Spongebob

I second the question about their distributorship and other companies they have snatched up...is it just the mail order that's in trouble or did they dork up their corporate structure and the whole enterprise is in extremis? If it is the latter - HUGE impact to the hobby.

Officially it is a "representative shape" to a notional signature target in order to assess the flying qualities of a tailless air vehicle in the ship environment. No hard signature requirement.

Actually, he gets to sit in an air conditioned space on the O2 level drinking coffee, eating Cheetos, whizzing in a real toilet and watching movies in the background.

COD's and engines have a bad track record. Sometimes. But also running the air campaign and close air support show during OEF and OIF was pretty cool. Providing overwatch, air support and MEDEVAC for convoy ops in Iraq in 2006 (what we called "OnStar" missions) was pretty dam cool too and one of the most rewarding things I did during my 21 years. More so than being on lockdown in a hotel and flying mail.But to each their own. From talking with the bro's at the VAW/VRC Wing, the big deal with the V-22 is opening up the COD mission to other air capable ships and locations. Instead of

Not in the E-2. You hold what you have until you don't slow down. If you bring the power up like a jet as the plane traps p-factor will walk the plane over to the left deck edge when you have reduced rudder effectiveness (as you slow down) and no nose wheel steering. Spool up time is 1-2 seconds and the prop will actually increase pitch as the power lever is brought forward leading the engine so going around is usually not an issue. My guess is it parted pretty early. A late parting is one of those "you're fooked" areas in an E-2 or COD.

Yes...I believe the color coding is thrust based since "tension" is 5000lbs of force for all aircraft.

Quick correction to the above...the box was a modification made to accept the new nose-tow aircraft on older catapults. Nose-tow use the hold back bar (half the dumbbell stays in the bar, the other half stays with the plane) which goes into a "snubber" that also absorbs the shock/vibrations; previous bridle aircraft use the hold back strap on the keel, which attaches to the deck behind the catapult slot (you can see it just behind the left nose wheel in the pic). So, the box is the snubber added to older cats. Once the cats were updated, the snubber gear was placed in the deck. I think Vin

the panel lines are way overdone.

Saw this flying while playing golf, er, working this week. Looks good. Empty back seat which should be considered a crime.

In your overhead shot, you can see it is in the 3-color scheme. It can be very subtle depending on the light (especially bright sunlight) but you can see the demarcation on the doghouse.

She's hiding a big butt under that jacket. Time to wave over a NFO.

Was going to say that looks pretty close to the E2/C2 wing fold but with only 2 locking cylinders. Same method of aileron actuation!

When shut down, flaps/slats should be up. They are hydraulically operated and over several hours the flaps will bleed down; typically the slats will stay closed. HTH Sponbebob

Technically there are some rivets in there...but if a rivet has a black ring around it probably needs to be looked at to see if it is loose. Most of what you're seeing are stainless steel fasteners (screws) holding the panels down. On a US Navy aircraft they should be painted over. HTH Spongebob

A couple of reasons: - Shares the pain. The F squadron has more aircrew to share the workload - Allows NFO's on the embarked staffs to get flight time without having to be super proficient. Used to be a core S-3 mission. - Allows Pilots on the embarked staffs to get flight time without having to be super proficient with a back-seater to do the hard stuff. - Nugget "good deal night traps" in the F squadron. The difference in the amount of "give" between the E and F is minimal. The 5W configuration was used up until a couple years ago when nobody wanted to use the E/F for tanking in any

No mention of AH-64's?? Doesn't the Army OWN them? AC-130's? An A-10 pilot looking through their HUD still needs a good picture; the aircrew get that from working with a TGP, BDRVT, BFT and other tools. There is a reason that they added TGP's to the A-10. An A-10 with poor SA is just as bad as anything else. Agree on the CDE for the 30mm, but Hellfire and Maverick are both close and I believe APKWS is even better than the 30mm. New toys. You also know that all the A-10's that were in AFG left for Iraq back in Oct 2014? F-16's stayed.

gotcha, the one I have was from HLJ back in the day when you could order individual sprues based on kit number. I do not think HLJ supports that from Hasegawa anymore but I believe there is another retailer that does.

Two Mike's has one coming

Somebody needs to clean those seams up...

When you look up "Self Licking Ice Cream Cone" in a thesaurus it's synonymous with "DOT&E" among others. The key part is, what happens when they prove the A-10 can gun something the F-35 can't? The point is there's no $$ to keep a one-trick pony in the inventory, even if the F-35 was cancelled (which is won't be). The real question is, why do we have both the A-10 and the AH-64? Take A-10's out of theater and you hear Holy Hell from the Army guys; Take away AH-64's and OH-58's and everyone goes "meh" (and I was at RC-E last year when that was happening...)

Also, even though they trained stateside with the Sniper targeting pod, they reverted back to Litening for their last deployment because Rover had not been integrated with Sniper yet. HTH Spongebob

Are they using a weapons loader as a jack?

Yeah, some of my SPAWAR folks described ALIS as a "Large, Angry woman".

It's always low until you figure out what tends to break and what doesn't and stock spares accordingly. OT is only a snapshot - you really need fleet time on a system. For instance, look at the 787.

Not quite accurate - on ejection seat aircraft the LPU has the auto inflation device; E-2, P-3, etc. do not for the same reason as the helo's - you may need to do an underwater egress. Also, from about 2006 on E-2's equipped with the new parachutes have SEWARS (salt water activated release) and an automatic altitude based opening device which includes and orange "sponge" (similar size/squishiness) on the right strap. Note the parachutes stay in the plane as they are the seatbacks; crew wear torso harnesses. HTH Spongebob