Neeko

It depends on the policy of the service and the country. I can only speak for the US Navy, but we train like how we fight- which means that the training rounds come off when aircraft got to the hangar just the same as if they are live. Obviously the instrumentation pods aren't ever live, but they are treated the same. This does not apply to ready aircraft in tent shelters like in Afghanistan, but to the dedicated maintenance hangars. The only time I ever saw an exception to this rule was when I was on the TR in 2008 and we hosted the French and their Rafales on board for a few days. Their air

VAW-120 :D

2x GBU-31 could be carried side by side. It was the GBU-24 that had the restrictions.

VF-31's call sign was actually "Bandwagon". "Tomcat" or "Tomcatter" was used unofficially at times towards the end of their time with the F-14, but they used "Bandwagon" for a fair bit of their time in Tomcats.

Technically yes, one could hang 5 fuel tanks on a Super Hornet... but it is not cleared to fly in that configuration. We also would occasionally hang the ARS pod backwards on a wing pylon to do maintenance on it. Again, ARS is not cleared for flight on any station other than 6 (centerline).

That is absolutely an ARS pod on a 5-wet tanker. The orange "-5" and the RAT give it away.

The whole problem that nobody is talking about is that there is almost nothing available for markings of the three fleet F-14D squadrons between 1992-1997... not to mention VF-101 Det Miramar. You can have photographs of any of these temporary schemes (which I think are supremely awesome), but they do no good in model form if we have nothing available for markings. Personally I would love to do a VF-31 jet with the water-based applied camo, but I'm thinking my only option for decals is a Yellowhammer sheet that may or may not be close to the timeframe that we need. Interesting fact: friends

Aft of the spoilers is structure. Not an access panel, even though it looks like one.

Those are the LEX Spoilers. You'll be hard pressed to see a pic of the cavity, as they are very rarely popped up on deck outside of aircraft start-up.

There are almost no openings at all in that area. You have the LEX Spoilers, which are just an empty cavity with an actuator inside, and that's about it. I can't recall ever seeing anything opened up there, and I'm pretty sure it's all sealed.

Are you referring to the turtleback panels on the spine? There's not much going on under there, and they were rarely pulled up for anything more than connector repair on one of the antennas, or the occasional phase inspection...

Seeing that photo makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up! We could do "minor maintenance" with weapons on, but jacking a bird up with bombs on it defeats every bit of logic set up to keep from pickling those things on deck. Sure we all know that Doug Masters blew up a truck full of goons with a Maverick while taxiing, but what the movie doesn't show was the person flipping a switch in the wheel well and jamming a screwdriver in the landing gear strut weight-on-wheels switch...

Someone mentioned it before- LGTR. There are none in 1/48 that I know of, and we carried them all the time. Of course, that would also mean bomb racks on the belly rails and ITERs... Might as well throw a pile of Mk.76 blue death and/or ADM-141 TALDs as well.

The Hasegawa kits have the option to kneel the airplane if required. How difficult would it be to take the kneel section from one of those kits for the Revell kits? I know I have at least half a dozen myself... of course we are talking 1/48 and not 1/32...

We referred to them simply as "air bags".

I believe so in the F-4B, yes.

The F-14A had an IRST in the very beginning.. It didn't perform so it was taken off a few years before TCS came onboard. The D IRST was similar, and had similar reliability issues at the time.

The F-14D IRST was pure junk, and the only way to make it worse would be to mount it on a centerline tank. Woe be unto the first aircrew that punches that tank off- intentionally or not, because I can't imagine it not being a Class A mishap based on cost alone. Hopefully this new iteration is the embodiment of a giant leap forward in design and capability that finally gives the pilots what they need.

I know it's not a line jet, but Superscale 48-714 has the VFA-113 CAG jet from 2000 cruise, and the only thing different with the markings are the CAG/DCAG/PC names and the presence of whatever drop marks were added. Everything else to include the BuNo should be the same between the 2000/01 and 2002/03 cruises. SuperScale 48-714

I would die to see Bill the Cat on the tail of a Super Hornet!

Awesome, Brian! I am one of the 2% of aviation enthusiasts/modelers who think that VFA-41 scheme is the cat's pajamas... don't sell them all at the nats! :)

I could not agree more!

The funds required to integrate AMRAAM would have been an order of magnitude greater than what it took to put LANTIRN on the jet. AMRAAM was a capability that died when the Tomcat transitioned abruptly from acquisition to sustainment. LANTIRN was integrated using mostly off-the-shelf hardware to bridge a major gap in strike capabilities between the A-6 sunset and IOC of the F/A-18E/F. Had there not been equipment already developed for the LANTIRN mod, the chances of it being developed from the ground up specifically for the F-14 during sustainment would be almost zero.

That's what happens when you start listening to what pilots say... lol! In all seriousness, Brian's description of LANTIRN being a garage mod is pretty accurate, all in all. The whole thing was put together on the cheap with existing hardware- such as the pylon LANTIRN was hung from being originally intended to carry the AGM-88. We referred to it as the "HARM Adapter" all the time when configuring and deconfiguring...

In a fleet squadron? The answer is an unequivocal no not ever. We carried the standard AIM-7/9/54 for A2A and that was it. F-14D software had provisions to operate HARM and AIM-120, but they were not cleared and never ever carried.. nor did we ever train with them, hang dummies, or anything like that.