F-20 Tigershark

[+Major Lee 18]

Anyone planning on an F-20 Tigershark for the SF? Would make a great "mercenary" or allied nation fighter... I once read that it was the "best fighter the Air Force never bought"...

 

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/f-20.htm

[Wrench 9,635]

Louis St. Louis is gonna need them (20 to be exact) for the Football City Air Force!!!

 

Wrench

Kevin Stein

[Sgt.KAR98 0]

The F-20 doesn´t seem to be anything but a F-5...(not offending the fans)

BTW,I heard the F-5 wasn´t a very good plane for the USAF,it was more for exporting....

[gerald14 0]

The F-20 doesn´t seem to be anything but a F-5...(not offending the fans)

BTW,I heard the F-5 wasn´t a very good plane for the USAF,it was more for exporting....

 

Yeah that's right buddy!!!

The plane was mostly for exporting but the good thing is that

Mexico got them and May 5th is coming!!!!!

Vida Mexico!!!!!

 

Also a F-20 will be good also!!!

Edited May 5, 2007 by gerald14

[eraser_tr 29]

It would be interesting to have in game, but in reality I doubt it would have been worth it. Not much more than an F-5 with a single engine and digital avionics.

 

Air to air armament of only 2 sidewinders? this in 1980 with the Mig-29 and Su-27 becoming fully operational, carrying 10+ a2a missiles.

[+suhsjake 11]

Who said that we were really going to use it. It would have been a great NATO and export aircraft. It was designed to be cheap, fast, and easy to maintain. It probably would have been upgraded to carry more armaments.

[eraser_tr 29]

the main reason other nations didn't buy it was because we didn't order any.

 

Of course, the more the merrier. Thats the beauty of SF, we can make all those things that could have been.

 

When I get to the X-29, I can quickly convert that to a tigershark. The X-29 was essentially an F-20 with canards and forward swept wings.

[SayethWhaaaa 245]

It would be interesting to have in game, but in reality I doubt it would have been worth it. Not much more than an F-5 with a single engine and digital avionics.

 

Air to air armament of only 2 sidewinders? this in 1980 with the Mig-29 and Su-27 becoming fully operational, carrying 10+ a2a missiles.

 

It was also cleared to carry up to four sparrows and had a slightly knocked down radar from the F-16A (I think it was the AN/APG-66 or 67). It's biggest fault was the fact that it was a plane that had reached the end of it's development cycle and that it had to compete with the F-16 that had almost limitless potential for expansion and systems growth (or it's cheaper, versatile stablemates in the F-5E and Mig-21). Even though it could reach Mach 2.1, it didn't bring anything new to the table so to speak. Lightweight, Mach 2 fighter/strike fighters were the standard and the F-20 really didn't improve on this standard. Especially when you consider that at the end of it's career, the F-5/F-20 design could carry 2 IRs and 4 SAHMs and the F-16 just out of preschool could already do that...

 

That said, I'm still a fan of the Tigershark and other "also rans" and think they would make a fine addition to this sim!

[+Soulfreak 6,366]

i think a F-20 would be very nice...

[kazamashin 0]

The selling point of the F-20A was it had Sparrow capability from the get-go not something that "could-be" added later like that of the F-16A plus the better radar and low upkeep. How long did it take F-16A to get that upgrade prior to the ADF to get BVR. Plus it was able to get of the ground quickly..something i heard only matched by the F-104.

 

Definitely something worthwhile for this sim.

[MigBuster 2,875]

The selling point of the F-20A was it had Sparrow capability from the get-go not something that "could-be" added later like that of the F-16A plus the better radar and low upkeep. How long did it take F-16A to get that upgrade prior to the ADF to get BVR. Plus it was able to get of the ground quickly..something i heard only matched by the F-104.

 

Definitely something worthwhile for this sim.

 

I think the Block 15 was the first to be able to use sparrows - though the ADF was the first US version to actually carry them.

 

They did also test the F-16A with Sparrows "From the get go"

 

 

 

 

The F-20 probably could have done with a bubble canopy also and I would be surprised if it got anywhere near the F-16s agility - that was the point of the 16 having an unstable airframe after all.

Other than that The F-20 weapons load was only listed as 3765kg to the 16's 5443kg plus the F-16 has a better listed ferry range.

Edited May 5, 2007 by CoolHand29

[+Gepard 10,682]

The F-20 Tigershark was a very good plane. It became the victim of the F-16 lobby, who successfully sabotaged the F-20 purchase of US Military. The F-20 would have been the superior Air Defence Fighter for US Homeland defence. It had the mid range Air to Air Capability. The F-16 had to modified to ADF version for meeting the Air Defence requirements.

The F-20 would have been the better Adversary trainer in Top Gun and Red Flag exercises to simulate modern soviet airplanes like the MiG-29. The F-16 lobby promoted succesfully the F-16N. The result was, that the F-16N was unable to play this role due fast system fatigue and beginning cracks on the wings, so that the USN was forced to go back to the proved reliable F-5E.

Export success was also torpedoed by F-16 lobby. So production lines in South Korea and India were never materialized. With US Government support the F-16 was always comepetited against the F-20.

The data files showed, that the F-20 was not worser than the F-16, in contrary it was in some points superior. It was able to climb faster and curved better.

But one major weakpoint the F-20 desing had: It built up much to fast G Forces. During flight test and also during demonstration flights F-20 crashed due Pilot blackout and G-Lock. Under this point of view the F-20 was dangerous for its own pilot and the selection of the F-16 was the right choise.

[Falcon161 3]

True. Sad, but true. The F-20 was just too dangerous to fly in real life. But a SFP1/WOV version would be awesome ! I personaly like the the F-20 more than the F-16 and the F-5! So a WOV version would be awesome! Somebody please make.

[DWCAce 19]

As far as I know, the Blk 15(ADF) was the only version to carry the AIM-7 (test platforms aside).