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PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2003 18:59 pm 
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Joined: Mon Apr 07, 2003 00:26 am
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Location: Mid-Coast USA
found this:

Quote:
Tomcat and F-model SH engage.

From the LC:
The Tomcat was a D with DFCS. It was a pretty even fight, really, although the Tomcat pilot was doing a marginally better that day than my pilot. However, later that afternoon one of our best BFM pilots went up in an 'F and had his way with the Tomcat over and over again.

Here's the deal: On the first hop of the day, I was in the 'F. We tried a non-standard BFM gameplan and it didn't work as well as we'd hoped (it has promise, but needed refining). The second hop of the day, I was in the F-14D. We couldn't do BFM because I wasn't NATOPS current in the F-14. But we did do some slow speed handling, and I was impressed with how the DFCS improved the Tomcat's performance in this regime (but it still wasn't as good as a SH, although it has gobs more thrust). By the third hop, the Tomcat pilot was pretty tired, and that probably had something to do with the results of the engagements. It's not just the crew's ability, but the physiological state of the crew when they enter the fight, that effects how the fight goes.

What I didn't mention is that on my 'F hop, we did two head-to-head BVR intercepts that flowed into BFM engagements. On both we were able to maneuver and manage the intercept so that we merged unobserved on the Tomcat. These fights started so one-sided that I knocked the first off because we were saddled at the Tomcat's 6 before he saw us. On the second, we floated away from the Tomcat's 6 until he saw us, then let him turn into us first before we brought our nose on to create a more neutral fight.

On my Tomcat flight, I spent the first 10 min of the flight, and several minutes later in the flight, troubleshooting assorted radar and avionics problems, cycling circuit breakers, tweaking radar settings, etc, in order to keep the avionics functioning during the 1 hr flight. I don't have to do that at all with the 'F.

To me, those were two BIG advantages the SH has over the Tomcat. But one thing I really love about the GE-powered Tomcats is their energy addition capability. When you tap into 50,000lb of thrust in a low-drag jet like a Tomcat, you really get the knots on in a hurry. That's a great capability to have.



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