Navy jets yes, but the Air Force uses MIL-PRF-7808 turbine oil. Still 100% POE based but a lower viscosity than MIL-PRF-23699 (KV100 of 3.0 cSt vs 5.0 cSt) because some Air Force bases are located in colder climates.
Still making F-18’s
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The F-104 looks awesome - and met all of its design performance goals. It wasn’t designed to turn, it was designed for high climb rate and high speed. It achieved excellence in both - compared with its contemporaries.
But it was terribly unforgiving. It took a real pilot to fly it.
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Cool part in the "Right Stuff" when Yeager had to eject from it after entering a spin.
Had to delete that scene ….had one swear word.
Germans lost 116 pilots and 292 F104.
They were losing 20 F104 per year at one point and down to 10 later on.
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A friend of mine was in the German Air Force and flew the F-104, so my impression of the airplane is based on what he’s told me.
In many ways, the design philosophy is very similar to the F-16.
Smallest possible airplane, biggest possible engine.
Propflux01
$100 Site Donor 2025
I overhaul t56 engines for the Air Force and we still (and always have) used the 23699. Comes in those big 55 gallon drums .
Both 23699 and 7808 are suitable for these jet engines, but the Air Force in general has traditionally used the 7808. There may be some bases that prefer the 23699, or more likely are buying power-by-the-hour from the engine builders who specify builder approved 23699 oils for their engines.
The 23699 products are designed for engines starting down to -40°F and 7808 oils down to -60°F. The 7808 is not actually needed as the few Air Force bases that experience temperatures below -40 will have fuel problems as well.
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Pilots must not have felt much turbulence going fast with those small wings.I saw an F-104 last week at Pima Air & Space Museum and it has very small wings / very sharp leading edge.
Designed for max speed, climb and performance.
Awesome museum if you haven’t visited yet.
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High wing loading.
I see a Voodoo and F106 also on display.
F106 was a nice looking aircraft.
You can see where the F4 Phantom got its good looks from - the F101 Voodoo.
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Astro14,
I was thinking about you while I was walking around this Tomcat and wondering how it must have been to fly these aircraft. I’m impressed how Grumman engineers could design such an amazing fighter and get everything to work with all the various systems and subsystems on Tomcat.
Very complex aircraft with impressive radar / Phoenix missile.
This biggest mistake was the Navy not getting funding for a Super Tomcat.
I was thinking about you while I was walking around this Tomcat and wondering how it must have been to fly these aircraft. I’m impressed how Grumman engineers could design such an amazing fighter and get everything to work with all the various systems and subsystems on Tomcat.
Very complex aircraft with impressive radar / Phoenix missile.
This biggest mistake was the Navy not getting funding for a Super Tomcat.
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How much of a difference to acceleration/speed do the weapons pylons/racks make with no ordnance loaded? Or is that aircraft specific?
"Missile with a man in it."
If you ever read The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, he had something about an F-104 ejection that wasn't Yeager's. I think it had something to do with the ejection sequence going downward in some versions. So an ejection at low altitudes (like at takeoff) wasn't advisable.
In the movie version, that was supposed to be an NF-104, which was specifically modified in an attempt to break altitude records. The real one had a peroxide (with a bit of jet fuel) booster rocket plus peroxide control thrusters that operated off the same booster fuel. The F-104 they got to film the movie didn't actually have that. The booster rocket made the NF-104 very different.
It really depends on the airplane.
Internal weapons carriage (F-22 and F-35) means that top speed is minimally affected by weapons.
On the F-14, 4 AIM-7 in the belly (in conformal weapon stations) actually improved drag a bit, though they added some weight.
On some airplanes, the pylons have quite a bit of drag.
External weapons like AIM-120 are low drag, but the MK-80 series are a lot of drag. So, depends on the airplane, the weapon and the weapon rack.
But an airplane without weapons is an airshow performer. Cool to watch, not much good in a fight.
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Just in case you folks want to visit Pima, do it in the wintertime. Sue and I were there mid summer and the heat while simply walking around outside was, let's say, uncomfortable.
Scott
Enjoying some SHADE under a "six turning, four burning" wing. It was wicked hot when we were there.
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It didn't help that the Germans were adapting a pure interceptor into a multi role aircraft including ground attack. The thing simply wasn't designed to do that and the accident rate suffered. It was designed to get to a Soviet bomber formation as fast as possible, shoot a few, and haul ass home which had to be close by as range wasn't it's best attribute. My uncle was a mech in the AF in the late 50's and said they were constantly getting cuts on their heads if they forgot to put the covers on the leading edges of the wings they were so thin.
Been a part of airshows with the Starfighter Squadron performing and they are awesome to see perform. Can do anything a pilot asks as long as it's straight and fast. I think approach speed for landing on those things is north of 180 kts and north of 200 if the blown flaps aren't working.
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Canada lost around 110 F104 but only 19 F18.
We had almost twice as many F104 than F18 but the F104 accident was still a lot higher.
Not sure how Canada was operating them but probably like the Germans.
I take and land with birds around at times but I don’t cruise at 500 knots at 300 feet and there have to lots of bird strikes in that kind of operating environment.
From Wikipedia if it’s correct:
“There were 110 class A accidents in the 25 years that Canada operated the CF-104 resulting in 37 pilot fatalities. Most of these were in the early part of the program centring on teething problems. Of the 110 class A accidents, 21 were attributed to foreign object damage (14 of which were bird strikes), 14 were due to in-flight engine failures, six were as a result of faulty maintenance and nine involved mid-air collisions. Thirty-two aircraft struck the ground flying at low level in poor weather conditions. Of the 37 fatalities, four were clearly attributable to systems failures; all of the others were attributable to some form of pilot inattention”
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FWIW, accident rates with century series fighters were astronomically higher than they are now. I can remember my first operational Squadron Commander telling us that during his 18 month tour in England in F-100 Super Sabers there was not one month that went by that he did not attend a memorial service for a pilot in the wing cashing it in during a flight mishap. Some months were more than one.
The F-4 wings I was in seemed to lose an average of one to two planes a year. Tying the low altitude record seemed to be the biggest single cause - maybe one in three. A lot of flying was done at low altitude, with clearances down to 100'. Weather was a factor in a number of accidents I'm familiar with in both Europe or The Pacific, but rarely in the Lower 48.
Even with all the low altitude flying, birdstrikes weren't much of a contributor to class A mishaps in the F-4.
IMO, it currently takes as much skill to properly employ a fighter in a tactical senario as it always has, however the basic flying has gotten an order of magnitude easier. I'm sure that has a lot to do with lower accident rates.
The F-4 wings I was in seemed to lose an average of one to two planes a year. Tying the low altitude record seemed to be the biggest single cause - maybe one in three. A lot of flying was done at low altitude, with clearances down to 100'. Weather was a factor in a number of accidents I'm familiar with in both Europe or The Pacific, but rarely in the Lower 48.
Even with all the low altitude flying, birdstrikes weren't much of a contributor to class A mishaps in the F-4.
IMO, it currently takes as much skill to properly employ a fighter in a tactical senario as it always has, however the basic flying has gotten an order of magnitude easier. I'm sure that has a lot to do with lower accident rates.