Bremspropeller

Having been to Santiago earlier this year, I'm wondering how the Argentinians planned to make it into the Santiago basin. The mountain-range just east of the city rises steeply to a height on average above 3000m MSL, with Cerro el Plomo reaching almost 5500m MSL. Valpariso is a 2h bus ride from Santiago, over another, lower mountain range with few passageways, so it's ideal ambush-country. Call me a pessimist, but I think the probability of success would have been less than their Malvinas/ Falklands adventure.

I decided to go and search for the airfield, taking off from O'Higgins. Field's a bit short, so the key lies in a good approach. Let's put the rubber onto the first few feet of the strip. Landing was short'ish but not too critical. Let's see if we can squeeze her out again! Single seat, 2600lbs of fuel. Well, I basicly rotated her into the pedal-shaker at 100KIAS and she leapt into the air, just making the opposite river-bank by a couple of feet. I guess retracting the gear right away did help. Back to O'Higgins. It's a nice little airfield and it will be cool for C-130 ops. Hopefully RAZBAM can extend the F10 map/MP to include the airfield, so it can be used by mission-builders!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achille_Lauro_hijacking Scroll down to where the Egypt Air part starts.

Or intercepting F-14s at night, trying to hijack an aircraft during an international affair and telling them to go eff themselves.

Check the loss-rates of indian MiG-21s then. Loss rates say absolutely nothing without consideration of the circumstances. The RAN lost 50% of their Skyhawks, the SAAF lost 50% of their Buccaneers.

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Thanks forth quick answer! Could you give a short explanation how the modulation does work?

That's a great question about a topic I've been wondering about a lot, too. The engine schematics and description say there's three burner-rings, but they're all fed through a common fuel-manifold. There's a second ring (?) upstream, fed by a different manifold, but I haven't seen a description of what it does and how it works. It's provided by the same pressure regulator, through. Normally, multiple rings indicate multiple burner stages, but it seems they're all fed by a common manifold, so they'd be coming on/off simultaneously. Maybe the fuel is metered altogether instead of adding or isolating rings.

That's a real good point. I think the C-101 has almost twice the amount of fuel as the L-39. The Albatros has tip-tanks and was in James Bond, though, which gives it nutnfancy "first kind of cool" appeal. Srsly @VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants: Get both of them

In the end, it's down to what experience you're in for. I love trainers, so I have all of them (still missing the Saab, though). The L-39 is a bit more of a tractor (in both good and bad ways) and it comes with that same appeal as an AK and the Mi-8 are coming with. Solid and dependable Eastern Block hardware that has seen action all over the world. In relative terms and focussing on the handling itself, the L-39 is the hardest trainer to fly with it's lively pitch behaviour. To me, the C-101 is by far the most refined module of the three and even though the jet is the least perfoming, it flies the nicest and the module itself has the most features. Like the GPU that you already know from the F1. You can also actually grill the motor. I also like the pedal shakers.

The 339 also still has the taxiway issue. Had one aircraft completely break on me tonight. The switches are still inverted. As is the flight controls overly. After a whole evening of doing some close form wingwork in all three of the trainers: The C-101 is the best pick.

It sure is a hot topic.

They do. You can see the step in the Ps curves at Mach 0.85, where the flaps are coming up.

Hey Ivan, thanks for digging those up! That's precisely the EM diagrams I rememberred. Looks like I rememberred a bit optimistically, though: 6g sustained, not 7g, at the conditions I mentioned in my first post (5000ft, 50% internal fuel, two Sidewinders).

Post- and Pre-Flight inspections during the early times of F-104G flight ops (pre 1967, as indicated by the DD+241 code: 2. Staffel of JaboG 34 at Memmingen) Startup: 1 finger at 10%, 2 fingers at 20%, 3 fingers at 30%, cut-off signal at 38%, GPU air needs to be switched off by 40%. Seven-Finger check: (no finger) 1st crew-chief engages torch-igniter for the afterburner, 2nd crew-chief checks it's function by looking for the glow 1) Speed Brake check 2) Flight Control check 3) Trim check 4) Stab Aug check 5) APC check - RH AoA vane is checked to energize both stick-shaker and kicker (landing gear uplock override switch needs to be used for the kicker funtion) - LH AoA vane is checked to energize the stick-shaker, the kicker must not fire 6) Flaps check - BLC valves open at 16° deflection and need to be fully open at 45° - check for proper airflow on both wings - check for no airflow at T/O (15°) on both wings 7) Emergency Nozzle Closure System check Note the aircraft rolling, pitching and yawing during the runup check on the runway. That's the precession moments of the engine acting on the aircraft during the quick power changes.

Coccarde Tricolori Speciale 2 "F-104S" pg.52/53 - memories of Col. Luigi Piccolo "The Aspide could have been a truly great missile if it could have been supported by a truly capable radar. In reality, it would be the 18° Gruppo that was the best off in the second half of the eighties, as - having CBO-configured aircraft - it could fly with the Vulcan cannon and four AIM-9L." Might be a misunderstanding - it doesn't actually say they were flying air-defence, just their fighter-bombers had a better setup for the real-world air defence with the radar being lacking in performance. and therefore the Aspide not being able to perform up to it's capabilities.

There were more 104s besides the figher sub-type S* variants that had their guns removed or replaced: - the first A models didn't have a gun, since the guns weren't ready - a lot of CFs, RFs and F-104Gs had no guns, but an aux tank instead** - none of the two-seaters had a gun * Seems like one italian unit (18° Gruppo) at least for some time flew the S fighter-bomber in air-defence, so they had the gun and four Lima Sidewinders as a normal loadout. **In fact, initially all CFs and most of the 104Gs (if fighter-bombers and paricularily in the strike-role) had no guns. The F-104G "AWX" sub-type (all weather fighter) had their guns installed at the beginning.

No such thing. The first full up F-104G Geschwader of the Luftwaffe (JaboG 31 at Nörvenich, west of Cologne) became operational on 20 June 1962. Just one day after a formation of four F-104Fs (WaSLw 10 aircraft) flew into the ground during the final training session for the aerobatic display planned on the 20th. It was somewhat similar to the '82 Thunderbirds Diamond Crash. All the operational 104s in Germany during the Berlin Crisis were US A or C models, including Guard aircraft. One of those crashed during the takeoff in Ramstein AB the day before, June 18 '62. It was an Arizona Guard A model.

Make sure the gear is up by 260KIAS. Unless you want to trap the gear doors open like this guy does right after T/O and during the first pass.

2:10 Impressive.Very noice. Let's see Paul Allen's take-off acceleration.

I think it's in here null

USN and USM used the MK4 gun pod, which is a different thing altogether. On top of that, the USN didn't use the pod on the boat, which essentially means the pod was used in theater - at times - by the Corps only.

One thing tabou the flap-limits: If the airspeed is below 330/360KIAS, there's actually no Mach limit for the flaps in T/O at all. Hence, especially at high altitude, they can be used in wild abandon. @Smyth thanks a lot for your great work!

I don't think scraping was a major issue, but what limited their use with some operators was their negative effect on stability. I think there was also some concern about damaging the seekers, which were close to the nose tyre, but those concerns may have been mostly theoretical, since the cat config was flown at least into the 80s.

All in german, but you might get away with using the subtitle function. Some really good info in there. Three playlists by Frank Heinevetter (F-104 and Tornado pilot). Flying the 104 - from the pilot's seat. Starfighter Stories Starfighter pilot memories