Anyone building Strike Test Tomcats??

[Collin]

I went out yesterday and took some photos of #202 (159455) and #221 (162595).  Both are F-14A's with a mix of parts to make things interesting.

 

#202 has the new style gun vents but none of the ECM bumps while #221 has the older style gun vents but has all the later upgrade ECM bumps.  I'm not a Tomcat expert but plan on doing the Fightertown Decals #48012 for the display at Pax River. 

 

I will throw the photos up here later in the weekend.  PM me if you want them sent to your email.

 

Cheers

Collin

[glorystomper]

PM sent!

[Collin]

Lets start with side 221 first.  F-14A 162595. 

 

[Collin]

Now 202 (159455)

[tomthegrom]

Someone needs to make the FNG clean those airplanes! Great photos, thanks a lot!

[Whiskey]

Seems to have made plenty of birds happy to roost in those open doors.

[CJ Martin]

Ha! Worked on both of these 'cats back in the day. SD 202 is designated as an "NF-14A", i.e. it is not a Fleet standard configuration. Miles of orange wire internally to support instrumentation is the primary reason for this. Fun fact, this aircraft was used extensively to test what effects deleting the glove vanes would have in various configurations. For one set of test flights, the entire AWG-9 radar system was removed from the nose (antenna, everything in the TX bay and the power supplies on the other side. Lead weights were added aft in an effort to move the CG as far aft as possible. During this series of tests a high speed low level flight was performed and it ended up melting most of the TPS paint off of the jet. It looked like an old elephant, paint melted and wrinkled - wish I had pics of that.

 

SD 221 was referred to as an F-14D minus - basically an A airframe & engines with D avionics. This bird spent most of it's time up at the Grumman plant in Calverton, NY during development of the Delta. Like SD 202, she has miles of orange wire internally. Her near sister SD 220 (another D-) is on display at the Pax museum at the front gate. Both 220 & 221 were retired with very low hours o the airframes. It was deemed too costly to mod them to Fleet standards.

Edited November 16, 2016 by CJ Martin
Damn typos

[A-10 LOADER]

Very cool story CJ, thanks for sharing.

 

Steve

[eraucubsfan]

Someone needs to do decals for SD 221, every time I drive by it, I want to build a model of it.  Anything with shark teeth rules! 

[anj4de]

On 14.11.2016 at 0:55 PM, CJ Martin said:

Ha! Worked on both of these 'cats back in the day. SD 202 is designated as an "NF-14A", i.e. it is not a Fleet standard configuration. Miles of orange wire internally to support instrumentation is the primary reason for this. Fun fact, this aircraft was used extensively to test what effects deleting the glove vanes would have in various configurations. For one set of test flights, the entire AWG-9 radar system was removed from the nose (antenna, everything in the TX bay and the power supplies on the other side. Lead weights were added aft in an effort to move the CG as far aft as possible. During this series of tests a high speed low level flight was performed and it ended up melting most of the TPS paint off of the jet. It looked like an old elephant, paint melted and wrinkled - wish I had pics of that.

 

SD 221 was referred to as an F-14D minus - basically an A airframe & engines with D avionics. This bird spent most of it's time up at the Grumman plant in Calverton, NY during development of the Delta. Like SD 202, she has miles of orange wire internally. Her near sister SD 220 (another D-) is on display at the Pax museum at the front gate. Both 220 & 221 were retired with very low hours o the airframes. It was deemed too costly to mod them to Fleet standards.

Very low hours on the airframe..and most likely no carrier duty? Perefct candidates for an all up restauration to come...in a few years. I am sure that at the latest when Iran has to give theirs up we will see private initiatives to get a TomCat back into the air! BTW..Norway has just completed a TF-104 restauration to flight. Wonderfull.. to say the least!

[CJ Martin]

I don't think SD 220 or 221 ever went to the boat, but they may have done some carrier suitability work here at Pax or up in Lakehurst. Both jets spent the majority of their time up in Calverton NY at the Grumman facility. SD 202 did go to the boat more than once but only for a week or two at a time. Every time I got assigned to a boat det from Strike something would happen and the det would get called off, so I never went back to sea once I left VF-33. I got out after my enlistment was up and started working in my current field - Reliability & Maintainability. Get my 20 year pin next month, woopie!