Dave.B
August 25, 2017, 5:33pm
21
Maybe the T-bird ground crew chap was just messing with me then. I was just passing on what I’d been told in good faith.LSLGuy , you’ll be glad to know I stayed well clear of the emergency power generator vent on the right hand side just behind the intake, just in case ;).
LSLGuy:
Former F-16A & B driver in a world now long long ago and far far away…
Some facts:
The single seat C model has X amount of internal fuel tankage. The 2-seat D model has ~25% less. The external centerline fuel tank makes up for that capacity difference less a bit. The centerline tank adds some drag, but less than you might think; the complicated shape is pretty carefully chosen versus to local flow field under the fuselage. With the result that the ferry range or endurance of a C with no external tanks and a D with a centerline tank are pretty similar. Although the external tanks are ground removable and inflight jettisonable, the process to remove or install one takes a bunch of man-hours and involves a bunch of specialized tools, support carts, test equipment, etc. My combat unit tended to install them on one subset of our airplanes and just leave them on there for weeks and months. In the A model with full internal fuel we could normally fly a 1-hour air-to-air practice mission at middle altitudes comfortably, but 1 hour plus 12 minutes was getting antsy on fuel and you’d definitely run out before 1 hour 30 minutes. But … If you took off in full afterburner and just left the throttle there at low altitude, that ~90 minutes of fuel would be entirely spent in just 8 minutes. :eek:.
It’s much easier to plan and fly a ferry mission from one airshow to the next when all the aircraft in the formation have about the same range. Likewise, because an airshow is flown mostly at very high power settings, pretty much a full load of internal fuel is needed to fly the standard show including having some contingency fuel for somebody having a problem that precludes landing immediately after as planned. The D model with no external tank would be hard-pressed to fly the show with enough (any?) contingency fuel left at the end. Removing the tank and reinstalling it would introduce unreliability, increase man-hours, increase the amount of support gear they need to transport, and generally be a PITA for no real gain. So it isn’t done.
Basically what I said, though much more eloquently. Good Post, a nice dram of Aberlour a’bunadh will be consumed in your honour.
Back when this thread was active I wrote to the Thunderbirds at the link on their website. I finally got a response:
Straight from the horse’s mouth.