mrvark

The MERs & TERs mounted the shoulder bombs at 45° (so +45°, 90°, -45°). Looking at the assembly tail-on with the fins installed with the normal 'x' orientation, it looks like +x+, keeping the fins from interfering with each other. You'd only get in trouble if you mixed + & x orientation on the same set of bombs.

ECM pods were mounted directly behind the gun pod. The original pylon, used with the Vietnam-era AN/ALQ-87 is shown in the drawing. Note that the drawing shows that the back end of the pylons ages down to match the profile of the pod. At some point after the Vietnam War ended that feature was deleted as you can see from the pic taken at the Nat Museum of the USAF as compared to the December 1972 pic (with the Mk 82/Mk 15 Snakeyes mounted in an 'x' configuration).

This has turned into an interesting thread! It appears that the mounting protocol changed at some point. Here is a pic taken in Aug. 81 with the Mk 82 conical fins clearly in the 'x' configuration: Here is a pic of a Combat Lancer F-111A with the high drag MAU-91 fin hinges loaded in a '+' configuration (although the fins would appear to be 'x'): When a new weapon is authorized to be employed by an aircraft, it goes through extensive flight testing (in the USAF, it's called 'Seek Eagle'). Why they would choose to do '+' rather than 'x' (much le

I'd never seen (or at least noticed) that before, so I asked my friend Alan Howarth about it. His reply: "I have always thought that was a predecessor to the SST-181X Combat Skyspot antenna. I have only seen it on 8th TFW F-4Ds 1968-69ish plus a 49th TFW jet where that must have missed having it taken off."

The F-111 used TF30 engines, similar to the F-14A. Like the F-14A, the engines were shut down one at a time, which resulted in one nozzle being open and the other closed. The one flaw in the ResKit nozzles is that both are fully open. 😟

Spoilers were controlled using the Ground Roll Spoiler Switch (GWSS). At "last chance" just prior to taking the runway, the switch was set to 'BRAKE'. When both throttles were set to idle and the landing gear squat switch sensed 'weight on wheels', the spoilers raised. You could tell when this happened because the spoilers would pop up as the jet sat there at last chance. When they advanced the throttles to take the runway, the spoilers retracted. When they positioned on the runway to do the before takeoff checks, the spoilers would raise up again until the throttles were advanced just prior t

I just read the new postings on the other ResKit cockpit thread. The cockpits I have are the original cast resin ones, not the newer 3D printed ones. As an OBTW, I have some of their 1:72 sets for the Hasegawa kits as well. The sidewall decals are thick enough that the fuselage halves won't close. So be prepared to trim the decals and/or sand away from the fuselage plastic and/or resin cockpit tub.

Yes, that's Remit 31 at last chance during OEC. Stations 1/8, were never used operationally (a couple of publicity shots aside). Stations 2/7 were only used by FBs for carriage of fuel tanks. 1/2/7/8 were all fixed at 26° for a hi-alt cruise setting (giving the wing tanks a toed-in appearance when the wings were set to the normal takeoff setting of 16°. In the photo, you see the normal 'F-' configuration of swivel pylons 3/4/5/6. Here is a pic of a FB-111A wing with all the pylons removed showing the fixed pylon 2 attach points and the pivot locations for pylons 3/4, along with the flaps down

I was around Fs from 1982-7 and never saw one without all four pylons installed. When the 27th TFW F-111Ds participated in SAC's Giant Voice (?) competition in 1988 (?) there was at least one extremely long low level that required use of bomb bay installed 'Tokyo' tanks and removal of the wing pylons to reduce drag, which was the only time I heard of Ds with the pylons removed, but I don't have photos of that. EF-111As normally flew with pylons installed on the outboard (stations 3/6). I have one photo that shows the bottom of the wings that leads me to believe that the inboard station pylon a

After seeing a previous thread on this subject several months ago, I dry-fitted my assembled escape capsule into my unfinished F-111A kit. At first, it didn't seem like it would fit at all, but suddenly it popped into place and appeared to me to fit just fine. It MAY be that inserting the cockpit interior will spread the exterior enough that your inserts are unnecessary. I'm only one data point, and my opinion may change after doing a final assembly, but that's my experience so far.

On 27 February, the final night of the war, two F-111Fs each delivered a single GBU-28/B ‘Deep Throat’ bomb against a deep command bunker at Al Taji AB, just north of Baghdad; one of three such bunkers where Saddam Hussein reportedly spent most of the war. (Developed and deployed in only 17 days, the first GBU-28 had been dropped only three days earlier by F-111F 74-0186 at the Nellis test ranges.) The GBU-28 dropped from Cardinal 71, the 495th TFS squadron commander’s aircraft, 70-2391, flown by Lt. Col. Ken Combs and Major Gerald Hust, hit where it was aimed, but missed the bunker. However,

A couple of points: PAVE Tack was only used on the F-111F (beginning in the early 1980s) and (later) the F-111C. The HB rendition leaves a lot to be desired. The newly released kit CMP48001 from Caracal Is MUCH better.

494th FS crews were flying whatever jets were there for the Nov 7th drone shoot off. Just saw some full pics of the second set of jets returning to Lakenheath and they are indeed 492nd jets. So, perhaps they left 492nd jets in place and just swapped out the personnel when the Turkey shoot happened.

I don't know about that, but the were really easy to see from a long way off. Funny (true) story about where the air superiority blue came from. Gen. Bellis, the head of the program, visited the McDonnell plant and the engineers were briefing him on the ghost gray camouflage when he asked them "Why not blue?" They asked what shade of blue and he pointed to his light blue uniform shirt. And that his how the ASB diversion began... BTW, the ASB jets were flat on top, but gloss on the bottom.

Hi Neils, When I arrived at Luke AFB in about Apr. 75, the entire operational AF F-15 inventory was sitting outside the VOQ I was billeted in. There were about a dozen jets, all blue. Typically, jets are delivered about two years after the year number on the tail (e.g., FY74 jets would show up in CY76).