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F-5 Aggressor intake colors


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I am working on the AFV club F-5E for the top gun GB. I have looked at pictures on the internet and I have ssen many pictures where just about app parts of the intake which are visible from out side the aircraft are the same color as the fuselage, but I can not find a picture looking down the intake to see what color it is. Many other aircraft are painted white inside the intake, but I can not find a definitive  reference to work from. 

 

Any thoughts? what did you do if you built an F-5 ?

 

Thanks

 

 

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The heck of it is I was at nellis when they had a slew of those there. I’m gonna go with bare metal. For sure the T-38s of that era were. Since the intakes couldnt be crawled, i dont think it made much sense to paint them. For sure they weren't big enough for a guy to crawl in and paint.

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T-38 intakes were a matte medium gray (I use Dark Gull Gray FS #36231) when I flew them as a student in the 80s and later as an instructor in the late90s/early 2000s; it's likely F-5 intakes are the same color.

 

Regards,

Murph

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F-5 intakes are silver from factory, same as the landing gears. Individual countries hay have changed it themselves. S'pore's F5s stayed with silver throughout their service. 

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I gotta take a friendly swipe at Murph who I think gets stuff right all the time except this one. I had 120 T-38s assigned to my care as a maintenace officer at Reese AFB from 1978-1981 and saw them through all phases of maintenace. I then had two late model 38s assigned to my flight test organization at Holloman from 1981-84. None had painted intakes. They were dull bare metal. I have forgotten a lot since those days but not that particular detail. It was readily apparent when engines were pulled and you could see the intakes from the engine bay vs looking down a dark intake.

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On ‎11‎/‎3‎/‎2018 at 8:06 PM, BillS said:

I gotta take a friendly swipe at Murph who I think gets stuff right all the time except this one. I had 120 T-38s assigned to my care as a maintenace officer at Reese AFB from 1978-1981 and saw them through all phases of maintenace. I then had two late model 38s assigned to my flight test organization at Holloman from 1981-84. None had painted intakes. They were dull bare metal. I have forgotten a lot since those days but not that particular detail. It was readily apparent when engines were pulled and you could see the intakes from the engine bay vs looking down a dark intake.

 

I stand corrected, but looking down a shadowed intake on a preflight the dull natural metal looked as if it was medium gray paint.

 

Regards,

Murph

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See? This is why I like Murph’s posts. He’s a straight shooter The thing of it is, those intakes were dark and the skin was plain old dull metal so it would appear gray. In order to facilitate inspections, technicians used a thing called a “jet light” to brighten things up. For some reason I think the C models have painted intakes though. As an added note on T-38s, wheels and struts went from silver to white in the 80s. Inside of gear wells and doors could have been white, silver or ADC gray. I saw all of those used.  Our corrosion control shop  also turned out jets with painted on markings or 3M dry decals (stickers).The Air Force generally is very standardized and after Vietnam there was less and less variation in my experience. As an example, that little colored tail flash band on TAC jets of the 1980s/90s was approved at Langley. Woe to the unit that went out on its own and applied ANYTHING unapproved.. But this is a whole new discussion!

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