John

Is it me or am I imagining this I really must be imagining this but I have noticed a trend that with the increase in price of a car the stupider and more callous the driver. A few minutes ago I just shagged a Bently (I'm so impressed NOT) out of my clearly marked Handicapped parking space. Before I did got a snapshot of the plate thats all I need for him to get a minimum 250 dollar ticket here in NH. Yeah chump change for a dick who owns one of these but there is a point here. Folks the Handicap spaces are there for good reason and I sure as hell hope none of our crew abuses them. Folks like me really need those spaces much as I wish we didn't but that's life. Anyway here is the Dickheads plate New Hampshire Tag number 250 A664

Do a search under LAMPS (Light Attack Multi Prpose System) they came in about three flavors. Mostly the LAMPS was developed to give Heli born ASW and some S&R capability to smaller surface platforms that could not carry the larger Sikorsky heli's. FF like the Reuben James and such carried LAMPS some versions had MAd and sonobouys others had a dipping sonar. A few had a 7.62 chin mounted mini gun but this varient was very rare Spain had a couple with this on the old Didalo I saw this varient up close while in port in Rota back in 1977. By the Way Kamaan Heli's is located inCt. and the worlds first turbine powered Heli was devloped by them. It was the flying test bed for the old Husky with the intermessing rotors and was on display for many years at the New england Air museum at Bradley International Airport . Back in the mid 90's Kamaan took the Heli back and developed the Aerial logger from it to replace the display heli they gave the museum the only known flight capable Husky left in the world. John

If I recall in real life the only thing that ever came close to this at near sea level was the old Thud F-105. I recall reading in Air combat years ago during a Red flag they dropped to ground level and just ran away from the F-16's and 15's with ease. During this they were given the nickname "Land Shark" as the distinctive tail was like shark fin sticking up above tops of some terrain they were masked in. The Thud was designed primarily as a high speed low level penetration nuke strike bomber with ATA to fight it's way out . It followed the classic fast bomber rules... just like the original Marauder of WW 2 BIG engine BIG gas tank minimal wing! But as always as times changed the aircraft was modified for other roles.

Yeah the Pups were retired around 79-80. Yes in Hammer heads they had Hellfires or Stingers with a minigun mounted like a spooky gunship. I know Zur is doing an armed version but this is a stop gap so to speak to inv9olve it in my campaigns.

Having issues uploading the screen shots.

Playing around with Zur-Techs nice MV-22B was a lot of fun but lacked something.... A ground attack capacity likr the ones in Dale Browns novels. Looking at the F-5A I did a rough comparison of weapons locations and thought the locations for the inner wing pylons was close to the gear pods on the V-22. So I copied and transfred that info over to the V-22 and made the apropriate change in the rest of the Data and changed the allowed weapons to just GP,RP and CGR. When loaded the pods rest very conveningly on the top outside edge (just recessed enough to look right) of the Gear pods and behind the leading edge of the wing. The line of fire is just inboard of the prop arc and looks like it was designed this way from square one. And two Bull Pups makes this a bad ass looking bird! img00001.bmp img00001.bmp

Good things are well worth a wait... I grew up in Sandwhich Ma. on Cape Cod and our home was directly under the flight path out to the target ship. We used to watch the Vodoos sortie out of Otis Air force Base to it.

Typical Airbus accident. They have computers that automaticly override or make critival flight decsions that sometimes countermand or conflict with normal operations of the aircraft. Most likely this was one of the computer decsions that automaticly releases the brakes at a takeoff throttle settings. This feature is on ALL airbusses to prevent the pilot from overstressing the airframe on the ground. A famous crash of an Airbus took place when the computer delayed the pilots throttle command by 10 seconds and overrode his full up control input. thats the one where it flies into the woods at the end of th runaway during a slow low pass. I was working at PWA at the time and the series 4000 has FADEc witha spool up safety limeter to keep the compressor from stalling it spools up the engine as fast as it can without stalling it. Airbus thought this spool up was still to fast and added another delay to slow the throttle response. They tried blaming PWA but PWA proved thay had tampered with the FADEC programing the spool up time. another incident witha A380 happened in Bermuda wher the computer kept overiding the pilot during apporach and auto engaging the go around. This happend for two hours until the palne went dry and they glided in. Airbus airframes are not safe at all! I will not get on an Airbus and have canceled flights to stay of them. Edited for redundancy.

Myself I build R/C submarines and currently have the following under construction. 1/200 th USS Daniel Webster SSBN 626 the only US SSBN with bow planes 25 inches long Scratchbuilt 1/200 th USS Andrew Jackson Built where I live. She was a 616 class ssbn 25 inches long Scratchbuilt 1/200 th USS Henry L. Stimson SSBN 655 I served on this boat 26.5 inches long Scratchbuilt 1/144 th USS New Hampshire the latest Virgina class to be launched late this year nearly 3 feet long Trumpeter Seawolf conversion 1/144 th USS Abraham Lincoln SSBN 602 the first SSBn built hwere I live and the last George Washington classlast Steve Neill GW kit ever made Polar lights Seaview Static display On order the new Moebuis Models 39 inch Seaview to be built as R/C Scratchbuilt Gerry Andersons Stingray !/20th Scale 52"LOA Scratchbuilt 20,000 Leagues under the Sea Nautilus. These are full functional Subs with actual ballast systems and other features depending on hull.

Okay I've heard more then enough of you arm chair Fighter pilots. I worked on the Prototype F-119-Pw-100 Engines for the F-22 so I have a damn good idea of what reality is as far as this airframe goes. First Helmet sights are all well and good BUT with these cavets.... Sure you can get an initial lock on a raptor or any stealthed aircraft BFD unless you have an active data link to the weapon (missile) that is absoulutly jam proof that first lock doesn't mean s**t. Once the bird leaves the rail it's on it's own and are subject to the inherent design features that make a lock so hard to get on a Stealthed aircraft even more so as Radar guided weapons by shear size cannot carry the same order of power radar as an aircraft, IR signatures by nozzle design and other features of a stealthed aircraft are suppressed,laser guided weapons need a beam held on the target until impact and in a dogfight if your target fixated your gonna get zeroed by another fighter especially if this laser is guided by a helmet site. Even more so what good is it going to do you if you see the bird and it is out of both your gun cone and weapons launch envelope not to damn much. Given the advance in threat warning systems a stealhted aircraft with the manuver capbility of the f-22 Raptor /F-35 Lightning unless the pilot is asleep at the switch is going to be a very tough opponent no matter who the enemy is. Stealth and super or hyper manuverability has now made Air Combat more like Submarine warfare where if you can see them or hear them before they hear or see you you win. Further no matter what the equipment the better pilot in a given situation is going to prevail. I read in this thread "the f-15 has never faced an equal in combat" BULLs**t ask Fighter pilots from Isreal and in the first gulf war F-15's went up against the Mirage F-1 and 2000's along with Mig 29's all three equal to the f-15 and f-16 on design anyway. The difference is training and the will to prevail. Even better in red flag f-15's, f-16's and f-14's had a hell of a time against F-5's and when faced with F-105's the 105's played land shark got low and out ran the F-15's and F-14's and leftr the 16's gasping for air.

Well you could model the F-8U-3 Super Crusader that lost to the F-4. It was a political infighting thing in the Navy that caused the F-4 to be chosen mostly the Missle only attitude and the ATG bomber capbility built in this way the Navy made the penny pinchers who hobbled the TFX program happy. To damn bad the F-4 was picked The F-8U-3 kicked it's ass all over in everything except carrying bombs and having guns. The F-8U-3 Super Crusader One Pratt & Whitney J75-P-5A/6 turbojet, 16,500 lb.s.t. dry, 29,500 lb.s.t. with afterburning. Maximum speed 1457 mph (Mach 2.21) at 50,000 feet, 800 mph (actually brushed Mach 3 in flight testing) (Mach 1.05) at sea level. Cruising speed 575 mph. Stalling speed 154 mph. Initial climb rate 32,500 feet. Combat ceiling 51,500 feet, service ceiling 60,000 feet. Combat range 645 miles. Maximum range 2044 miles. Maximum fuel 2036 US gallons. Weights: 21,862 pounds empty, 32,318 pounds combat, 37,856 pounds gross, 38,772 pounds maximum takeoff. Dimensions: wingspan 38 feet 11 inches, length 58 feet 8 inches, height 16 feet 4 inches, wing area 450 square feet. Projected armament was to have been four 20-mm cannon plus three air-to-air missiles carried in slots cut into each lower side of the fuselage and on the fuselage belly just behind the forward landing gear.

Actually the Engines WERE NOT THE SAME. While the base core was the J-57 from PWA the varients and thrust rating were different with the F-8 having higher thrust verients. It's a common misnomor that just becasue and engine has the same designation at the begining that they are the same for the different varients. In most cases until PWA introduced the module concept in the early 70's only about 50 percent of parts were interchangeable between varients of the same engine family. And until the F-14,15 and f-16 programs Engine mounts and plumbing connections were often different between engines of not only the same family but builder. With the comon engine bay introduced by these programs this all changed and plumbing setups became standard between airframes and engines. F-100 Varients before the F-100D had the J-57-P-7 rated at 10,200 dry and 14,800 Wet F-100D had the p-21A varient that had 10,200 Dry and 16000 Wet F-8A J-57-P-4 10,400 dry 16,000 wet F-8E J-57-P-16 10,700 dry 18,000 Wet RF-8G J-57-P-22 10,700 dry 17000 wet An old Pratt Rat John D-7035 PWA Rocky Hill Ct.

http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autom...p;showfile=1939 this si the link for the Brewer Bomber version IMHO a far more potent aircraft then the base Firebar it was moded from.

Thanks All I forgot about Major Lee's airdrome!

This is true as far as the TVC but the Air Force did weigh that into the evaluation formula in stating it would be a bonus. HOWEVER the winning engine from Pratt was designed from square one to have TVC. It was designed with the universal mounting sytem to allow it to be back fitted to F-15's in case the ATF was completely killed off. If one digs into the history of the F-15 it was designed to have TVC but the materials technology for the petals was not adequte to handle the flight loads at that time (1973). I was heavily involed with the ATF engine program at Pratt during the early 90's. Pratt by the way was able to deliver ahead of time the flight engines while Ge was late by several months delaying the whole fly off the airforce waited for them even though the F-22 and 23 Protypes with the Pratt engine were ready to go. The 23 flew first with PWA's and the F-22 First flew with the GE's the Airframe to fly first was chosen on a coin toss. And by allowing GE to fly the second airframe first was a bone thrown thier way. Their "Dual cycle" engine had real problems from square one. As far as IR signature went a lot of it was due to the PWA's exhaust temp being much lower then the GE's which had a lower bypass ratio due to the "Dual cycle" design which was intended to act as a turbo fan at takeoff and midsonic ranges and then switch to a turbojet cycle at high speeds were they are more efficent in theory then a turbofan. Another thing that hurt the XF-23 was wingtip contrails. During fairly moderate G loads during a turn the inner wingtip would forma huge wingtip vortex contrail that magniifed the RCS. Plus was a big visual hint soemthing was there. As well the weapons bay was non functional as far as being able to mount and launch a weapon during the flight test program while not required the YF-22 had a fully functional weapons sytem on board and did launch both a sparrow and Sidewinder during the eval program. The YF-22 also had a fully functional aerial refueling system when flown and did tankoff from a KC-135 while the F-23 could only simulate this. Later the second PWA powered 23 's refuel sytem was succesfully tested during late eval flights.