Joseph Kittinger had quite the resume, not only high altitude ballon flights/jump but he also shot down a MiG-21 during the Vietnam War (also spent time as a POW). The honor of meeting him when he was interviewed for a documentary with one of our Heritage painted QF-4Es at Holloman AFB.
Your telling of this story cracked me up Ron. In the late 70s - early 80s I worked as a draftsman in a small company that had different small military projects. We designed things like submarine power supplies, wiring harnesses for F-16s, etc...and so many of the things you described made me laugh as I could see in my mind's eye many of the things happening where I worked. Thanks for story Ron.
Nitpick: The Fairchild factory was in Farmingdale, NY. It was located around Rt 110, by where the Long Island's Ronkonkoma line crossed. The airport is still there (I once saw a 77 take off from there!). It gets use as a GA/biz airport, and there's a museum in one of the few remaining hangers. The rest is sadly, yet another mall :(
Thanks for sharing these. I grew up around Columbus AFB watching T38’s. Medically I didn’t make the AF, but I’m still a pilot and I have a lot of AF pilots (and army helo) friends. The stories are fascinating and I enjoy the personal historical slant you give to us. Keep it up.
I was a crew-chief, not a pilot, but we had a training-group on station. Talons and Texan Twos. I was rewarded with regular great views of the aerobatic training-maneuvers. From my perspective (down on the ground)--the T-6A appeared to me, to have been an appropriate choice. Did you ever get to fly or ride in one? They looked like fun. Thanks for sharing your experiences from that time. I remember that trainer-contract-competition only from its headlines... But you were eyeballs deep in it! Fascinating. All the best, Ron. Keep the videos coming, Sir.
I really enjoyed this video Ron. Most people haven't even heard of the T-46, outside of pilots that were going to have to teach new pilots how to fly it. I was stationed at Laughlin AFB twice on active duty, and the Tweet was the jet I primarily worked on, and then became a QC inspector on it and the T-38s. I was selected to be one of the maintenance personnel for the T-46 program. To this day I will never forget the day we got to go to Fairchild to see it for the first time. There were about 8 of us, with I think 2 from each of the AETC (then ATC) bases. They made a show of revealing the jet to us. They were not amused when they saw/heard my initial reaction to it. I was laughing, I mean belly laughing. Somebody from Fairchild finally asked, rather rudely I might add, what was so funny. I said that I can't wait to see what happens to that flimsy tail section, when some student does one of those fairly common 5g landings that happens with new students. As having been an IP, you know what I'm talking about. For those that haven't done that, it's one of those landings that are so hard, it will take 2 brand new main tires through the red chords, thus being throwaway tires. With the Tweet, we'd spend a couple of hours changing the tires, do a hard landing checklist, then fly it the next go. The tail section was quite flimsy for what it was going to have to endure as an initial trainer. My prediction was that we'd have to go collect the jet from the runway, with nothing but the flight control cables still holding the tail section to the rest of the jet. I was really disappointed that the AF didn't select the new T-37. I know that the Tweet had some issues, but they were all "systems" issues, which were addressed with the new Tweet as you pointed out. A pressurized cockpit, a single point pressurized fuel system, much better avionics & if I remember correctly, turbofan engines. I got to talk to our Deputy Director of Maintenance a couple of times, so that info was from him, as I never got to see anything on it in person or writing. He also said that a fairly large amount of the fuselage and flight control parts from the old Tweet, could be used as is, or modified some to make them work on the new Tweet. Again, I can't say that's the gospel, just what he said. I never got into the politics of how the decisions were made to select the T-46. What I was told was that the 2 Senators from NY played a major part in that. My understanding was that the AF wasn't really sold on that jet. Also, according to our DCM, he was at the meeting when an AF General told Fairchild team that they weren't going to buy the T-46. He said that they threatened stop making replacement parts, and giving support for the A-10. He said that the General laughed at them, and stated that the AF was pretty good at reverse engineering components for aircraft. Not long after that, my very first jet 56-2285 (Laughlin AFB was my first duty station after tech school at Sheppard AFB), was sent to Randolph. There it was stripped, I mean better than an LA chop shop could do. All wiring, adel clamps etc was removed. Then the wings were removed, then the fuselage was put on 1 tractor-trailer, and the wings on the other, and sent to a company near Austin, TX. There they would carefully cut the entire jet apart, looking for structural issues that couldn't be seen in the phase docks, or via NDI inspections. That lead to numerous TCTOs to keep the Tweets flying for another 20 years. Now to the T6 Texan II. As I stated above, I was stationed at Laughlin twice there while on active duty (that's where I met my wife of over 46 years now). I left there in 1989, when Laughlin went from an active duty maintenance complex, to a civil service complex. I retired from the AF after a tour at RAF Lakenheath & D-M in Tucson in 1995. From 1995 to Dec 2004, my wife and I owned our own multi-line insurance agency. Because of her dad's failing health, and his absolute refusal to move to Tucson from Del Rio, we sold our agency and moved back to Del Rio to care for him. The final 6 weeks that we were in Tucson, we lived in our motorhome in D-Ms RV park. That sits right next to the entrance to the boneyard. There they have a section called "celebrity row". Sitting in spot #4 then, was the second of the 2 full sized T-46 trainers. I never heard what happened to the smaller mock up airframe. Also about 2 weeks before we left there, we started seeing the first dozen of the XL (Laughlin) Tweets starting to arrive at the boneyard. They only spent a few weeks there, to be made ready (decommissioned). They were sold to Columbia if I remember correctly. I took a civil service position back at Laughlin in 2005. First as an egress tech, and then back to QC, now called QA. So I was there as Laughlin was in the process of converting to the T-6 II. After being around it for over a decade, I'm not impressed, and understand why the Navy wanted them gone. But the AF was stuck with having to buy an off the shelf replacement. This was because of really poor planning and budget constraints, so a new clean sheet trainer wasn't an option. I can only give 3 compliments for the T-6 It was fuel efficient. After the AF made changes to make the engine more powerful, it was sporty fast. But that lead to issues where the engine would unexpectedly shut off. It took like 6 years to figure that out, but it was completely tied to those engine mods that the AF wanted. They termed it as Prop Sleeve Touchdown. The third compliment is the Martin-Baker ejection seats. It's a very "manual" seat. I trained on the ACES II seats. Not a fan of having a little computer box in the seat pan making all of the ejection sequence decisions. Yes I know that we have a lot of jets flying with the ACES II system seats, but it has had several changes since I worked with it. Before I retired from civil service in 2018, they were already talking about a replacement for the T-6II. But with all of the funding consumed for the T-7 trainer, there wasn't anything left for even looking at a proposal to construct another new trainer. Gee, that sounds like 1985 all over again..
Thanks! I hate getting wordy like that on someone else's story, so I apologize for that. I was grateful to hear about the back story on the "new Tweet". Also, your story is different from mine for the maintenance side, and hopefully that closed some loops for you as your story did for me. There are many things that I miss about the mission that we all did, and it's a brotherhood that folks might not understand that haven't served. Please keep doing your videos!!@@ronrogers
I was stationed at Edwards in the '80s in the Egress section and got to be part of the USAF merge with the civilian test team for the T-46. I worked the side-by-side ACES II seats which was strange to us because nobody could explain how the seats could be sequenced with the rocket catapults blasting fire that would fill the cockpit and envelop the second seat to eject. All the tandem fighters had a back seat first sequence so the blast from the front seat would harmlessly hit the empty rear cockpit. None of the civilian engineers could explain how the second seat occupant would not be burned. Anyhow, it was one of a dozen aircraft that I worked, got the patch for my collection.
Good video Nice History. My dad was the program manager on the ACES II operating out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He actually had to eject out of an f101 so he had real hands-on experience with regards to human factors and escape systems. He learned to fly in a J2 cub (similar to a j3 but no brakes).
Of all forms of planes I'd say biplanes are my favorite regardless of being less efficient at lift per sf of wing and the additional drag of the apparatus connecting the wings.
Ron, electrical engineering, T37, Air Force, 1970's, ham radio... We have so many things in common! Why don't I know you already? I really like your content!
That entire NGT process was a total boondoggle and Cessna wasn't the only company that screwed the pooch. Grew up on Long Island, graduated college/ROTC spring of '82 with a pilot slot at Willie Class 84-01, report date in Oct '82. So the summer and fall of '82 I got a temp job doing basic grounds maintenance at Fairchild-Republic Airport in Farmingdale, Long Island. That summer there was a big stir over at the F-R hanger because they did a T-46 rollout after the contract award was announced. I went to look at it, and even as a novice pilot I remember being totally underwhelmed. The entire design just struck me as half-baked. Not to mention, turns out the rollout aircraft on display was just a shell - didn't even have engines in it. We all know how that project was bungled in the years that followed. A ton of effort went into making that plane work but F-R just wasn't having it. Years later I met a fellow PIT IP at Randolph who had spent about a year working on developing the new syllabus for the thing. After they finally canned the T-46 the AF was casting a pretty wide net to find SOMETHING to replace the Tweet. I actually got a backseat ride at Randolph around "88-'89 timeframe in the T-45 Navy trainer because they were soliciting opinions from experienced Tweet IP's as to whether or not it might be a worthy successor for the T-37. I personally didn't think it would be a good primary trainer...
The other day, I thought that maybe an F-20B would have been a better trainer to replace the T-38A, and I say that as a critic of the F-20A for all its issues that made it a non-starter for TAC. F-20 would have solved the gutless T/W and control system challenges in the T-38, while providing a modern cockpit for guys who would eventually convert to F-16Cs, F-15Es, and F-15Cs. Shared common engine cores/components with F-117A, FBW, more modernized, easy to maintain. Thoughts?
@9:25 someone should have done a drawing of the plane with the horizontal tail hovering 8" above the top of the vertical stabilizer, just to mess with the others in the group. The detached tail: innovation!
Been following these with interest, both as an amateur aircraft designer and flying instructor, but find this episode a little confusing? I can only go on what I've read (never having flown jets), but always thought the little T-37 was a good concept for a trainer, if a little underpowered. One would have thought the advent of the A-37 would have been an obvious replacement for the Tweet. As for the failure of the 'Tweet 2', the explanation leads us to believe that Cessna lost because they only had a drawing, while Fairchild had a flying item, even though they lost in the end anyway. Beechcraft had in some way gone a cheaper route by just licensing another manufacturers product (Pilatus), and throwing it into the competition. Some will say the Texan II is a completely different machine to the PC-9, but only in similar updates that would set the PC-9 apart from the PC-7. An interesting note here would be that Beechcraft was doing this to replace the old T-34 Mentor, but as it turns out the original Pilatus airframe, the PC-3, is of similar vintage to the T-34. I guess it's always a hard decision for airforces whether to go from abinitio on jets, or a more civilian like propellor trainer, or to offload abinitio training to cheaper civilian operators using said prop trainers as we currently do here in Australia?
The A-37 would have had too much power. I have flown both. It has a lot of power to carry an armament load. It wasn't that Cessna just had a paper proposal. The reviewers are looking for innovation and most of the innovation on the Cessna proposal was fairly hidden by what appeared to be just a glossed over tweet.
Ron, how did you like Wichita? I was with BMAC back in '85-'86 on the 747 CRAF program. Different work environment compared to my time at Everett. If I couldn't get recalled to the BCAC side in SEA, I was leaving. Left for the airlines. Didn't care for the area, I grew up in Wisconsin.
I grew up in Iowa but I really liked Wichita. I left in '85. Had good ham radio friends, had my own aerobatic school. Great city for general aviation. Good place to raise kids, at that time. All in all, one of my favorite places to live.
I was told that the fairchild proposal was shot down by a USAF general because they pissed him off. That's what the fairchild people told me when I worked with them at Grumman.
Well that was a wild and convoluted ride. Went from the T-46 straight to declaring T-6 Texan II the winner of the NGT program. Erasing the completely separate JPATS program from history.
Ron, what are your views for the T-7?, which should be replacing the T-38 in about a year or so. Personally, I liked the T-38, she was fun to fly, but I do envoy the new students that will be flying the new jet.
I really don't know much about the T-7 but as you, I really enjoyed the T-38 until they screwed up the intake with the C model. Students no longer get a supersonic ride!
@@ronrogers What the... that's just wrong! Of course, there's always the "unplanned" boom ride, like that time I was on a solo 4-ship ride (circa 1983) and begrudgingly given the lead for the "check-the-square" 2 minutes of nail-biting by the 3 IP's who were dual, and trying desperately to be a little TOO smooth doing basic fingertip, and kinda got got the nose buried, and well..
Yes! I was a student in the T-38 (dual) with a solo lead. The aircraft was really getting pitch sensitive and I commented to my IP. He said, "look at your mach meter." Wow I said, do I get another mach busters certificate? He said,'Shut up!"@@pi-sx3mb
@@ronrogers LOL, yep! I still remember the debrief. IP lead was pretty chill - starts with the usual grounds ops yada, yada, etc., goes through the flight in order and then when he gets to my lead portion, he looks around at the 6 of us and asks "Did anyone see their altimeter jump?" 6 solemn shakes of the head no. "Okay, moving on..." Of course, it's hard to watch your altimeter when your eyes are glued on the lead aircraft wondering if the 1.1G pull is going to turn into a 5G pull, scraping the bottom of the altitude block. 😝
I knew all those guys on the list at 0:46 but you. Were you at Pawnee? I was at the Military-Twin Division. OOPS. Got ahead of myself. I was on my "maternity* leave" in 1981. Didn't get back until the CJ started.
![[TH] VALORANT Champions Seoul - Lower Bracket Final - LEV vs TH](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/fyYkI80GG4o/mqdefault.jpg)
Joseph Kittinger had quite the resume, not only high altitude ballon flights/jump but he also shot down a MiG-21 during the Vietnam War (also spent time as a POW). The honor of meeting him when he was interviewed for a documentary with one of our Heritage painted QF-4Es at Holloman AFB.
Your telling of this story cracked me up Ron. In the late 70s - early 80s I worked as a draftsman in a small company that had different small military projects. We designed things like submarine power supplies, wiring harnesses for F-16s, etc...and so many of the things you described made me laugh as I could see in my mind's eye many of the things happening where I worked. Thanks for story Ron.
Nitpick: The Fairchild factory was in Farmingdale, NY. It was located around Rt 110, by where the Long Island's Ronkonkoma line crossed. The airport is still there (I once saw a 77 take off from there!). It gets use as a GA/biz airport, and there's a museum in one of the few remaining hangers.
The rest is sadly, yet another mall :(
Just seeing if you were paying attention....that's my story!
Thanks for sharing these. I grew up around Columbus AFB watching T38’s. Medically I didn’t make the AF, but I’m still a pilot and I have a lot of AF pilots (and army helo) friends. The stories are fascinating and I enjoy the personal historical slant you give to us. Keep it up.
I was a crew-chief, not a pilot, but we had a training-group on station. Talons and Texan Twos. I was rewarded with regular great views of the aerobatic training-maneuvers.
From my perspective (down on the ground)--the T-6A appeared to me, to have been an appropriate choice. Did you ever get to fly or ride in one? They looked like fun.
Thanks for sharing your experiences from that time. I remember that trainer-contract-competition only from its headlines... But you were eyeballs deep in it! Fascinating.
All the best, Ron. Keep the videos coming, Sir.
I have flown a T-34 which is similar but very underpowered by comparison.
I really enjoyed this video Ron. Most people haven't even heard of the T-46, outside of pilots that were going to have to teach new pilots how to fly it. I was stationed at Laughlin AFB twice on active duty, and the Tweet was the jet I primarily worked on, and then became a QC inspector on it and the T-38s. I was selected to be one of the maintenance personnel for the T-46 program. To this day I will never forget the day we got to go to Fairchild to see it for the first time. There were about 8 of us, with I think 2 from each of the AETC (then ATC) bases. They made a show of revealing the jet to us. They were not amused when they saw/heard my initial reaction to it. I was laughing, I mean belly laughing. Somebody from Fairchild finally asked, rather rudely I might add, what was so funny. I said that I can't wait to see what happens to that flimsy tail section, when some student does one of those fairly common 5g landings that happens with new students. As having been an IP, you know what I'm talking about. For those that haven't done that, it's one of those landings that are so hard, it will take 2 brand new main tires through the red chords, thus being throwaway tires. With the Tweet, we'd spend a couple of hours changing the tires, do a hard landing checklist, then fly it the next go. The tail section was quite flimsy for what it was going to have to endure as an initial trainer. My prediction was that we'd have to go collect the jet from the runway, with nothing but the flight control cables still holding the tail section to the rest of the jet.
I was really disappointed that the AF didn't select the new T-37. I know that the Tweet had some issues, but they were all "systems" issues, which were addressed with the new Tweet as you pointed out. A pressurized cockpit, a single point pressurized fuel system, much better avionics & if I remember correctly, turbofan engines. I got to talk to our Deputy Director of Maintenance a couple of times, so that info was from him, as I never got to see anything on it in person or writing. He also said that a fairly large amount of the fuselage and flight control parts from the old Tweet, could be used as is, or modified some to make them work on the new Tweet. Again, I can't say that's the gospel, just what he said. I never got into the politics of how the decisions were made to select the T-46. What I was told was that the 2 Senators from NY played a major part in that. My understanding was that the AF wasn't really sold on that jet. Also, according to our DCM, he was at the meeting when an AF General told Fairchild team that they weren't going to buy the T-46. He said that they threatened stop making replacement parts, and giving support for the A-10. He said that the General laughed at them, and stated that the AF was pretty good at reverse engineering components for aircraft. Not long after that, my very first jet 56-2285 (Laughlin AFB was my first duty station after tech school at Sheppard AFB), was sent to Randolph. There it was stripped, I mean better than an LA chop shop could do. All wiring, adel clamps etc was removed. Then the wings were removed, then the fuselage was put on 1 tractor-trailer, and the wings on the other, and sent to a company near Austin, TX. There they would carefully cut the entire jet apart, looking for structural issues that couldn't be seen in the phase docks, or via NDI inspections. That lead to numerous TCTOs to keep the Tweets flying for another 20 years.
Now to the T6 Texan II. As I stated above, I was stationed at Laughlin twice there while on active duty (that's where I met my wife of over 46 years now). I left there in 1989, when Laughlin went from an active duty maintenance complex, to a civil service complex. I retired from the AF after a tour at RAF Lakenheath & D-M in Tucson in 1995. From 1995 to Dec 2004, my wife and I owned our own multi-line insurance agency. Because of her dad's failing health, and his absolute refusal to move to Tucson from Del Rio, we sold our agency and moved back to Del Rio to care for him. The final 6 weeks that we were in Tucson, we lived in our motorhome in D-Ms RV park. That sits right next to the entrance to the boneyard. There they have a section called "celebrity row". Sitting in spot #4 then, was the second of the 2 full sized T-46 trainers. I never heard what happened to the smaller mock up airframe. Also about 2 weeks before we left there, we started seeing the first dozen of the XL (Laughlin) Tweets starting to arrive at the boneyard. They only spent a few weeks there, to be made ready (decommissioned). They were sold to Columbia if I remember correctly.
I took a civil service position back at Laughlin in 2005. First as an egress tech, and then back to QC, now called QA. So I was there as Laughlin was in the process of converting to the T-6 II. After being around it for over a decade, I'm not impressed, and understand why the Navy wanted them gone. But the AF was stuck with having to buy an off the shelf replacement. This was because of really poor planning and budget constraints, so a new clean sheet trainer wasn't an option. I can only give 3 compliments for the T-6 It was fuel efficient. After the AF made changes to make the engine more powerful, it was sporty fast. But that lead to issues where the engine would unexpectedly shut off. It took like 6 years to figure that out, but it was completely tied to those engine mods that the AF wanted. They termed it as Prop Sleeve Touchdown. The third compliment is the Martin-Baker ejection seats. It's a very "manual" seat. I trained on the ACES II seats. Not a fan of having a little computer box in the seat pan making all of the ejection sequence decisions. Yes I know that we have a lot of jets flying with the ACES II system seats, but it has had several changes since I worked with it. Before I retired from civil service in 2018, they were already talking about a replacement for the T-6II. But with all of the funding consumed for the T-7 trainer, there wasn't anything left for even looking at a proposal to construct another new trainer. Gee, that sounds like 1985 all over again..
Thanks for sharing this information! That is what I like about these postings, the information I get from others also involved!
Thanks! I hate getting wordy like that on someone else's story, so I apologize for that. I was grateful to hear about the back story on the "new Tweet". Also, your story is different from mine for the maintenance side, and hopefully that closed some loops for you as your story did for me. There are many things that I miss about the mission that we all did, and it's a brotherhood that folks might not understand that haven't served. Please keep doing your videos!!@@ronrogers
Good stuff, Ron! Enjoying your stories!
Steve, Glad you like them!
I was stationed at Edwards in the '80s in the Egress section and got to be part of the USAF merge with the civilian test team for the T-46. I worked the side-by-side ACES II seats which was strange to us because nobody could explain how the seats could be sequenced with the rocket catapults blasting fire that would fill the cockpit and envelop the second seat to eject. All the tandem fighters had a back seat first sequence so the blast from the front seat would harmlessly hit the empty rear cockpit.
None of the civilian engineers could explain how the second seat occupant would not be burned.
Anyhow, it was one of a dozen aircraft that I worked, got the patch for my collection.
I am sure we addressed that but I can't remember how and you are right, it is a serious issue.
Good video Nice History. My dad was the program manager on the ACES II operating out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He actually had to eject out of an f101 so he had real hands-on experience with regards to human factors and escape systems. He learned to fly in a J2 cub (similar to a j3 but no brakes).
Of all forms of planes I'd say biplanes are my favorite regardless of being less efficient at lift per sf of wing and the additional drag of the apparatus connecting the wings.
Yes, I love my GL.
Ron, electrical engineering, T37, Air Force, 1970's, ham radio... We have so many things in common! Why don't I know you already? I really like your content!
Thanks!
That entire NGT process was a total boondoggle and Cessna wasn't the only company that screwed the pooch. Grew up on Long Island, graduated college/ROTC spring of '82 with a pilot slot at Willie Class 84-01, report date in Oct '82. So the summer and fall of '82 I got a temp job doing basic grounds maintenance at Fairchild-Republic Airport in Farmingdale, Long Island. That summer there was a big stir over at the F-R hanger because they did a T-46 rollout after the contract award was announced. I went to look at it, and even as a novice pilot I remember being totally underwhelmed. The entire design just struck me as half-baked. Not to mention, turns out the rollout aircraft on display was just a shell - didn't even have engines in it. We all know how that project was bungled in the years that followed. A ton of effort went into making that plane work but F-R just wasn't having it. Years later I met a fellow PIT IP at Randolph who had spent about a year working on developing the new syllabus for the thing.
After they finally canned the T-46 the AF was casting a pretty wide net to find SOMETHING to replace the Tweet. I actually got a backseat ride at Randolph around "88-'89 timeframe in the T-45 Navy trainer because they were soliciting opinions from experienced Tweet IP's as to whether or not it might be a worthy successor for the T-37. I personally didn't think it would be a good primary trainer...
Thanks for sharing your insight from the "other side" of the fence!
The other day, I thought that maybe an F-20B would have been a better trainer to replace the T-38A, and I say that as a critic of the F-20A for all its issues that made it a non-starter for TAC. F-20 would have solved the gutless T/W and control system challenges in the T-38, while providing a modern cockpit for guys who would eventually convert to F-16Cs, F-15Es, and F-15Cs. Shared common engine cores/components with F-117A, FBW, more modernized, easy to maintain. Thoughts?
@@LRRPFco52 My thought is that you know a whole lot more about that than me! I think you meant that question for Ron...
Very informative video! Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience!
My pleasure!
It's clear why the guy changed your words, then changed it back. He needed to take credit for your portion of the work (to keep his position)
Nice video, I remember that plane sitting over at South Base for years.....
Cessna almost looked like the Canadian tudor.
Yes, a very close resembelance!
@9:25 someone should have done a drawing of the plane with the horizontal tail hovering 8" above the top of the vertical stabilizer, just to mess with the others in the group. The detached tail: innovation!
Oh gosh. I'd love to pore over those documents on 1st/99th percentile reach and the other ergonomic considerations
Been following these with interest, both as an amateur aircraft designer and flying instructor, but find this episode a little confusing?
I can only go on what I've read (never having flown jets), but always thought the little T-37 was a good concept for a trainer, if a little underpowered. One would have thought the advent of the A-37 would have been an obvious replacement for the Tweet.
As for the failure of the 'Tweet 2', the explanation leads us to believe that Cessna lost because they only had a drawing, while Fairchild had a flying item, even though they lost in the end anyway.
Beechcraft had in some way gone a cheaper route by just licensing another manufacturers product (Pilatus), and throwing it into the competition.
Some will say the Texan II is a completely different machine to the PC-9, but only in similar updates that would set the PC-9 apart from the PC-7. An interesting note here would be that Beechcraft was doing this to replace the old T-34 Mentor, but as it turns out the original Pilatus airframe, the PC-3, is of similar vintage to the T-34.
I guess it's always a hard decision for airforces whether to go from abinitio on jets, or a more civilian like propellor trainer, or to offload abinitio training to cheaper civilian operators using said prop trainers as we currently do here in Australia?
The A-37 would have had too much power. I have flown both. It has a lot of power to carry an armament load. It wasn't that Cessna just had a paper proposal. The reviewers are looking for innovation and most of the innovation on the Cessna proposal was fairly hidden by what appeared to be just a glossed over tweet.
I have 1,000 hrs in the A-37 and it is a gas hog and is why we carried 6 external fuel tanks.
T-46 was a very nice looking airplane
Ron, how did you like Wichita? I was with BMAC back in '85-'86 on the 747 CRAF program. Different work environment compared to my time at Everett. If I couldn't get recalled to the BCAC side in SEA, I was leaving. Left for the airlines. Didn't care for the area, I grew up in Wisconsin.
I grew up in Iowa but I really liked Wichita. I left in '85. Had good ham radio friends, had my own aerobatic school. Great city for general aviation. Good place to raise kids, at that time. All in all, one of my favorite places to live.
I was told that the fairchild proposal was shot down by a USAF general because they pissed him off. That's what the fairchild people told me when I worked with them at Grumman.
Don't know about that. I heard there were production issues.
Real problem with the t38 is how old and poorly supported the fleet has become... need a clean sheet to reduce pilot deaths..
Well that was a wild and convoluted ride. Went from the T-46 straight to declaring T-6 Texan II the winner of the NGT program. Erasing the completely separate JPATS program from history.
This is the early 80s, JPATS wasn't part of the equation then.
ALWAYS REMEMBER: In procurement you have Three (3) vectors: Cost, Quality, Timeliness---Pick any TWO!
Very true!
Fairchild was at Farmingdale, NY, not Farmington.
Ron, what are your views for the T-7?, which should be replacing the T-38 in about a year or so. Personally, I liked the T-38, she was fun to fly, but I do envoy the new students that will be flying the new jet.
I really don't know much about the T-7 but as you, I really enjoyed the T-38 until they screwed up the intake with the C model. Students no longer get a supersonic ride!
@@ronrogers What the... that's just wrong! Of course, there's always the "unplanned" boom ride, like that time I was on a solo 4-ship ride (circa 1983) and begrudgingly given the lead for the "check-the-square" 2 minutes of nail-biting by the 3 IP's who were dual, and trying desperately to be a little TOO smooth doing basic fingertip, and kinda got got the nose buried, and well..
It's pretty slick looking! Only one engine but that twin tail is totally boss.
Yes! I was a student in the T-38 (dual) with a solo lead. The aircraft was really getting pitch sensitive and I commented to my IP. He said, "look at your mach meter." Wow I said, do I get another mach busters certificate? He said,'Shut up!"@@pi-sx3mb
@@ronrogers LOL, yep! I still remember the debrief. IP lead was pretty chill - starts with the usual grounds ops yada, yada, etc., goes through the flight in order and then when he gets to my lead portion, he looks around at the 6 of us and asks "Did anyone see their altimeter jump?" 6 solemn shakes of the head no. "Okay, moving on..." Of course, it's hard to watch your altimeter when your eyes are glued on the lead aircraft wondering if the 1.1G pull is going to turn into a 5G pull, scraping the bottom of the altitude block. 😝
I knew all those guys on the list at 0:46 but you. Were you at Pawnee? I was at the Military-Twin Division. OOPS. Got ahead of myself. I was on my "maternity* leave" in 1981. Didn't get back until the CJ started.
I was at Wallace flight test. Twin propeller side
I would like your thoughts on the Rutans. Not my favorite people.
Regarding their politics or engineering capabilities?
@@ronrogers both, but the engineering is probably more interesting to your audience?
Who needs the business? SpaceX sued and won over that practice.
Fairchild > T6