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starfighter - delinker , what´s this ??


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A question to all starfighter experts: Early maschines had "something" under the fuselage behind the front wheelbay pointing downward that´s called "delinker". It must belong to the gunsystem. It disappeared on pictures of later aircraft . What´s it´s function ? If I want to build a later german navy starfighter - do I have to close / fill the existing opening in the Hasegawa kit or let it open ?

Another question : Late german navy starfighter have regularily some " black boxes " under the backward cockpit glas. What´s their function ( something to do with the flare / chaff dispenser installation ? ) and where can I find some short distance / detailed pictures of this area.

Thanks for help

Stefan

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I think the first item you're describing is the shell ejection chute. AFAIK, it should be on all Starfighters that were fitted with Vulcan guns, so it's not on the T/RF-104 variants and gunless F-104S's.

Don't know about the boxes under the aft canopy from the top of my head, sorry.

However, I have a couple of AirDoc books on German '104s (one pictorial book of all variants, and their first volume on fighterbomber units ("JaBo Geschwader") which may contain some info on this. Unfortunately, I won't get home for another week or so.

HTH,

Andre

Edited by Andre
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The 'delinker' was the ejection shute for the spent casings and links for the gun, never heard it called that before though. I believe that the gun in the F-104 ejected the spent casings and links, unlike the guns in newer aircraft that retain them, so the chute helped these parts clear the aircraft, don't want to damage your own aircraft when firing the gun.

I think (and I may be wrong), but any F-104 that had the gun installed would have this chute, any version that had the gun removed would not have it, unless they forgot to remove it. Marinefleiger 104's retained the gun, so the 'delinker' would be there.

Ken

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I thought that I heard somewhere that some F-104s with the gun later went to internal storage of the links and cases because they were damaging whatever was on the centerline stores pylon. The down side was supposedly that the space to store the cases and links internally was limited, meaning that aircraft so modified could only carry a partial ammo load for the Vulcan.

Could be wrong, though.

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As mentioned above the delinker provided a path for spent rounds to go out into the airstream as the compartment where they normally went couldn't hold a full capacity of rounds. The ammo bin on the 104 could hold a max of 725 rounds so if a full gun load was called for then the delinker would be installed. However, with the c/l pylon close by, anything load on it, or as in the case of some NATO 104s, AIM-9s on the belly, could be hit by the rounds. In case of the CF-104, the rules stated that nothing could be load on the c/l if the delinker was used and a store was more useful than a few extra 20mm rounds so we hardly had the delinker unstalled. Our normal 'max' load was 350rds and that packed the spent round compartment pretty good. We did load up 5 100 round belts when the a/c would go away to another base to do some shooting. Other countries had their own rules so check your references to see if their 104s had them installed or not with or without something on the c/l pylon. One last point, with the delinker, the rounds were jettisoned while links were retained in the compartment. What i was told way back when was they were afraid the belt links may not breakup in the airstream and they could have a snake flapping in the breeze. The valuable brass spent rounds were tossed while the cheap metal links were saved, go figure.

Jari

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Thank you for your answers. Now I know it´s a part of the gun system. You can´t see it on later starfighters and I think they removed this part after a while and replaced it with an internal retaining system. So I will fill and sand the opening in the fuselage.

Thank you Andre , I own some Airdoc books - especially the one about the navy ( MFG 2) aircrafts as reference - no close ups or description in the text. So close ups of this area are still wellcome. I asked this on a german forum - they should know it. No reply at all.

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