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'Vark memoirs

Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 11:39 am
by Cybrludite

Re: 'Vark memoirs

Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 8:37 pm
by Rich
While stationed at Edwards AFB, I had the dubious pleasure of working on a couple of f-111's. As I recall, a F-111A and a F-111D. Why on earth they allowed General Dynamics to install 60-80 lb avionics boxes directly into the instrument panel is beyond me.

I just shook my head and went back to my little A-7D, where sanity ruled (except in the continedl effort to convert British jet engines to US usage).

Re: 'Vark memoirs

Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 9:48 pm
by Darrell
I was driving north on I-25 in northern New Mexico, out in the middle of nowhere, back in '94, I think. I got buzzed by an F111. Never saw or heard him coming, just a sudden incredibly loud roar directly over me. Scared the living daylights outta me. Then I saw the plane out the passenger side window, very low to the ground, heading east fast. I suspect the guys in the plane had fun doing it.

Re: 'Vark memoirs

Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2016 2:41 am
by randy
I was on the Operational Test and Evaluation (OT&E) team for the EF-111. Sitting in a windowless SAM radar simulator van when one made a near mach low level pass overhead. Scope totally whited out and feeling like a mobile home in tornado alley.

One of my ROTC Field Training flight mates was the WSO when his bird crashed during a training flight out of Cannon. RIP Al.

The 'Vark was my go to AF bird (A-6 for the Navy) when I was a weaponeer and wanted absolutely positively destroy a precision target.

Thanks for the link.

Re: 'Vark memoirs

Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2016 9:22 pm
by SoupOrMan
Sadly, the F-111 was lousy at air-to-air.
No shit. It was a medium bomber and the fighter designation was a pretty much blatant lie to make the British communists and Soviet communists cry more.

I and a few of our weapons troops still think we could have loaded SUU-23 gun pods (once the F-4 Cs & Ds retired) on the four inner pylons and made the F-111 into a very fun/scary CAS aircraft.

I loved working on my Ravens except when I hated working on them.

Re: 'Vark memoirs

Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2016 10:29 pm
by Vonz90
SoupOrMan wrote:
Sadly, the F-111 was lousy at air-to-air.
No shit. It was a medium bomber and the fighter designation was a pretty much blatant lie to make the British communists and Soviet communists cry more.

I and a few of our weapons troops still think we could have loaded SUU-23 gun pods (once the F-4 Cs & Ds retired) on the four inner pylons and made the F-111 into a very fun/scary CAS aircraft.

I loved working on my Ravens except when I hated working on them.
The fighter concept was for it to just carry a bunch of long range missiles and they would do the work. This was the 60's when they thought dog fighting was passé.

Re: 'Vark memoirs

Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2016 11:51 pm
by Rumpshot
My cousin was a wing safety officer for F-111's at Mountain Home for a while.

Then he was the program manager when they were retired.

He mostly made a career out of them. Started flying them around 1970, retired shortly after they did.

Re: 'Vark memoirs

Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2016 4:43 am
by SoupOrMan
Vonz90 wrote:
SoupOrMan wrote:
Sadly, the F-111 was lousy at air-to-air.
No shit. It was a medium bomber and the fighter designation was a pretty much blatant lie to make the British communists and Soviet communists cry more.

I and a few of our weapons troops still think we could have loaded SUU-23 gun pods (once the F-4 Cs & Ds retired) on the four inner pylons and made the F-111 into a very fun/scary CAS aircraft.

I loved working on my Ravens except when I hated working on them.
The fighter concept was for it to just carry a bunch of long range missiles and they would do the work. This was the 60's when they thought dog fighting was passé.
For the Navy, it was supposed to be a long-range standoff interceptor that carried the Phoenix missile. Thankfully Grumman came along with the Tomcat to provide a proper carrier-based fighter platform.

For the Air Force, it was a medium bomber designed to carry nukes at low levels and high speeds and toss them to their targets while getting the hell out of there. Thankfully General Dynamics improved the intakes and with the C and future models. Translating cowls are terrible compared to blow-in doors. An H or J model modified to add an internal 25mm cannon would have been just the thing for a medium bomber with attack aircraft capabilities. It could carry plenty of ordnance, a gun that worked well against light vehicles & APCs would have been icing on the cake. Once the digital flight control systems were added, the aircraft became very reliable for B-shop.

Re: 'Vark memoirs

Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2016 4:59 pm
by HTRN
I wonder how good a medium bomber it would be if repowered with say a pair of f135s? :twisted: ads in some jdam equipped sdbs(with 30k of payload, that means a shitload of them

Doubling the thrust and adding vectoring, combined with modern guidance packages, basically makes "bone Jr" :D

Re: 'Vark memoirs

Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 4:50 pm
by SoupOrMan
Well, you wouldn't be able to repurpose the old airframes with those engines. Now that I think about it, you wouldn't want to repurpose those frames considering some of the stress-related cracks. We had a few planes restricted to under Mach 1.1 due to engine nacelle and wing cracks.