Alicatt

Day two of three, yesterday was the neighbourhood invite to the local airbase at Kleine Brogel, followed by the sunset airshow. official pics from last night's Sunset Show: https://www.sanicole.com/media/index.php/en/photowall?fbclid=IwAR308Ksn5ZX_99f5SPi8WSRpJgnIrNohO7BQKTLM2igwz0n1Bhkj3hfdcaU Today is spotters day at the airbase and also today the Market Garden convoy set off from Leopoldsburg following in the footsteps of Operation Market Garden with todays leg going from Leopoldsburg to just outside of Eindhoven, next weekend they will finish the journey by going to Arnhem Tomorrow is the full airshow at Sanicole just between our town of Hechtel-Eksel and Leopoldsburg, my grandson and I will be there from about 08:30

Byeee! It's the F-6 Lightning ;) :pilotfly::joystick:

I do too want to try the Lightning against a host of other aircraft, and hoping the flight manages to last more than one pass before the Lightning has to tank :D It's bad here tonight, normally I would be at the sunset airshow but my grandson wanted to go on Sunday instead, all these aircraft flying over my house going from Kleine Brogel to Sanicole Seen a B17, the Swiss F5 display team - hang one was even doing a swiss roll climbing away from K-B airbase :)

The F-104 was based at our local airbase before they transitioned to F-16s, we even have a F-104 on the end of a pole stuck in the middle of a roundabout here. I'm not adverse to having other aircraft and am quite looking forward to seeing the F-16 in game even though it is a different model than the ones that routinely disturb my mornings ;) There was one team doing a F-104 module for DCS but they stopped a while back. Still, I would love nothing better than a Lightning, preferably one of the export models with the ground attack capability as well as the air to air. Now, I must transfer my VHS LPG videos to digital, they have been gathering dust in the cellar for too long :)

Depends on whom you are asking, the only aircraft that would have caused me to hesitate slightly between the Lightning and the other, we already have in the shape of the F-14. So as we already have that then it is the Lightning hands down most interesting aircraft to have next. Yeah, Yeah I know I'm biased, but the Lightning is still the one aircraft I most desire to have in DCS.

Having tested their products in 2003, and even featured on their website with using their rudder pedals back then, I agree, they are excellent quality. That is one evening I will not forget in a hurry, with the team from Real Simulator and a few of us from Frugal's Forums, including Mark, getting the lowdown on what they were making.

Real Simulator has been making force sensor replacements for the TM Cougar for quite a few years now and also replacement force sensors and F-16 joystick handles for the Warthog. http://realsimulator.com/

Vador and his Dark Falcon were overhead yesterday practicing for 13th and 15th September and the Sanicole Airshow and the KB spotters day on the 14th.

I'm glad I've made a few friends that are ex lightning pilots and while I'm full of curiosity I try and temper what I ask them, they are all very helpful I must admit. Tell me about it, stalling and spinning at 5000ft + and I'm on the point of freezing once I get to the 4th rung up :D I managed to put my fear aside just a bit to go flying, I am sitting there in a small aircraft with knees knocking and loving it at the same time, Ah well, getting too old to start up flying again but every time I pass the local airfield it is all I can do not to turn in there and sign up, today they had a Shorts C330 Sky Van with a big smiley face painted over the camouflage taking paratroopers up at the local airfield (Sanicole)

I'm not that big @ 1.74m and the Lightning cockpit was, lets say, cosy. there is a height restriction for the lightning, but it all comes down to the length of your thigh bone, it is due to the way you egress under assistance, if your legs are too long you risk leaving your knees in the cockpit. There are one or two pilots that had to use the "assisted egress" and ended up with badly scraped legs on the cockpit combing. I had my first sit in a Lightning in the early 1990s, was handed a set of keys and left alone to my own devices with a museum example of a B2 Vulcan, and yeah it is not that easy to get in and out, thankfully the centre console lifts to allow it, or it would be nigh impossible :) The Lightning was at RAF Leuchars and I was a cadet at the time, so many questions I had and the squaddie looking after us didn't have a clue :( Since then I have been back in one in 1989, I was a lot bigger than at 14 and the cockpit was a lot tighter :)

Now, I have sat in both a Vulcan cockpit and a Lightning one and for a Blackbuck mission I would much rather be in the Vulcan ;)

From speaking with pilots of the Lightning they all say it was a sportscar amongst sedans even up to the time it was retired, it's big limitation was the lack of fuel and all sorties were planned around getting more fuel. However, the Avro Vulcan pilots said they loved to get the Lightning high and then they could run rings around them as the Vulcan had a better instantaneous and sustained turn rate at high altitude. It was due to the better wing loading of the Vulcan at altitude. :joystick: :pilotfly:

The only charts I could find on short notice for the Draken were what I posted. I'm surprised I can actually figure out what some of the pages of the manuals you linked to are saying, knowing a little Dutch helps :) I'm going to have a look through them later this evening.

Remember that the Draken's maximum take off weight is about 20,000lb lighter than the max take off weight of the Lightning. With no stores and an empty ventral tank the F2/F3/F6 lightnings had a better than 1:1 thrust to weight. It was one of the "tricks" the display pilots used when demoing the Lightning, using up the ventral tank to get an better power to weight :)

Some charts from various different Lightning models. I don't have a proper chart for the Avon 302 engine Lightning. The Draken's engine was quite a bit more powerful than those fitted to the Lightning, it might be comparable with the Avon 302 First image is the Lightning F1 and F2 with the Avon 210 engine acceleration graph with re-heat, the second image is the F3 acceleration with the Avon 301, 3rd image is the F3 g-limits 4th image is the F6 with Avon 301 engines with annotation about the 302 engine, 5th image is F6 g-limits. EDIT: just added the Draken acceleration table for comparison.

Good man, that :D I was sold on the Lightning at about 8 years old and seeing the firebirds display team, for an 8 year old in 1964 it was shock and awe :D

If they do model the Draken then at least they will be modelling the same engine that is used in the BAE/English Electric Lightning

3 different Airforces, The RAF, the Royal Saudi Airforce, and the Kuwaiti Airforce. The RAF used them in Malta, Cyprus and Singapore. The Saudis used them successfully in the Yemen in the ground attack role. From BAE's web site @ https://www.baesystems.com/en-uk/heritage/english-electric-lightning#

If you keep reading past page 229 then it goes into selecting the different wing sweep modes, then on the pre take-off check list that is part of the challenge and reply between RIO and pilot item 11 on page 240 is where the RIO challenges the pilot to put the wings at 20°

Yep, looking at Change 3 - 15 January 2004 page 227 of the pocket check list NAVAIR 01-F14AAP-1B , and it is page 267 of the .pdf when read in Adobe acrobat. Step 10 Wing Sweep Mode Switch - Auto Then on page 229 (269 of .pdf) step 27 Emergency Wing Sweep handle to 20°

It's on page 227 of the check list NAVAIR 01-F14AAP-1B Was going to show the page but it is newer than 2000

sidelobes? not all the energy is in the main beam. There is a nice animation of a phased array in operation showing where the energy goes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side_lobe

As well as for those well known civilian simulators, there is just a F6 model available, the sim lite one also features the F53 with it's A/G weapons, but it is very sim lite!

As a radar tech from way too long ago I used to have to wear a lead apron to protect the family jewels when working on ships radars, and we had lead glass inserts to replace some of the covers so that we could see what we were doing inside the transceiver housing while working on them. My family was an early adopter of the microwave oven and the one we had in our house took 6 people to carry it, the cooking chamber was about 4" thick lead, it was powered by a 6kW cavity magnetron at a frequency of 932MHz, we got it in the 1960s and it was about the same size as a washing machine. Cooking time was counted in seconds, and for somethings even a second was too long - many explosions as the flash vaporised water tried to get out of the food :D

That over wing pylon had a piston to eject the store, it was made so that you could put a 1000lb bomb on it and drop it, that is for the F53, for the F6 with the overwing tank on, it was only cleared for jettisoning in straight and level flight, the RAF never used the Lightning in a ground attack role, it was only the export versions that had the A/G capability. BAC also proposed fitting the Lightning with AIM9 sidewinder missiles on the under wing pylon but again the RAF did not want to spend the money on developing that.