Victory205

I'm not "Shoe". LOL, "Mover" is certainly milking "Shoe's" sea stories. He's posting snippets to get more clicks by the day. I have a better gear overspeed story than that one, but not sure if I should share it since it involved a friend who was prohibited from flying afterwards. He kept his wings, but was kicked out of the squadron. I never managed to overspeed the gear or flaps during my career. One little occurrence that always astonished me was that in 1977 while I was in college, I attended an airshow where a VF84 F14 arrived briefly. I had never seen a Tomcat before, this was a couple years before the goofy "final countdown" release. I hadn't taken a flying GA yet, wasn't in the AVROC program yet, had no idea that the USN had a way for college grads to become officers and pilots, and knew nothing of the squadron. I recall peering at the aircraft and marveling at the workmanship. It looked knew, and even the hydraulic line routings, the counting accelerometers in the wheel wells and all of the details of the airframe were state of the art and impressive. They towed the aircraft later so it could start up away from the crowd for departure, and I recall staring at the process, with the guys flying it looking young, confident and competent. It was a completely different world from the future I was heading for... They took off in burner, came back for a pass, pulled into the vertical, and disappeared into what had become a 1200 overcast. Wow. Seven years later, after a ton of work, I was in that squadron flying that aircraft. That's why 36 years later, I wake up every day astonished, fascinated and grateful. If you have a passion, if you have a goal, if you desperately want to do something, then go do it. If you look closely, the people in the interviews are just regular, normal people who were willing to pay the price. Ordinary people do extraordinary things every single day. If you are willing to work, you can too. Start now.

If I understand the question, the handle rotates just forward of the knob, about an inch forward is where you can see where the inner shaft extends from the outer tube. It was a cheeky affair, a little pin on the inner shaft engages in a hooked shaped groove in the outer tube. Since this is something only used in an emergency, I only pulled it in the sim, and don't recall how far it extended, or if the sim which had to be easily "resettable" was even accurate. A few inches would be fine for your purposes.

There are "discrepancies" between the published charts, which are based on extrapolations from tested datapoints, and actual performance as well. Shoes achieving 2.35 Mach is highly unlikely. The only opportunity was usually presented on a PMCF flight, where careful planning was required to save enough fuel and create enough room while completing all of the required tests to do the Mach run to check the Mach levers and their efficacy in preventing engine stall. You needed to get to at least Mach 1.6 or so to get a valid test before decelerating below Mach 1.5. The Max Mach tests that are cited likely required tanking on both ends, a completely clean aircraft, plenty of airspace, total temperature monitoring and were done for the contractor to validate performance. There is no reason to go that fast in practice. Anytime you needed max velocity for intercept, you were going to be carrying an "end of the world as we know it load out", which would limit Mmax to far less than the placarded 2.34 Mach. Sort of Catch 22. The 1.88 limit was due to burner spray bar structural issues. People exceeded it so they could say that they did Mach 2.0, but if anything was damaged, then you were accountable. The times I did PMCF runs, Fort Worth Center and Giant Killer would usually give me my ground speed readout over the UHF without asking. While deployed, you had at least five radars on you from the battle group. You were also trying to do that supersonic run with tanks and rails, meaning 1.6-1.7 in the thirties if you were luck. With everyone watching their scopes, you weren't going to weasel your way out of gun decking your actual speed if something went divergent. Better have lots of money to bribe the RIO too. If you needed to burn the wing fuel down for FCLP or a recovery, it was more common to practice burner turns in a climbing spiral, or pick up .9 Mach on the deck, and do a vertical zoom for fun, all predicated on what your airspace constraints might be. The vast majority of my supersonic time was on bug out profiles somewhere between 5K and the deck. Otherwise, it was on a PMCF for the Mach Lever test. The the aircraft capable of higher than Mach 2.0? Absolutely. Was it a common practice? Nope. One additional tidbit. Supersonic on the deck over a little boat after takeoff doesn't make much sense. We weren't allowed to exceed Mach closer than 30 NM from shore, with the exceptions of certain restricted airspace (Nellis, Yuma) spectrums. The shockwave from a Tomcat in close proximity sounds and feels like standing next to a 105mm Howitzer shot. It isn't a thump like you hear from a high altitude aircraft, it's a canon shot. Last time we did an airshow at sea with a Mach flyby, the Tomcat knocked a side window out of an SH-60 sitting in the corral. While I did thump my flight lead during a FAM hop at Red Flag (he thought his engines blew up until I popped up in front of him), I certainly wouldn't thump a little fishing boat for obvious reasons. It's a mistake to take a sea story or line from a book or article that someone his trying to sell, and extrapolate into making the anecdote into the Gospel of Grumman Aeronautical Lore. Just enjoy the yarns, knowing that they are largely useful for entertainment purposes.

The second flight was more exciting... There was a toast at the Tomcat Memorial in Virginia Beach at 1608, the time of the flight, honoring the folks who built, maintained and flew the F14. It included a moment for the 68 Brothers and Sisters who were lost while flying the aircraft. Remember.

It’s not the rivet counting, it’s the guys who have never bucked a rivet declaring that “the rivets the wrong diameter”!

Yes it is, as are many others. If you were in a real aircraft with normal control forces, you'd naturally be trimming. With one exception (formation flight) flying in an untrimmed state is practicing bleeding. I'll never understand the drama over trim and round gauges around here. It's basic flying. It's a bit strange to see people who don't actually fly become HUD cripples.

Quite a few embellishments, as too many fighter pilots are wont to do, but funny nonetheless. Getting zapped wouldn’t be an issue unless the photographer was barefoot. I was picked up out of the water by an H46 (in training), and was sure to let the cable touch the water before grabbing it for hook up. I’ve heard the other side of that story several times, and nothing was mentioned in terms of static discharge. The part about VF84’s CO being embroiled in a controversy over extra flying in exchange for “favors” was true. We still had agents coming by from time to time to look at flight time records. Emory Brown’s career was kaput after that. He ended up at FedEx.

Kula66 Do you have an understanding of how to navigate using a BDHI/RDMI/RMI needle?

FWIW, the retardant is sprayed outside the engine, within the engine compartment. No extinguishing agent goes inside of the engine. The fire warning loops run around the periphery of the engine case. Also, climbing to a half atmosphere or pressure or less, and slowing down will make the extinguishing agent more effective. If the turbine has come apart and is contained, or a burner spray bar has gone divergent, shutting off the fuel is the primary means of solving the problem.

Just pull the plug on your monitor...

If you like Tomcat stories, here are some good ones-

Excellent. I have a bit over 25,000 hours over the course of 42 years of flying- I'm still learning. I've read that entire online book, have a shelf full of aero and flight test books, never tire of learning and always learn something when I read or attend training. The MIT OCW material is a gold mine. Where else can you audit a class on Physics taught by an MIT Prof, without having to take a test, for free?

Push the HDG button (5) when cleaned up after launch.

Learn from Phd's https://www.av8n.com/how/#contents https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-687-private-pilot-ground-school-january-iap-2019/class-videos/lecture-1-introduction/

Bob Shaw's "Fighter Combat" has a chapter on Tactical Intercepts. It's back in print and can be had from the usual sources. When it was released, we all thought that the book should have been classified. If you are seriously interested in air combat, grab it before it dries up again, it is a must-have. My comments on the Hornet reference the Legacy models that we were beginning to get in the USN in the late 80's. The USMC got the bumblebee first, and USN A7 squadrons didn't begin to transition en masse until the late 1980's. At the time, AMRAAM hadn't been fielded. The Hornet is a versatile aircraft, but it replaced a light attack bomber, and essentially did the same mission, adding BVR capabilities. The Super Hornet does better and AMRAAM helped, but the threat also changed massively in the early 1990's. It was bizarre for my airline to start flying to places in the Soviet Union that were on our target list, just a few years prior. Understand that jamming changes everything, and having a RIO and the ability to evaluate emitters and take appropriate action was valuable against long range bombers with sophisticated jammers and chaff layers in the formation. That sort of thing isn't sexy, but that's what the AIM54/AWG9 was all about. Almost all AIM54 fleet missile shots were set up to get specific data points on that sort of complex, detailed scenario. For the past fifteen years or so, where the USA has been engaged, the air to air threat has been so low that the CAS mission could have been performed with AD1 Skyraiders. That is all about to change (maybe), and we'll see long range fleet air defense fighters at some point. Probably because the "Military Industrial Complex" will pay China to make enough blustering threats to land some lucrative new orders.

This is a well stated summary. There is an entire ECM world that none of you know about, that will never be simulated. During an OAB exercise off of Ike, we were launched as a DLI, having the only jet in the air wing without tanks onboard, into a 300’ overcast. Probably the most technically talented RIO I’d flown with, a genius who worked at LMT on the A12. We had been listening to frantic calls from the E2C about a high speed inbound rider, low altitude, jamming and chaff. Everyone thought it was an F111. The outer CAPs didn’t have the fuel, the geometry, or the speed to catch it. So we were launched. I cut across the bow off of CAT One, rolled out on the intercept heading, and left the engines in afterburner. We ended up intercepting the inbound bogey at 500 MSL, 50 miles from the ship, despite the jamming and chaff, flying the entire profile in the clouds. He was doing 540 KIAS, and we rolled out behind him, above Mach, which was daunting that low, with the ASI unwinding to below SL as we exceeded the number. Craig kept after it, the powerful radar energy burned through the jamming, he tweaked and employed mode agility, and we kept contact and closed carefully from the rear quarter after simulating forward quarter shots. I came out of burner, which causes a bobble, careful not to end up in the water. Radar altimeters are worth their weight in gold. Out of the murk, a massive B1 materialized, filling my windscreen. I had offset the diamond slightly to the upper left side of the HUD, because we were closing in the clouds, and it’s a good thing I did. The B1 was massive compared to the F111 we expected. I eased to the right, and pulled alongside. The B1’s copilot was visibly pissed, banging on the glare shield when he noticed us out there, and he realized that he had been “killed” by the decrepit, outdated, useless, archaic weapons system in the F14A. A Hornet would have never seen the thing, much less had the speed or fuel to execute the intercept. Because the threat has changed, we will likely see another platform fielded by the Navy, with the range and speed and electronics agility to execute similar engagements.

The name of the file in the post above is F14B Tank Jett Limits. Forum software doesn't appear to show file names any more. Here are the basic speed limits. Top chart config is basically clean (or total of 2 AIM-9 on sta 1 and , bottom is tanks and up to 4/4 config (no AIM-54) aboard.

Here you go, jettison limits-

The F14 suffered from bulkhead cracks (I should know the number of the specific bulkhead station, but can’t recall at the moment) and fuselage delamination. Rolling G, because of the design geometry, torqued the fuselage. The bandaid answer was a “staple” in the bottom of the fuselage, designed to reduce the torquing moments. It actually stuck out into the airstream. I’ll see if I can find a photo somewhere, but the aircraft wasn’t invincible, and had structural issues due to metal fatigue caused by repeated stress. 50,000 lbs was about 6-6500lbs of fuel in a shore based, training configuration.

I've known Hermon Cook for over 30 years. We lived next to each other in Virginia Beach, and were colleagues for the past three decades. He was in AC 202, in fact 204 wasn't in the flight. Hermon also wasn't flying with Leo Enright, wasn't the flight lead, and didn't get his kill with a sidewinder. In fact, he was calm, competent and quietly took care of business in all respects. Interestingly, Hermon received "Fight Pilot of the Year" honors as the junior LT wingman. Joe Connelly's aircraft, AC207, the flight lead that day, was eventually remanufactured into an F14D. Seat of the pants pretty much negates needing to ever look at the G meter. Different in the sim, obviously. F14's had "counting accelerometers" in the wheel well that provided a historical record of how many G's were pulled during the flight. IIRC, each numerical read out clicked over each time the specific G threshold for that indicator had been exceeded. There was no hiding from an over G.

Duplicate

It's a UHF ADF that worked with a handful of stations. Basically, shore based NAS and aircraft carriers. It was not compatible with civilian ADF installations.

Unless you have mastered the art of flying from the deck of a ship at sea, go practice your carrier landings. Great opportunity to do that. The aircraft is handling well around the boat. Lots of time and effort is going into getting the complex performance numbers correct.

Rule of thumb was a bit over 2000 ppm at SL, 500 ppm at 36,000 feet. Hated waiting on the cat for a pedantic cat officer to launch you. 30 secs was a 1000 pounds of fuel.

Good book, glad to see that people read around here. We seem to have an esoteric Heatblur Book Club going of late, they have me reading tomes from erudite authors from across the planet. It's awesome. The carrier pattern, up to the angled deck era, was also flown much lower and tighter to the ship. Some of that is turn radius related due to lower speeds, but the down wind in WWII and Korea was flown at 200 feet. The F4U was so difficult to see around that the pattern was flown in a curve almost to the fan tail. Have a look at some of the WWII landing footage, you'll notice aircraft almost dragging their hooks in the water they are so low on downing in the background. It's almost like they flew a level turn until over the ship, then paddles gave them a cut and BLAM! In reality, they lost about 100-120 feet during the final turn. At the battle of Midway, some of the pilots had very few traps under their belts, and almost all were new to the SBD. It had only been around en masse for a few months. The strikes were a "charlie foxtrot" in a lot of ways, but Naval Aviators being innovative SOBs, with some even ignoring their flight lead, they still managed to get the job done. A WWII Pacific sim would be the holy grail in my view. No realtime maps showing your position. You'd have a plotting board, weather brief, crude fighter direction, unknown enemy positions, fly for two hours to the enemy location and nothing in sight, make your decision. There would be a lot of running out of fuel and ditching, return to where the carrier was supposed to be and it's either not there, or burning from an enemy strike. Now what?