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Great Navy Hornet (and others) Weathering Ref Shot


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On 2/4/2020 at 3:41 PM, Mstor said:

 

You ain't kidding. What a mess. Did he stick his fingers in a pot of dirty grease before pressing those buttons? :dontknow:

The flight deck is a greasy place, nothing stays clean for long.

 

That panel is the ground refueling panel, what mostly likely happened is that the plane captain had just got done chaining the aircraft down and then opened the panel so the plane can be refueled, tie down chains are very dirty.

 

When I worked on deck I always came off the deck at the end of the shift covered in JP-5, Hydraulic Fluid and grease, I was a walking hazmat spill. Planes leak, grease gets thrown about and tie down chains are dirty/rusty, no amount of Oxiclean would get my jersey clean.

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28 minutes ago, GW8345 said:

The flight deck is a greasy place, nothing stays clean for long.

 

That panel is the ground refueling panel, what mostly likely happened is that the plane captain had just got done chaining the aircraft down and then opened the panel so the plane can be refueled, tie down chains are very dirty.

 

When I worked on deck I always came off the deck at the end of the shift covered in JP-5, Hydraulic Fluid and grease, I was a walking hazmat spill. Planes leak, grease gets thrown about and tie down chains are dirty/rusty, no amount of Oxiclean would get my jersey clean.

 

Thanks GW8345. I always figured the flight deck would be a "messy" place. Just wasn't aware how messy. I figure when things get really busy, there no time to wipe your hands on something to get even the most egregious grime off, other than your clothes. :dontknow:

 

P.S. I had a fly-by-night car repair shop going once with a friend. What a mess I was when I got home. I can imagine what it felt like after a shift. :thumbsup:

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3 hours ago, shion said:

Interesting pic showing different level of surface finish on FPU-12, one with fiber visible one without.

 

49494128513_13ce670ee4_3k.jpg

If I may, the inboard tank is an FPU-12 and the outboard tank is a FPU-11, hence the reason why one has the fiberglass showing and the other one doesn't. The FPU-12 will have a dark grey nose and tail, the FPU-11 doesn't, that's how you can tell the difference between the two without looking at the serial number plate.👍 

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On 2/5/2020 at 9:49 PM, Mstor said:

 

Thanks GW8345. I always figured the flight deck would be a "messy" place. Just wasn't aware how messy. I figure when things get really busy, there no time to wipe your hands on something to get even the most egregious grime off, other than your clothes. :dontknow:

 

P.S. I had a fly-by-night car repair shop going once with a friend. What a mess I was when I got home. I can imagine what it felt like after a shift. :thumbsup:

One thing about the grease commonly used on aircraft (called "Molly B"), it was like baby poop, the more you wipe, the more you smear.🤣

 

Molly B was a black grease and once you got it on your hands it wasn't coming off easy, you either had to pressure wash your hands or wash them in either Turco (aircraft cleaning compound) or JP-5, either way, you were losing skin in the process.

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1 minute ago, shion said:

Thanks for the info.

Why 2 types of FT, is there a technical reason? Is it possible to switch them?

The FPU-12 are just newer built tanks, depending on what time frame will determine if you can mismatch them. Now a days, you can miss match them, about 5 years ago, you could only mismatch them symmetrically, ie,. inboards one type, outboards a the other type. You will see them mismatched symmetrically but it's no longer a requirement. There is other differences between the two but it's not something modeler's need to know.

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Every once in awhile we would come across some of the earlier FPU tanks on the Supers that had the cap back past the edge of the intake lip. Talk about a bad girl to get a donkey d!ck into the for defueling. In 13 years, I only saw 4 of them. And they were still flying them as of the end of 2018.

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There's actually three drop tanks authorized for the Supers; FPU-11/A, FPU-11A/A and FPU-12/A. The tank tank Spook is describing are the old FPU-11/A drop tanks.

 

The only way to tell the difference between the FPU-11/A and the FPU-11A/A is the location of the access panels but I don't remember which tank had what panel where though.

 

And before anyone mentions the buddy store, those are not considered drop tanks, they are ARS's (Aerial Refueling Stores).

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4 minutes ago, GW8345 said:

There's actually three drop tanks authorized for the Supers; FPU-11/A, FPU-11A/A and FPU-12/A.

 

That's it! I've officially lost my mind here. Only a government agency could come up those designations. :woot.gif::tease:

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1 minute ago, Mstor said:

 

That's it! I've officially lost my mind here. Only a government agency could come up those designations. :woot.gif::tease:

You can thank the Air Force for the designations, it's their (eff'ed up) system.

 

FPU = Fuel, Pressurization Unit

 

The USN/USMC system just designated everything with a Mk / Mod.

 

Before 1962 there was two weapon designation systems in the US Military, the USN/USMC and the USA/USAF system, after 1062 the designations systems were overhaul under a common system that the Air Force came up with.............and trust me, it's confusing, even to me and I been in the ordnance field for 36 years.

 

If you really wan to make your head hurt, try figuring out all the JDAM designations, talk about making your brain hurt.

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5 minutes ago, GW8345 said:

If you really wan to make your head hurt, try figuring out all the JDAM designations, talk about making your brain hurt.

 

I was just going to say that you've gone and made my head hurt :thumbsup:

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11 hours ago, Finn said:

Indian Air Force MiG-23's:

 

 

 

Jari

 

Interesting. Plain light grey cockpit interior. No turquoise or later light blue-grey. Wasn't it a blueish grey that Mig moved to? I have a few pics of Mig-23s with a blue grey interior. None with the pain grey seen above.

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