Quicksand Fans

F-14 flyby also gun strafing shot in Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Love the near-nose-on passes All gone now but a couple doing flight test chase, still the hottest looking fighter-interceptor there was

Alright Goose.....it's time to buzz the tower.

I am pretty sure that was going through their minds, with it being 1993 post-Top Gun

You dont want to be too crazy though, I seem to recall a wee oopsie back in the mid-to-late 70s where some practice concrete 'shapes' the 104s were working with went, er, astray while practicing Toss-bombing. One missed the island of Sardinia the other one landed at the base of the scoring tower

needless to say, the Italians were not totally impressed even if it wasn't on purpose

Still boggles my mind that they didn't keep upgrading the engines and avionics on the Tomcats until the airframes wore out. We're rapidly reaching the point the Germans were at in late '44- we have all these "wonder weapons" that we can't field in great enough numbers to fight a war.

kham wrote:F-14 flyby also gun strafing shot in Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Love the near-nose-on passes All gone now but a couple doing flight test chase, still the hottest looking fighter-interceptor there was

Top Gun really had nothing to do with it. Those low passes by the range towers are commonly called "door checks." We saw them all the time when we'd go on trips to the range. They're really impressive when an F-4 does them. Not so impressive when it's an F-16 (you really need that extra engine), but still cool.

Yeah, people forget they were flying F-14s 15 years before the movie was a big deal

Is anyone other than the IIAF operating F-4s anymore? I think the Luftwaffe phased theirs out a couple years ago. Another fine bird missed

nachtjaeger wrote:Still boggles my mind that they didn't keep upgrading the engines and avionics on the Tomcats until the airframes wore out. We're rapidly reaching the point the Germans were at in late '44- we have all these "wonder weapons" that we can't field in great enough numbers to fight a war.

The tech is simply allowing us to do more with less. An entire squadron of F-14's against two F-22 Raptors would be a very unfair fight......for the F-14's. We're by no means hamstringing ourselves.

You have to keep the Tomcat's mission in mind. It was an enormous sled intended to be an interceptor for the fleet. Six Phoenix missiles and a big ass radar/computer system for targeting made for a weapon system that was lethal at a hundred miles. Dog fighting was another skill set all together and real air-to-ground came along much later in life. Planned upgrades weren't pursued early on because of the aircraft diversity in the fleet. Today the F-18 gets tweaked all the time because it is THE aircraft on the flight deck.

nachtjaeger wrote:Still boggles my mind that they didn't keep upgrading the engines and avionics on the Tomcats until the airframes wore out. We're rapidly reaching the point the Germans were at in late '44- we have all these "wonder weapons" that we can't field in great enough numbers to fight a war.
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It wasn't for lack of trying.

We are moving from NY State to Cumming, Georgia and my one real huge loss is the inability to visit the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome.