Setting QNH

Dud:
Most of these items removed tended to shift the CG way forward; on some, just
outside of the forward limit. Cavaliers were found to have lead bolted to the
rear tail cone to fix the shift.
As opposed to a full fuselage fuel tank, that moved the CG aft to the rear
limit, the removal of the non-military items does the reverse.
VL

Thanks Vlado.
Dud

"MLenoch" wrote in message
...
Dud:
Most of these items removed tended to shift the CG way forward; on some,
just
outside of the forward limit. Cavaliers were found to have lead bolted to
the
rear tail cone to fix the shift.
As opposed to a full fuselage fuel tank, that moved the CG aft to the rear
limit, the removal of the non-military items does the reverse.
VL

Dudley

Never flew a light bird like yours and Lenoch's with all the crap
removed. All my time was in a combat ready bird with guns and ammo.
Got the fuselage tank down to 20 gallons which was supposed to give a
neutral CG (or some such) before spinning or other extreme maneuvers.

Max turns I made at one time was 6 and was winding up pretty good.

Of course we weren't supposed to spin but in those days all us young
ones thought we were invincible ). Of course a lot got bit in the
bird when their luck ran out but that's the way it was.

I'm assuming Lenoch is reading this posting and I wonder how much
weight got taken out of the 'civilian' birds?

I flew D-10's to D-30's. Each version got heavier and didn't fly as
well in a dog fighting situation. If we were going to go up and rat
race it behoved you to go and get one of the early (light) birds )



On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 14:40:25 GMT, "Dudley Henriques"
wrote:


"Big John" wrote in message
.. .
Dudley

Understand. I on several occasions was sent around for some reason or
another and after cleaning up bird was cleared for a closed pattern,
close base and short final.

My normal landing used the standard GUMP check and several
transmissions of "Gear down and locked", the last turning final and
with the change in procedure I almost landed wheels up a couple of
times over the years because my concentration was broken.. Only didn't
because of my 'double rubber' approach to things when I was flying on
the edge with hard adherence to check lists.

If your up in the air you can get away with a lot but low there is
maybe only one shot so it better be a good one (or be lucky)..

The TB accident has been covered pretty well so we should leave it and
let it RIP. As you stated, those in the business will learn from what
happened, but it was an expensive dollar wise teacher.

New subject. Did you spin the '51 when you were flying it?

I've spun it power off, but never with power on.
Dudley

Conversion to civilian configured Mustang:
Armor plate behind seat = 300 lbs
Fuselage fuel tank= 90 lbs
Radio=40 lbs
6 x .50 cal. with hardware=600 lbs
Gunsight with hardware=40lbs
2 x Drop tanks-empty=250lbs
These are 'guesstimates'......
VL

"MLenoch" wrote in message
...
Conversion to civilian configured Mustang:
Armor plate behind seat = 300 lbs
Fuselage fuel tank= 90 lbs
Radio=40 lbs
6 x .50 cal. with hardware=600 lbs
Gunsight with hardware=40lbs
2 x Drop tanks-empty=250lbs
These are 'guesstimates'......
VL

This would put Moonbeam at about 8K?
Dud

"Big John" wrote in message
...
Dudley

Never flew a light bird like yours and Lenoch's with all the crap
removed. All my time was in a combat ready bird with guns and ammo.
Got the fuselage tank down to 20 gallons which was supposed to give a
neutral CG (or some such) before spinning or other extreme maneuvers.

Max turns I made at one time was 6 and was winding up pretty good.

Of course we weren't supposed to spin but in those days all us young
ones thought we were invincible ). Of course a lot got bit in the
bird when their luck ran out but that's the way it was.

I'm assuming Lenoch is reading this posting and I wonder how much
weight got taken out of the 'civilian' birds?

I flew D-10's to D-30's. Each version got heavier and didn't fly as
well in a dog fighting situation. If we were going to go up and rat
race it behoved you to go and get one of the early (light) birds )

You would have enjoyed the 51 at a light GW with minimum fuel. It was a joy
to fly.
I knew Douglas Bader fairly well. We used to run up our phone bills talking
about fighter tactics during the war. We both agreed that the "dogfight era"
came to a screeching halt during the Battle of Britain when just about
everybody realized that the way to survive was to avoid the left side of the
envelope. Ps wasn't a factor then in ACM theory as you know I'm sure. Boyd
and Christie and Rutowski hadn't figured out the EM concept yet, but you
guys were using it without realizing it "officially" :-)
Actually, Chennault had it right way back in the late thirties if they had
only listened to him. By the time you guys got in the fight, it was pretty
well doctrine that the way to both survive and rack up a score was to keep
the energy up; use one carefully flown pursuit pass, going through the angle
off spectrum from lag to lead when in firing parameters; zeroing the ball
and firing, then diving through a planned overshoot in the plane of the
target's motion.
ACM has come a long way since the early days hasn't it? Hell, now you don't
even have to see the *******s!! :-))
Dudley

"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
ink.net...

"David Brooks" wrote in message
...

IIRC, this discussion earlier revealed that the T-bird pilots have
super-wizzo-thingummy altimeters that can indeed set QFE at high
elevations.
Granted, yours and mine can't.

-- David Brooks

Hi David;

The Thunderbirds use a standard altimeter setting for the point of
demonstration and do not use a 0 altimeter set. Their maneuver profiles
are
corrected to MSL altitudes. Stricklin unfortunately on the way up the
front
side of his maneuver mentally "corrected" his reverse top target gate to
Nellis' elevation instead of where he was. This put the Viper way low of
where it should have been at the top side commit. He missed his visual
cues
as well. The airplane simply didn't have the g available vs the altitude
under it to cut the corner.

Well, yes, I got that. I think that was fairly clear from the descriptions
that erupted here a couple of months back. I was merely responding to the
assertion that altimeters don't go down that low, and I learned in the
earlier thread that the military ones do - not that they use this ability in
the shows.

I do seem to recall that the pilot makes a call at the top of his pattern to
a safety officer - was it of his height AGL? That does seem to be a weak
spot in the safety chain; if the pilot is calculating his elevation
incorrectly, the call of what he thinks is the value is not much use as a
crosscheck.

-- David Brooks

"David Brooks" wrote in message
...
"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
ink.net...

"David Brooks" wrote in message
...

IIRC, this discussion earlier revealed that the T-bird pilots have
super-wizzo-thingummy altimeters that can indeed set QFE at high
elevations.
Granted, yours and mine can't.

-- David Brooks

Hi David;

The Thunderbirds use a standard altimeter setting for the point of
demonstration and do not use a 0 altimeter set. Their maneuver profiles
are
corrected to MSL altitudes. Stricklin unfortunately on the way up the
front
side of his maneuver mentally "corrected" his reverse top target gate to
Nellis' elevation instead of where he was. This put the Viper way low of
where it should have been at the top side commit. He missed his visual
cues
as well. The airplane simply didn't have the g available vs the altitude
under it to cut the corner.

Well, yes, I got that. I think that was fairly clear from the descriptions
that erupted here a couple of months back. I was merely responding to the
assertion that altimeters don't go down that low, and I learned in the
earlier thread that the military ones do - not that they use this ability
in
the shows.

I do seem to recall that the pilot makes a call at the top of his pattern
to
a safety officer - was it of his height AGL? That does seem to be a weak
spot in the safety chain; if the pilot is calculating his elevation
incorrectly, the call of what he thinks is the value is not much use as a
crosscheck.

-- David Brooks

All procedures are being examined internally by the team as a peripheral to
the official AF accident investigation board and the final internal
adjustments to the team's standard procedures will I'm sure reflect the
combined recommendations of both reports.
Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship
Commercial Pilot/ CFI Retired
For personal email, please replace
the z's with e's.
dhenriquesATzarthlinkDOTnzt

MLenoch

The radio was a 4 channel VHF set, SCR-522, that sat on top just
behind the armor plate and inside the canopy.

The gun sight was the K-14 (semi computing). Did it weight 40 lbs??? I
didn't like it for high angle shots as the sight would move back and
forth with the variation in G's.Impossible to keep on target. Also
with high G's the sight would end up pointing at nose of bird and the
nose would cover up the target so you couldn't fire with any
probability of hits You either had to get to a lower angle off or
pull less G's which meant you were off target. Since most kills were
at 20 degrees or less off the stern, the high angle problems didn't
hurt much if any. I know a number who locked the gyro and flew with a
fixed sight and did ok because they were outstanding pilots.

I didn't think you would carry drop tanks in the acro mode? Did you
pull the racks off the wings and the 'zero length' rocket launchers?
Not a lot of weight but some drag.

I make about 3 hours fuel cross country with no drop tanks and
fuselage tank out. I can remember getting fuel flow back to about 55
gph at long range econ cruise. Of course air show you were probably
burning 90 gph?

Fly safe.

BJ


On 11 Mar 2004 14:08:06 GMT, (MLenoch) wrote:

Conversion to civilian configured Mustang:
Armor plate behind seat = 300 lbs
Fuselage fuel tank= 90 lbs
Radio=40 lbs
6 x .50 cal. with hardware=600 lbs
Gunsight with hardware=40lbs
2 x Drop tanks-empty=250lbs
These are 'guesstimates'......
VL

Dudley

On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 14:59:43 GMT, "Dudley Henriques"
wrote:


"Big John" wrote in message
.. .
Dudley

----clip----

You would have enjoyed the 51 at a light GW with minimum fuel. It was a joy
to fly.

I can imagine. Ever bird I ever flew where I got the weight down, flew
so different and better.

I knew Douglas Bader fairly well. We used to run up our phone bills talking
about fighter tactics during the war. We both agreed that the "dogfight era"
came to a screeching halt during the Battle of Britain when just about
everybody realized that the way to survive was to avoid the left side of the
envelope. Ps wasn't a factor then in ACM theory as you know I'm sure. Boyd
and Christie and Rutowski hadn't figured out the EM concept yet, but you
guys were using it without realizing it "officially" :-)

When I came in Sq (newbe) I was told to"keep my airspeed up". We
didn't have all the fancy acronyms for it, just get going fast and
keep it going fast )

Best tactics were same as Chennault's, Make a sunrise attack with
superior speed and keep speed and exit the 'fur ball'. When you had
altitude on the fight pick your target and reenter or go home and come
back and fight another day..

If you got in a turning contest again keep you airspeed up until you
could break out and regain the dominate position.

Tactics were essentially what is taught today but we had to watch our
EM very close as any G's bled it off rapidly.

Would love to fly a 15-16 where you can pull it in to 9 G's and
accelerate instead of bleeding your energy down to the stall. I don't
think EM is as important in today's birds as it was in the WWII birds?

Actually, Chennault had it right way back in the late thirties if they had
only listened to him. By the time you guys got in the fight, it was pretty
well doctrine that the way to both survive and rack up a score was to keep
the energy up; use one carefully flown pursuit pass, going through the angle
off spectrum from lag to lead when in firing parameters; zeroing the ball
and firing, then diving through a planned overshoot in the plane of the
target's motion.
ACM has come a long way since the early days hasn't it?

Have a nice week end.

BJ