Oh, sure, but the difference is in what happens after. A few Nixon stooges steal some papers regarding campaign strategy... jail sentences all around, Congressional hearings, a President resigns. A Clinton stooge steals national security information... he loses his security clearance for a few years and gets another job. Clearly, when it comes to theft, Dems are better at it.
Peter,
would you mind sharing which search approach or strategy you used to find this report? I still come up empty on Google even when searching for specific sentence fragments of the report, and even a search on the Contrails server for 'STAMP' or 'small tactical' yields zero results.
Thanks in advance,
Martin Bayer
Harrier just wasn't the airframe to try it with - lots of structural and vibrational issues. Not to mention that the inlets are big enough to act as drag brakes anyway (got to come up on the power at certain dive angles) so the airframe just isn't even aerodynamically suited.
Yeah...last time I saw a Harrier demo in an airshow it was over water.
Got a few in my pocket like that - like the canarded Hornet I built from a wind tunnel model drawing. Used the Monogram kit.
But my best was the canarded F-15 I did from Av Week drawings. I took it in and showed it to the F-15 STOL Demo pilot once, and he went nuts over it...said it was the best one he'd seen. Wasn't until quite a bit later that I found out that I had guessed the paint scheme that they'd been using for computer models in the sim perfectly. He even caught what I did with the "production" delivery numbers and had a laugh...
I saw one (a Harrier) blow it's main tires well after landing once - passed the hot brake checks, shut down. We were putting a new HUD in it and about an hour after land time the tires just blew as the guy got half way up the ladder. Gets hot under there...
I don't consider operation from an airstrip an example of "forward basing". That's a "deployment", to me.
What I'm referring to is "off pavement" operation - chopping an LZ out of a forest, field, or a patch of desert and operating from there for extended or even limited periods. As far as I know of, that's never been done operationally.
snipped-for-privacy@ix.netcom.com wrote:
Never heard of that one before. Ever find anything on the Navy inflatable rubber ramjet competitor to the Blackbird and Kingfish? I'm going through that big VTOL pdf now for any other candidate for the Socorro sighting and actually ran into one; the Bristol Siddeley "Flying Pig" from 1959 which uses a wingless vehicle with a Pegasus engine in it to perform like a cargo helicopter. Shape is right, timeline is right, size seems a bit big compared to Zamora's description, but it does use a top-rear mounted intake (apparently the Pegasus is mounted backwards compared to the Harrier) so you might be able to do plenum chamber burning on the fan output nozzles. intriguingly, there is a pair of small downward pointed nozzles mounted on the sides between the main Pegasus output nozzles, at the thing's CG. These could well be some sort of auxiliary booster nozzles using either rocket or jet thrust for lift-off and landing, when airflow through the top rear duct isn't optimal due to low forward speed. The device uses a quadricycle landing gear with pneumatic tires, something that almost certainly have been changed it it had been built due to overheating of the tires by the engine efflux (unlike the Harrier , this obviously can't do a rolling takeoff or landing.), and that would tie in with the four depressions at the landing site. At the time (early-mid 1960s) there was a lot of cross-pollination between the US and British VTOL programs. There's a drawing of it on page 133 of the pdf. Bristol Siddeley apparently did a lot of studies of this idea, including ones with multiple Pegasus engines:
You need that fake eye with the camera in it, like in "Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun". :-)
Pat
Is there not also a problem with the nose impeding airflow at high AOA?
Yes. It has. Been there. Done that.
Admittedly the hover pad was PSP, but we didn't have nearly enough PSP for the strip, so we just did a major FOD-plod, picking up every lose stone and stick in the vicinity, then ran the jets over bare, frozen earth.
The Harrier Force deployments in Germany were very basic as well (although not quite as basic as the Falklands sites). They were just an area of woodland with an open field next to them. We came in, laid a temporary PSP airstrip, build aircraft hides and fuel bunds under the trees and pitches tents next to our jets. Two weeks later we cleared everything out and left no trace that we were ever there (that bit was very important as the German environmental laws were very strict). On one deployment we even operated from a stretch of autobahn during the day. During the night the autobahn was re-opened to traffic. Anti-war protesters would drive up and down the autobahn, throwing 10 pfenning pieces out of their car windows. Every morning we had a FOD-plod down the length of the autobahn, picking up the money. It was a nice little earner as we could easily pick up 25 or 30 Deutchmarks in one day. At that time 20DM was more than enough to buy you enough beer to sink a battleship (big ship) and still have change for a gyros on the way home!
They found out a big problem with the top-mounted intakes in two seperate aircraft, the F-107 and Northrop's Tacit Blue stealth radar aircraft. Things like screwdrivers and wrenches go sliding down into the duct as mechanics are working on the aircraft and lay their tools down in the leading edge of the intake. On Tacit Blue a guy could go crawling into the intake to retrieve them; on the F-107 you had to take the whole back off of the aircraft.
Didn't some major Japanese model company do a limited release kit of that version?
Pat
The Soviets tried it in Afghanistan with their Forgers using a mobile landing/takeoff pad that was towed into place by a truck and deployed. It was a complete flop...Afghanistan is so high above sea level that the Forgers could only generate very little lift thrust, so had to fly with decreased fuel loads if they were carrying weapons, and they were quickly withdrawn.
Pat
Then I stand, or sit...corrected...how many flight hours/landings over two weeks? And how much fan damage did you take?
...I love how if you bust out a chunk of a fan blade you simply count over the opposite side and hack off an equal amount.
Heh...I got stuffed down the inlet of a T-45A once to count blades because I was the only guy on the line that would fit...
I think I've seen an anime-style version based on it, but I've only ever seen one other guy scratch build one for a contest - did a mighty fine job, too. did the test jet in it's colors - not like my "tactical" ones. Can't say as I've seen a straight kit of it...I'd buy one.
I've done two - in 1/72 and 1/32 - converted from F-15E kits, with scratch built 2-D nozzles. The 1/32 Revell Strike Eagle kit is actually a fair basis for the build, because the STOL Demo was converted from F-15B #2, and that's what that kit represents - not really a production E.
An issue for all aircraft operating in Afghanistan, from what I hear...the place is really up there in elevation.
I don't know about the F-07, but on the Tacit Blue with its flush mounted top intake it was a big problem; the pilot had to side-slip it toward the runway to keep airflow up into the intake (and also to see the runway; the cockpit was so wide that the pilot had a very hard time seeing outwards and downwards from it). It was supposed to be a extremly unfriendly aircraft to fly, with the qoute about the new test pilot seeing it for the first time saying: "Well...it's got to fly better than it looks." ...and a pilot who had flown it replying: "You haven't flown it yet." :-)
Pat
Yeah, and definitely not a place you want to get caught in a land war. A lesson may powers seem to continue to forget.
poor brits did it 3 times, wasn't it?
I'm still trying to figure out what's there worth fighting over...so many have over the centuries...it's value must be purely strategic.
Rufus wrote: : :Yeah...last time I saw a Harrier demo in an airshow it was over water. :
Last time I saw a Harrier demo in an airshow it was UNDER water...
...now that's a trick.
:>> :>> I don't consider operation from an airstrip an example of "forward :>> basing". That's a "deployment", to me. :>>
:>> What I'm referring to is "off pavement" operation - chopping an LZ out :>> of a forest, field, or a patch of desert and operating from there for :>> extended or even limited periods. As far as I know of, that's never :>> been done operationally. :>>
I think you're being a bit too strict in your 'definition' of "forward basing". I would think that an Expeditionary Airfield would qualify, since the whole airfield is mobile components.
Harriers operated from EAFs during Desert Storm because they could get in quickly close to FEBA, which lowered target service times.
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