! The reason I advocate keeping ones exitement on a leash is because I also know from bitter experience that sometimes what you get won't live up to the hype you've made in your own head.

That's ok :P Although with your join-date for this board being 2008, you should know patience by now :P

I find it harder to care all that much, even though I'll buy the Tomcat next paycheck. It'll be here when it arrives, not sooner or later than that. Just WHEN that will be is, to be, irrelevant. Then again, I've been called far to patient before :P

It's the same for pretty much every single module, and have been since the sim came out. You can separate the community into three main groups: - Those that will scream, bitch, rant, demand their money back and threaten with lawsuits - Those that will vehemently defend the devs until death, regardless. - Those that will sit in the middle eating popcorn and accepting that a desktop sim will NEVER become 100% identical to the real aircraft. You'll have more or less rabit people in every camp, however.

....derp! Completely forgot about that site. Yep, feel pretty doofus now.

Heh, interesting. I didn't think there was another Beast (tailnumber 666) other than the A-MLU from the RNorAF. She's the jet that almost blew me out of the window of the Linetaxi when she was at Bodø AFB while I was in. Which also reminds me to check up if she's still at Edwards doing MLU testing, and if she still has Bitchin' Betty on the inside of her ventral fin.

Never had to fiddle with the PDU, as that was Light Maint' territory :D And I'm damn glad for that! Never bumped into the Nine-Mike, but I did put my shoulder into the back end of the fins on the Penguin Antiship-missile (you might know it as the AGM-119, although I'm not sure if the USAF uses them). Not pleasant! Can't remember which of the three chippies on my side that was the most hellish to remove, inspect and reinstall (might have been the one for fuel since that was the highest up in the bay). Been too long since I worked on the birds :( But I know that losing one and having it drop into the engine bay is something no Crewchief will thank you for. I was training an FNG on the flight line who managed to do that, and he can thank the higher powers for that the detector right next to one of the fire-doors and as such was easy to get to. Stern words were spoken very loudly, and both the FNG and me got a nice little run around the shelter as punishment. The FNG for ****ing up, me for being in charge of the FNG :P Same guy who I had to whack over the head with my maglite (he had a helmet on) when he tried to go in front of the wing tank when he was going in to do his checks in the wheel-well. He ****ed up so many times and was generally unsafe on the jet, so we ended up sending him back to ground-school for another month before he was allowed to do his checkout-test. Among the things he managed to do was to forget to remove the pitot-cover before a pitot-heat test (I got it off in time, but we had to call out QA in order to make sure it was OK), forgot to remove the chaff/flare-pin, almost removed the EPU-pin BEFORE startup (that would have been fun!), forgot the arming-pin in a live Nine-mike etc. He wasn't very well liked, but he ended up at least OK after his trip back to ground-school and extensive drilling by the rest of us. I think the single most hated task on the Viper except cleaning it was towing it in the summer. SOP was to lower the canopy onto the rail but not to engage the locks, and when you have to tow the aircraft 3-4km from the shelter it's in and to the heavy maintenance hangar, you're dripping with sweat. Can't imagine how it would be to do that at lets say Nellis or heaven forbid Baghram! Drotik: I haven't gotten to see her myself even though she did land and stay at an airfield near me for a while. Hoping to get to see her next year when she resumes flying. Also hoping to make it to one of the continental airshows next year, since most airshows here in Norway are pretty boring. Would love to see the Eurofighter close up.

The Eurofighter sounds like a dream, although I really wish I still lived in Bodø since I then could be involved with the Starfighter-program up there. They got good old 637, a TF-104G, flying again a few years back. I liked how easy it was to change the engine on the Viper as well. The engine itself hangs from two bolts and a rail mounted to the fuselage, and removing it is simple if somewhat tedious due to having to undo about 200 screws that holds the bathtub (large panel on the underside of the rear fuselage) and the 150is bolts that holds both the ventral fins to the fuselage. After undoing a bucketload of fasteners and such that holds things like the main fuel-pipe attached to the engines, you can easily pull the engine out and onto its sled. I think the quickest engine-change I was involved in was about 3 hours, but I know they can be swapped out faster than that if need be. The thing I liked the least as an F-16 Groundie was to clean the bird. THAT was hell...

The Viper is extremely small, which makes working on it somewhat interesting. There's a few things on it that's so insanely hard to reach that you've got to be something of a contortionist in order to reach them (I'm looking at you, 3/8" bolt that holds the righthand ventral-fin panel on!!). Hell, just doing a SOAP-check (taking an oil-sample from the engine for analysis) after every flight is something you do by feel alone. Of course, cramming your arm halfway up an engine-bay that's filled almost to the fuselage with pipes and hot metal is never really all that fun, and I've got the scars to prove it on my right foream, heh. You also have to be very aware when you move around it when you're doing your checks after startup, as with all military aircraft, but especially so because of the small size. I mean, the stabs move over a meter when you go for full deflection, and they also move through 3000psi of force. Getting slapped by one can kill you very easily. The flaperons inboard on the wing is also something most groundcrew will get slapped by, so you quickly learn to wear a helmet so that it takes most of the force from the bonk and not your head. Still hurts, however. There's a lot you can bump your head on due to the small size, and on the old Block 10-birds there's an antenna underneath the intake that is notorious for this. The main landing gear doors are also something that you'll hit yourself on and they're pointy enough in places to draw blood if you hit them with sufficient speed. One thing I specifically remember as the worst about working on it was that due to age, some of the jets seeped fuel from the panels on the back of the aircraft when it performed BFM. This, coupled with the often-wet weather up at Bodø MAS here in Norway ment that the aircraft came in wet and thus extremely slippery. I have done a triple-WTF off the aircraft because of the combination of aviation-fuel on metal that then gets soaked in water. Not fun when it's about 2 meters down to the concrete floor of the shelter, heh... I still miss my time with them, though, even though they were frustrating birds to work on from time to time.

Interesting! I knew that the old Luftverteidigungdiesels (F-4F Phantom II) used a Huffer-cart to start, but didn't know that the Luftwaffe also used auxillary power on the Eurofighters and Tornados. :)

Yikes! PTO-failure is no joke at all! We did have somewhat of an incident when we were at Banak as well. My jet had an intermittent ECS-fault, so in order to clear it we had to tie the jet down and do a full AB groundrun. The problem is that the tiedown was situated so that it pointed the nozzle straight at an earth embankment about 6 meters away. And the soil up there is fine sand, almost like desert-sand..... Well, the dustcloud rose 100-150 meters into the air, and rained sand down onto the entire flightline, including onto/into aircraft. We had two gun-failures the next day, one of which could have been very bad as the round didn't as much as fire as just pop loose and jam inside the barrel. On the next revolution of the gun, the round coming into the barrel got pushed into a jammed round, telescoped into the casing and then essentially jamming the entire gun while it being under full hydraulic load. NOT pretty, and the pilot did get a bit ashen when the EoD-crew told him that he had flown back to the airfield with two live 20mm HEI-rounds stuck in the barrel while having a hyd-leak from the gun-breech assembly due to the gun jamming mechanically. Very glad I didn't handle that aircraft that day, as cleaning hydraulic fluid is hell enough. You do NOT need it to be worse by introducing gunpowder-residue and gunpowder into the mix... The other gun-fault was where a round came out of the chute and wrapped itself around the guiding-lug on the breech-side of the mechanism like a banana.

Shaft from the gearbox to the pump itself snapped and started flopping around. I didn't get a close look at the damage, but I did help clean the aircraft before it was pulled into the heavy maint' hangar. I really pity the guy that had to climb inside the engine-compartment and do cleanup there :P

Well, we really didn't have much issues with the 220's of the older OCU-jets (pre-MLU), but one of the other crews had a 220 (not the 220E which the MLU's had) compressor-stalled immediately after starting it, probably during either SEC or BUC-checks. We were in a shelter a few hundred meters away, and the boom that came out of the other shelter was hilariously loud even for us. The aircraft had belched out a very nice fireball out of the intake as well, and if I remember correctly the issue was due to a faulty fuel-controller. Apart from that, we didn't have much engine-issues. I think the worst issues we had during my year in was that they found oil in the EPU-system, which effectively grounded the entire F-16 fleet in Norway for the better parts of two weeks. Other issues were minor. Fuel-leaks (I'm looking at you, 658!!!), ECS-problems on 279 while on deployment to Banak AFB, and we had one jet returning to base not soon after takeoff due to a broken shaft in one of the hydraulic pumps on board. That last one was "fun" to receive, as the hyd-oil reservoir emptied itself inside the aircraft. REALLY fun to clean that one... Was a bit more fun happening at Banak, like a shredded ventral fin and shrapnel in the left stab, plus a palm-size piece of shrapnel missing the Flare-magazine by about an inch after the jet had done a bombing-run. Sitting on RS15 the night the Russian submarine Kursk sank, however, was intense...

On US aircraft they've done away with having to use external sources of either air or power in order to start the aircraft, since it's just another thing that can and usually will break when you absolutely do NOT need it to. It introduces complexity into the mix that you don't need to have. Also, I don't know of any modern-day, main-line aircraft in western europe that needs external power or inputs in order to start. Sure, you might have some of the smaller trainers and such that might need it, but aircraft like the F16, SAAB Gripen, Tornado or Typhoons doesn't require it. Also don't think that the Rafale or the Mirage 2000 needs it. During my year working on the Vipers in RNorAF, we NEVER used any external hookups on startup unless it was when we had to hook the jet up to a testrig in order to do some testing on the ECS. External ground-power was used during the morning electrical checks, and there are provisions for using a Huffer in order to do testing on the ground as well as hydraulic hookups for testing purposes, but they're not used to start or launch the aircraft with. This holds especially true on ground-air, because the receptacle is VERY close to the intake on the Viper, which is not a place you want to be in when the engine is started.

It's about as old, repeated, unoriginal and not funny anymore as the million requests for a releasedate, and about as stupid as the screaming that ensues when a release-date is given/not given/pushed back/pulled forward ;)

We'll get it in..... *drumroll* #TwoWeeks :D (Sorry, couldn't help myself! I really would love some more info on this :D )

I laughed myself silly when I saw that yesterday. I'd modify it, however. Swap out the powder with three Co2-ampules that blow through vats of toner-powder from a color laserprinter, and would look into getting hold of some thiols instead of the fart-spray. Toner-powder is nigh-on IMPOSSIBLE to properly clean up, and if you add water to it...well, you'll never get THAT out. Thiols are....well...hideous. Skunks use two different ones and are well-known for being some of the smelliest creatures out there, and it takes a lot of time and effort to remove. Would really like to swap out the fart-spray with a few drops of thioacetone instead, but the risks of mishandling it would be a tad too big :P