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Blue Angel's Cockpit Mods


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Offhand, does anyone know if any company has done the cockpit mods for the Blue Angel Hornets, either the Legacy or Super?   

I would think with 3D printing it would be easier now than used to be with resin.  It would be great to get the stopwatch, smoke control etc... I'm not exactly great at scratch building and want to build the Blue's aircraft

 

 

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There aren't any after market goodies for the Blues. Other additions are the stick spring, the inverted fuel pump lights on the glare shield, the smoke probe and a Go Pro camera under the nose of number one at a minimum. A friend of mine was the commander from 17-19 and led the transition to the E after relinquishing command. The legacy jets were very tired and showed it.

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I recall there being Blue Angels cockpit parts included in the 1/32 Black Box F/A-18A backdate set for the Academy F/A-18C. Or some of them, like the gubbins on the coaming.

 

Tony 

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On 5/10/2022 at 3:16 PM, eraucubsfan said:

I've posted these before, they are legacy Hornets, but the stopwatch is pretty noticeable. 

 

 

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Thanks for posting these pics. I had read about the spring, but never seen how it was incorporated. I guess the Blues don't need ECM. 🙂

I had to learn an entirely new way of flying formation in the Hornet. Every other aircraft I flew, I loaded up the stick with forward trim, making it much easier to react to being bumped up (by simply relaxing a bit of the backpressure I was holding all the time). With the Hornet's autotrim flight controls, any downward nose loading would be fairly quickly removed, so I found I always had to be ready to push forward when floating high. Easy, and clever mod.

ALF

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  • 3 weeks later...

Looking around for some pics, the Blue Angels Facebook Page is full of pics.  I grabbed a few that show some of the fuel pump lights etc.  These pics are much larger and really good resolution from FB, I just posted the smaller ones so would load quicker.  

 

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Note the information on the MFD

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Also note the presence of anti skid on all airplanes. Also note in the hanger shot I posted of the left nose the Go Pro camera fairing ahead of the nose gear. This was on the leader’s jet.

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Just watched a great walk around video, the narrator a former BA pilot goes into details of the Blue Angels aircraft and ops. According to him the stopwatch is on the solo's (5 and 6) and the smoke control is on the throttle.

HTH

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