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Viggen documentation (flight manuals, etc)


renhanxue

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Reading the manual and although fun i'm a bit angry parts about the RBS15F weren't still classified, the air force still use that missile.

It may or may not have been a mistake in the declassification process but there's really no hard data to speak of in that section of the manual - no range, no warhead weight, no details about the seeker, nothing. There are some quite vague descriptions of the targeting logic but really, remember that this is a 30 year old missile design we're talking about here - rb 15F became operational on the AJ 37 in 1989.

 

I also strongly suspect that the missiles themselves are about to pass their "best before" date if they haven't already. The Gripen is capable of carrying them but I really do wonder if there are actually any missiles to launch. A 20 year shelf life was the norm in the 90's (bk 90 was designed for that according to the information from the cluster munitions treaty dug up by microvax, for example) and we're well past that even if we're being generous and assuming they ordered new missiles for the Gripen A - I suspect though that any rb 15F's still in the inventory are the originals from 1989. Wiseman also mentioned that the 2014-2020 equipment plan said that the missiles would have to be replaced (or refurbished, I guess) in the later half of the 2010's.

 

It may further be noted in support of this theory that while the Air Force claims to have the rb 75 (Maverick) operative on the Gripen in reality they do not actually have any such missiles. The Gripen can carry later Maverick variants but not the A version that they actually had and there has never been a purchase or an upgrade to newer versions of the missile. Again, see Wiseman's post above and also J. K. Nilsson's similar post with a few more details.


Edited by renhanxue
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Renhanxue, thanks for the English Version of Volume 1.

 

I'm trying to chase down the English procedures part of the manual (Volume 2), do you know if this exists anywhere?

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In the library at the national military archives, most likely, but as far as I know it has never been declassified. I dunno if they will initiate the declassification process for a foreign national or if they're willing to scan it for you (may cost quite a bit of money, you're probably gonna have to pay for the labor of the poor guy who's flipping all those hundreds of pages on the scanner) but it doesn't cost you anything to ask.

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Thank you very much for your response, I will investigate and post my findings :)

Achieving World Peace - One 2000lb JDAM at a time.

 

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Not much, but see the discussion here and on the following page.

 

Thanks ren, found it after scouring the docs abit as well. Sadly there's very little on the sustained load factor, only from Mach 0.9 to 1.1.

 

With that said the ITR at M 0.6 looks very similar to that of the F-14, which is mighty impressive. In other words the Viggen should be capable of one heck of a bat turn.

 

Now I can't really say I'm surprised considering the incredibly low landing speed of the aircraft.

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In the library at the national military archives, most likely, but as far as I know it has never been declassified. I dunno if they will initiate the declassification process for a foreign national or if they're willing to scan it for you (may cost quite a bit of money, you're probably gonna have to pay for the labor of the poor guy who's flipping all those hundreds of pages on the scanner) but it doesn't cost you anything to ask.

 

With a modern professional scan and print utility it's mainly a matter of putting a heap of pages on a drawer, push a few on-screen buttons and getting a cup of coffee. It scans while you fika ;-)

How (s)low can you go

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I've submitted an email to them, requesting a search for the English manual.. Now we play the waiting game and hope they don't laugh too hard at my poorly translated email :)

Achieving World Peace - One 2000lb JDAM at a time.

 

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With a modern professional scan and print utility it's mainly a matter of putting a heap of pages on a drawer, push a few on-screen buttons and getting a cup of coffee. It scans while you fika ;-)

 

I dont think they are allowed to use photocopiers on the documents at the archives to avoid damaging the paper/ink, so i don't know how that would be done. I know Renhanxue used his phone to take photos of the pages. :P

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I do have official flight characteristis of the JA37 (lots of graphs of the aerodynamics), also photographed, but I don't know if I'm allowed to share them. They were used for the JA37Di in that other, F-16 focussed military flightsim which-must-not-be-mentioned here.

How (s)low can you go

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I dont think they are allowed to use photocopiers on the documents at the archives to avoid damaging the paper/ink, so i don't know how that would be done. I know Renhanxue used his phone to take photos of the pages. :P

 

The staff can use whatever equipment they want, it's just visitors that are limited to handheld cameras. And it's true, since it's a ring binder with loose pages you could just stuff them into a regular multifunction printer and have it scan for you - I was thinking of regular bound books.

 

You can probably email them in English by the way, I think they'll think that is easier than machine translated Swedish.

 

I do have official flight characteristis of the JA37 (lots of graphs of the aerodynamics), also photographed, but I don't know if I'm allowed to share them.

 

Allowed by who, the guy who photographed them? If you have them photographed they've definitely been declassified or someone's made a huge ****up somewhere (and you can't get in trouble for that, since you're not qualified to judge if it's sensitive or not).


Edited by renhanxue
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It's good that you ask that right now because I finally got done with PDF-ifying the English version of the JA 37C flight manual (the unclassified part only). It's the wrong version of the aircraft - air superiority, not the strike version we're getting - but many subsystems are similar or even identical in some cases.

 

You people better appreciate this one because for some dumb reason I got it into my head that previous PDF's weren't pretty enough, so I went through the entire thing and manually perspective-corrected almost every single one of the five hundred pages. :|

 

Seriously, it's a pain. You start with this:

 

KCHOAPI.jpg

 

It's not straight at all and I didn't hold the camera right above the paper so there's keystoning (top of the paper appears narrower than the bottom) and stuff.

 

So out comes the geometric distortions tool and you fit this blue rectangle to the edges of the paper (or to the text, just make sure stuff lines up straight):

 

rs1pnzf.jpg

 

You end up with this, which of course isn't entirely straight anyway but urrrgh I can't be bothered to get it pixel perfect and it's better than it was.

 

M8X443f.jpg

 

Now repeat this for five hundred pages and yeah, it takes a while.

 

I am a little late but holy crap thank you my friend!!

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Indeed, in the past I have been reading Viggen manuals with a Swedish-English dictionary next to it, but that's a slow and wobbly path. It's great to have a translation by somebody who actualiteit understands what he's translating. A big thumbs up!

How (s)low can you go

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I do have official flight characteristis of the JA37 (lots of graphs of the aerodynamics), also photographed, but I don't know if I'm allowed to share them.

 

Since you have them, they almost certainly have been declassified, and it should be okay to share them.

I think many Viggen lovers in the community would be grateful for such data. I sure would be one of them. :)

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Since you have them, they almost certainly have been declassified, and it should be okay to share them.

I think many Viggen lovers in the community would be grateful for such data. I sure would be one of them. :)

 

I'm not so afraid of the classified thing: now the Viggen is phased out there is no military value in it anymore, but I need to contact the person who did the photographing: I want his permission first. A matter of good manners.

 

And here a 'restricted' memory comes in: so many people have contributed to the JA37Di in B MS that I have to do a thorough search to find the right guy. The fact that it's a few years ago and the forum for that other sim has a very limited storing space doesn't help either.

 

Edit: you can get them, but it may take a day or two.

 

Edit 2: check PM


Edited by Snail

How (s)low can you go

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It's good that you ask that right now because I finally got done with PDF-ifying the English version of the JA 37C flight manual (the unclassified part only). It's the wrong version of the aircraft - air superiority, not the strike version we're getting - but many subsystems are similar or even identical in some cases.

 

You people better appreciate this one because for some dumb reason I got it into my head that previous PDF's weren't pretty enough, so I went through the entire thing and manually perspective-corrected almost every single one of the five hundred pages. :|

 

Seriously, it's a pain. You start with this:

 

 

 

It's not straight at all and I didn't hold the camera right above the paper so there's keystoning (top of the paper appears narrower than the bottom) and stuff.

 

So out comes the geometric distortions tool and you fit this blue rectangle to the edges of the paper (or to the text, just make sure stuff lines up straight):

 

 

 

You end up with this, which of course isn't entirely straight anyway but urrrgh I can't be bothered to get it pixel perfect and it's better than it was.

 

 

 

Now repeat this for five hundred pages and yeah, it takes a while.

 

If you place the scanned object in exactly the same place and put the camera in exactly the same place and use a picture database program like Lightroom you can edit one page and then export it to the rest.

 

I had a similar problem when i photographed apartments so i bought a geared tripod head for fine tuning on all axis. You have a more complex problem as the setup has 6 degrees of freedom instead of just 3 like i have.

Get something you can put the document on and make sure the camera is pointing straight at it in all axis and you should have far less problems !

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I know how to batch edit photos, yes, and I am aware tripods are a thing that exist. The problem is the national archives have a quite restrictive photo policy - you are allowed to take photographs, but only with a handheld camera with no extra equipment. Bringing any kind of camera mount or any type of artificial lightning of your own into the reading room is forbidden.

 

It is possible a patterned background (like a checkerboard or something) to put the document page on could help with automating perspective correction by giving the algorithm an easily detectable pattern to lock onto, and I think that'd probably fly under the archivists' radar, but I'm really not interested in patching ScanTailor to actually use that kind of thing nor in writing my own solution from scratch. I could probably do it, but digital signals processing and machine vision really aren't my things so it'd be a hackjob. These days the "correct" solution probably involves a neural network and I really don't feel like training that, nor like writing the code to actually implement it.


Edited by renhanxue
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In my reference to an English version of SFI AJS 37 del 2, the response I received from Sweden. A shame, but it was worth an ask :)

 

2X0Cw5M.jpg

Achieving World Peace - One 2000lb JDAM at a time.

 

Intel i7 9700K, 32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3200Mhz , ASUS ROG STRIX GTX 1080 TI OC, Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog, Saitek Pro Rudder Pedals, Oculus Rift S.

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Proud Member of the 62nd Fighting Falcons

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Well, I could've told you that ;V

No translation of the AJ/AJS 37 flight manual exists. The aircraft never received enough foreign interest for that to happen. What may exist in English is the flight manual for some of the later JA 37 variants (the unclassified part definitely does exist, see the OP of the thread) but to my knowledge it's not declassified even in Swedish, and therein lies the rub, as they say.

 

Christine-Charlotte is great though, always super helpful and she knows what's up. The Viggen Facebook group is by far the best resource on the aircraft anywhere on the internet, tons of old pilots and ground crew and generally knowledgeable dudes. Even Krister Karling (engineer who was head of the aerodynamics development) is a member and posts there sometimes.


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