Alicatt

Also the Nimrod out of Kinloss and the Typhoons out of Lossie, my local airfield was Wick, it is situated between the A of Great and the N of Britain on that map. We got a lot of different aircraft come visit us from all over the UK as we had a lot of low flying areas, and Wick was a diversionary airfield which the RAF used for touch 'n' goes. I remember the Jaguar pilot that had to climb slightly to get over the road and my little mini van between Wick and Thurso, he rocked his wings as he disappeared over the next field... and the jet blast rocked my van :D Edit: There is more to that than is in Wikipedia, I will have to search my books to get the full story as it does detail some of the tactics the F14 used to intercept the Bears etc. by sneaking up on them using emissions control ie. radar off...

There are quite a few coastal airfields missing from that, but would love to see the GIUK as a theatre. Wasn't there some confrontation with the F14 up north in this area? Ahh... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-14_Tomcat_operational_history

For the flight test of the asymmetrical wing test they disconnected the systems for one wing and manually moved the wing to the required sweep and locked it there, the other wing was able to be swept by the cockpit sweep control. The two wings are interlinked to prevent asymmetrical settings happening.

Nice find :) Reading that reminds me of my GPS enabled telescope and what it does to find it's self and get an alignment. From cold and no location it first downloads the tables from the GPS satellites and works out it's location, then it spins around 360degrees one way and then 360 the other way to get a location on magnetic north, then from the data downloaded from the GPS it works out true north, then does a tilt nodding up and down on north then east, south and west to find out how level it is. Once it has done all that it points at a star and you have to centre it and it does this another 2 to 4 times to get it's precision fix, after all that it is ready to look at the stars :) Lucky you can do a "warm" start if you have parked it up properly then it just checks the stars and you are ready to go.

Well when you look this good how can one not help it :D

once the blast deflector goes up you have a balancing of the forces acting on the ship to accelerate it, however the section between the holding brace on the front oleo and the blast deflector will be under a slight bit of stretching force. To put numbers on it, the F14 delivers around 55,600 lbs of thrust at full afterburner The likes of the Carl Vinson CVN-70 weighs in around 226 912 000lbs so any acceleration from one or two F14s on the catapult will be negligible :)

Grumman F14 "Tomcat" by James Perry Stevenson in the Ace Aero Series Vol 25 ISBN-0-8168-0590-3 gives a lot of detail about the F14A and the book is from 1975, it is available on Amazon at a reasonable price too. Amazon UK from £9.83 : http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grumman-F-14-Tomcat-Aero-25/dp/0816805903/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429531764&sr=8-1&keywords=0816805903 Amazon.com from $1.81 http://www.amazon.com/Grumman-F-14-Tomcat-Aero-25/dp/0816805903/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429531855&sr=8-1&keywords=0816805903

Not only that, it was about the safety of the personnel, equipment and ship because the pilot did not have full control over his aircraft with such an asymmetric set up.

The book says that they had to stop the test pilot, Sewell, from attempting it as he reckoned he could do it :pilotfly: :joystick: Landing speed at 68 degree sweep was 195knots, it was outside the limits as to what the carrier could handle, at up to 50 degree sweep then the landing speed was greatly reduced as they could still use slats and flaps, still the landing speed was high at just over 150knots.

NASA flight testing asymmetric flight, one wing locked at 20 degree sweep and the other was able to be moved with the manual control during flight. they tested landing with it up to 50 degree sweep, even to carrier landing, but recconed there was not enough residual control authority at 68 sweep coupled with too high a landing speed to be carrier landed

Yup, mine is region free too, and got it from Amazon UK as well. It was delivered from the US and it didn't get stopped at customs here in Belgium - that was more surprising! Also just delivered today was ( just had to go open the door for the postie as I was writing the above) Tomcat! The F14 Story by Paul T. Gillcrist, had a quick flick through and lots and lots of lovely pics :D love the asymmetrical wing test, one wing at max sweep and the other at min looks kinda like a lame duck :)

have to check, but the image is very grainy, watched part of it yesterday before the lads dragged me off for my stag do :D I was watching it in my cinema (3.5m screen) and it shows up any imperfections, on the TV it looks better, so I don't think the source material is HD, but it could be that it is film stock that was used rather than digital. Will have a better look tonight. Audio in general is good, in 5.1 or stereo, but the cockpit audio is difficult to understand, thank goodness it is subtitled for the fight sequences. Lots of deck cam footage showing landings and oops moments :)

It dropped on my door step last week and have not had enough time to watch it yet :(

Playing Steelbeasts with my son is quite rewarding when we are sharing an AFV in co-op mode but he is not interested in flight sims and my grandson is still too young tho he does love aircraft and DCS :)

that has a certain trouser factor :) Can hardly wait!

I, for one, am looking forward to sitting in the back seat, it was my favourite in both Fleet Defender and Tornado. Add me to the RIO list :)

Have done so, even managed to find my dad's picture in one of the squadron photographs. My father was not a pilot or aircrew, he was a copper and sheet metal worker and only went there towards the end of the war as he was in a protected profession. Before joining the RAF he was a pattern maker at a shipyard on the Clyde. After the war the base commander tried to get my father to sign up for an extended service but my father had plans for his own business when he got de-mobbed. During his service he was sent to Bisley to represent the base, he was a marksman with no interest in firearms, somewhere buried in a box I have a certificate for his shooting when he was in the RAF.

Ah Tangmere, where my father served during WW2 :)

Yeah Harald does some very good interactive cockpits love his Lightning one too

You are looking good -Rudel- :thumbup: Nice aircraft bearing down on there too :)

PGM designator

Try searching on Scribid, there are a few different manuals and the check list on there

Lots of useful info on this site if you search for it ;) http://www.navyair.com/Menu.htm Even search the US Navy training website, a lot of NATOPS manuals and training material are free to access.

And out of date too :music_whistling: Just as inexpensive... http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Encyclopedia-World-Aircraft/dp/0760734321/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1TAE7SMQCW8YRHA3HTT3 :thumbup:

There is nothing I would "un-wish" happy to fly anything One developer is going to make my favourite aircraft - well it is on their roadmap, the EE Lightning My number two aircraft, well there are none left and not enough data about it to make one to the fidelity of DCS, the Westland Whirlwind Leatherneck just announced my number 3 in the F14 but there are no aircraft I don't like, some I like better than others but none I would un wish on anyone.