mkellytx

No need to recreate, NACA did a lot of the work with Republic back in the 50's at Langley. Most of those reports are up on the technical servers. There's even at least one flight test report on the B model is/was out there on DTIC. Chances are there's more with a thick layer of dust tucked away in the AFFTC technical library at Edwards. All that's needed is someone with time, contacts, a little money and a lot of patience for FOIA. The performance annexes as well are floating around the interwebs so a decent aero eng should be able to back out a lot of the key attributes with the proper guidance.

Here's a view of the Soviet/Warsaw Pact at the end of the Cold War with a few of the NATO airbases and most Norwegian airfields. The object counts speak for themselves... null

It's not so much SIOP, but some of the equipment on board, namely the EWO station. That said, the TO's for the AMI upgrade were/are floating around the interwebs. Now that the old girl will receive a new radar, engines, CONNECT and who knows what else, AMI may now be superseded like CCIP was for the Viper. Even if all of that could be overcome there's still other show stoppers mentioned in the thread.

The Kfir's no Nesher, but Columbia and Ecuador use/used them. Probably could come up with some scenario on the map that could use them...

Kola and the Northern Flank have long been areas of interest. Always wanted them and it's amazing the amount of info that's out there open source. Fiddled around a bit with the locations of the AD networks and airfields for the 1970's Cold War (Warsaw Pact). NATO, Sweden and Finland are all late 80's early 90's. It should make a really fun map. nullnull

Dude, this issue's black and white like a school bus full of nuns and someone's gotta make the call I'm goin' in for guns. To imply that DG aren't real pilots and the songs are less than 10% truth should require an immediate shot of Weed...

It's been known to happen. Once upon a time, when I was much younger I was a non rated aircrew. Not that I violated any regs or local OI's, but most airframes I was the backup to the pilot I got plenty of stick time so they knew if something bad happened they were good. The party ended when an FTE scraped the fins on a Viper, after that only rated crew could fly below 200 ft or anything higher risk than low. When we took one of those planes to the sandbox, I did get stick time to include some during an emergency. The switches and what not were on the pilot's side of the cockpit so I stayed heads up while he trouble shot until we were in the pattern and then he put it on the ground, just another day at work dead sticking a plane in the sandbox.

One of the F-111 drivers on the Libya strike had a reputation for using a lot of them. He was the first jet back in the chocks after the strike, opened the canopy and started handing them to who he thought was the crew chief, but when he looked up it was the USAFE commander, who took it graciously... Needless to say his call sign changed, or so the rumor goes...

Just to clarify it was the block 40/42 that originally had the full up system. As Kirk alluded in other threads the TFR low level LGB delivery was a little much for a single pilot and only really stuck with the Mud Hen community. That being said, Hill deployed block 40's to ODS with the nav pods, Keith Rosenkranz wrote a book Vipers in the Storm about that. Post ODS medium level was the name of the game and no one wanted the weight and drag of the nav pod on a Viper, Mud Hens not so much of a big deal. Other blocks got Tpods in other updates.

That's not flutter, at least not the aeroelastic type. What occurred in that video is disturbed air, namely vortex flow hitting the vertical, happens on the Bugs also. Flutter is by definition the convergence of two oscillatory frequencies, usually bending and twisting caused by aero forces. It can often be destructive, although there are some cycle limited types.

Indeed it is Overall, jumbled the O definition happens as we get older and don't take off the distance glasses to read the small print lol. Of course on the jets I flew we always went by EPR. Personally wiki isn't the first source I'd reference although my old Jet Propulsion text book was wrong, but did at least have a table comparing lots of engines on one page. The SR-71A-1 page 1-4 gives "8.8:1 pressure ratio compressor". Turns out Mattingly used an old reference from the 80's. That said, 6, 8.8 is quibbling they're both low.

The fallacy here is that the same engine in another airframe should produce the same results. The difference is that the vast majority of GE powered Vipers have a different inlet than the Pratt powered Vipers specifically designed for the 110. The 110 dropped into the Tomcat pretty easily since they were almost the same size as the TF30's and were about the same mass flow rate. So, everywhere except the upper right hand side of the envelope performance increased. That said, the effort to get that performance wasn't worth the cost. No doubt it could have been done, but budgets were shrinking in real terms, those were real cuts, not "Washington" cuts. At what cost would that performance come? No Super Bug, no LANTIRN? The potential existed to get the performance, the money and mission requirements just weren't there after the hordes of Backfires disappeared. The fact that the F-15 rescheduled their inlets for 110's shows that it could be done, unlike the Navy, there were some wealthy Gulf States willing to foot that bill... The tricky bit is once the Mach number starts getting higher than 1.5 matching the compression of the inlet to the compression of the compressor becomes really important and isn't easily intuitive unless you spend some time with supersonic aerodynamics, thermodynamics and some rotating machinery. It's hard stuff, been 20 years since I've done it, found I liked the performance and handling qualities stuff much better and flight test is much more fun to boot.

A lot folks, wrote a lot of stuff, one thing not yet mentioned about the difference between the two engines is the Overall Pressure Ratio (OPR). The TF30 is a 20ish OPR engine while the F110 is a 30ish OPR engine. Lower OPR engines do better at higher Mach numbers, J58 (SR-71) 6ish OPR, RR Olympus 593 (Concord) 10ish OPR. The inlets do a lot of the compression at high Mach through multiple oblique shocks (ramps/spikes/half cones), good for pressure rise but also raises the temperature. The higher OPR compressor will run into temperature limits faster, not so good for sustained high Mach numbers. That said, the higher OPR engine is the more efficient engine subsonic. So, in the case of the Tomcat, by the time they got F110 the high fast intercept was less of a concern in the late 80's and 90's. Hence don't spend the money to schedule the ramps, the better subsonic efficiency and higher thrust subsonic/transonic is good enough for the expected threat. Edit: corrected incorrect acronym

The unusual attitude recovery course has some safety value to it, never mind that I've done that for my flight test work. That said the real reason for not pushing the issue is if Elon can get the trip to Mars down to $100K like he promises, then I bet there will be Moon flights for $30-50K. That's a once in a lifetime experience worth fighting over!

A very good approach that might work if she weren't a musician and done several 'once-in-a-lifetime' things herself, Prince Albert Hall, Europe, backstage at Disney Hall... Doesn't quite work when I flew professionally on bombers, tankers and transports. The cost/value proposition of $15,000K to go supersonic just isn't there. Now the Me-262 thing totally could work...

Apparently they still do offer flights, but you must have a valid multiengine ticket with a valid medical to fly the jet, same goes for their Me-262. The TA-4J they only require a PPL and a valid medical. Gave it some serious thought myself, until the wife saw the prices...

Only idiots in DCS, IRL their missiles may not work if an EWO knows their stuff.

Guns went away in the early 90's, about the same time as the G models (50 cals). The H's would be a bore for the 60's as all they did was sit alert. The F's, D's and G's flew Arc Light and Linebacker I/II.

The H model was a late cold war bomber, add back the Vulcan in the tail and the model would work if you don't put a T-pod on it. The H's though mostly sat alert. A conventional BUFF would be a D or a G with J57's, water injection and ma deuces in the tail.

Definitely good folks, summer of 2006 I was flew Iraqi planes out of Kirkuk. The Air Force refused to give us radios or offer CSAR if we got shot down. The Kiowa guys gave us their number and promised to come get us if we needed. Fortunately, we never did, but no Kiowa pilot will ever need pay for their drink around me.

Thanks, it's getting close to 20 years since I've played with that stuff so the memory fades a bit...

It's a basically a shotgun blank pushing sand for the "puff", not lethal but you can lose workdays over it.

Yeah, it doesn't look very real. Just for reference here's a YT video of a bomber dropping 5 of them on Smoky, which is one of the ranges my old Bones from DY use.

The BDU-50/56 are concrete shapes, no charge. Any puff is dust/sand kicked, I seen many loaded, and dropped quite a few IRL. The BDU-33 on the other hand can have a spotting charge. Fun fact, the munition responsible for the most injuries is the BDU-33 (at least according to the maintenance officer training) since it weighs only 25 lb. it is the most dropped and there really isn't a good mechanism to prevent the charge from going off.

Alright, take this for what it is, as former aircrew and maintenance officer I like the idea of stepping to a spare. Since this is a wish list thread, the addition of when to decide to stick with your jet or step to the spare adds some real life SA for a virtual aircrew. Unfortunately, just about any battle damage can't be fixed quickly. Heck, a lot of battle damage repair requires an ABDR team from a depot, so anything needing that would take a bit of time. Red ball maintenance on the other hand would be very real world, typically that will involve some avionics box/part not working and troubleshooting a cause and getting a tech to the jet to swap, or clean an cannon plug. At some point along the way the decision must be made when to stick with a repair or step to the spare. That also must take into account what other lines are out there, your priority relative to theirs, how hard you're broke, how is the spare configured and if you can meet your mission time. Where this really could get interesting is with DC. If your jet is shot up then it's out of action min 12-24 hours and you have to step to the spare, but use of the spare removes it's availability for other lines to use. So, most through flight inspections take longer than we'd be willing to sit in a cockpit waiting, so that's probably not a good option. Hot pit refuel/rearm could take 15-45 min depending on jet/configuration, or a Swedish quick turn which should take 30-30 min max. Those cases would lend themselves nicely to red balls and force some timely decisions. The fun new bit of realism with DC is that you'd have to manage your jets and lines pretty well to meet the ATO. Typically when we flew normal sustained operations we flew four turn three or two (4x3 or 4x2) on a 12 PAA aircraft squadron (so, 12+1 back home, 12 deployed). Surge ops were more like 8x6 or 8x4, but after a couple of days of that all the jets break, so you burn through your spare parts and maintainers pretty quick. This would be a whole new ball game to worry about logistics, the health of the jets and the ability to sustainably meet an ATO. It would also force some discipline on how many configurations a given squadron uses, since each config requires its own spare. Anyhow, some rambling about the aircraft maintenance side of things that kept the jets ready and in the air.