Saturday, December 7, 2019

F-104 Starfighter in flight



11 comments:

  1. I tried to outrun one of those once...My Bad!

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    1. He he, I know, we used to say the throttle was connected directly to the ASI. 450 Kts by the end of the runway and 35 K ft in 90 sec, the VSI was pegged. Not many aircraft can exceed 750 Kts on the deck.

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  2. My father use to call them a flying brick dart.

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    1. Your father wasn't wrong. Outside of going really (really, really), they couldn't do much more.

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  3. Looks like the first one is exhibiting roll coupling.

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  4. No Differ, he just rolled inverted and pulled the nose down, up, to acquire the target.

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  5. The Germans named theirs Erdnagel, which means tent stake, literally “earth nail.” Both because of the long, pointy shape, and because the T-tail configuration caused it to pitch nose down and crash in high angle of attack maneuvers.

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    1. No J, it would usually pitch up and enter uncontrolled flight which usually required about 35,000 feet to regain control.

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  6. Built for straight line speed.....not much maneuverability....get you there fast, but you better take 'em out quickly....then hope you didn't get behind it on return for landing....the Germans didn't do too well with this plane, though the Puerto Rico Nat. Guard did ok with them....Los Bandidos....like the B26 in WWII, a pilot's airplane....

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  7. J, the 104 would pitch up and then enter uncontrolled flight from which recovery was iffy and at low altitudes impossible.

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  8. Talked with a Canadian F-104 pilot at an airshow at NAS Moffet (early 80's?), who explained that high speed stalls were the limiting factor in their combat maneuvering. It could be stalled at any speed if you tried pulling too hard. Stall/spin recovery required a minimum of 12k feet. IIRC, he stated SOP for them was to punch out if below 15k agl. He loved the plane, and had a LOT of hours in it (thousands, IIRC, fuzzy memory).

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