. How does the pilot position himself with the filler so far behind him? Must be a camera view, right. That plane has about a dozen camera's I believe. and I know the boom operator has his own range of motion. .
BJK- You just fly formation off the tanker. On the tanker belly are lighted indicators that tell you to fly fore or aft and up or down. Boke- That two seat A-10 almost resulted in a WSO rebellion. Never went anywhere, luckily.
I just love this thread! The XB-70 just looked like so amazing to me when I was a kid. Still does today. That era produced so many utterly spectacular aeroplanes. please keep the pictures coming. All the very best to all in 2022. Mark.
Jag- Single seat A-10s are slow and underpowered, especially loaded on high density altitude days. The two-seater was even worse, especially after they added LANTIRN pods.
Pretty boat and plane. However, I always found it very annoying when a boat would shadow me on a take-off run.
Understood......it's like the car in the other lane that gets up to your back door/somewhere......and stays just out of your view....."what the hell is he going to do?"
Don- Very useful in limited action warfare, not in peer warfare. Hated them as a range officer because they ate up all our scoring sensors and poles. Looked like somebody had been through there with a plow.
I don't know what you call an aileron roll but my instructor named it that. Everybody nowadays knows what a classic aileron roll is: screw balling about the longitudinal axis with no loss of altitude. Try that in a Stearman and you will loose 600 feet of altitude. What I described was what I was taught by an old ex- navy flight instructor and I did it many times with mixed results. The airplanes didn't have accelerometers so I don't know what G I pulled at the bottom and neither does anyone else. I do remember that it wasn't much. I performed in several air shows in which Bob Hoover also performed. I visited him in his Shrike and saw the famous tea glass that was featured in the videos of his pouring a glass during an aileron roll. Below the panel was a string with a little white ball hanging from it that never moved during the 1G roll. I saw him at Paine Field do a climbing aileron roll on take off in an F-86 . The guy was a master. Tex Johnston in the 367-80 wasn't too bad either.
Dad and I saw Hoover at an airshow in SoCal with his P-51D in the early 60s. He definitely could fly. Aileron roll in an F-111 is done with spoilers and differential slab and very smooth around longitudinal axis. In an F-4 the best ailerons rolls were done with the rudder. Got instruction on that after I asked the IP in an F-4G if I could do an aileron roll. Not too smooth. He showed me it was much smoother with rudder only. Nose high on aileron rolls was normal on lower powered aircraft or, like Bob said, you lost a lot of altitude.
All of this happened 76 years ago for me but I can still feel pleasure of it in my memories. Add altitude at the start of the maneuver and then spend it executing the maneuver for no loss of altitude. Careful use of back stick controls the G at the end. Nothing like throwing a Stearman around until you can smooth things out. Many hours of pure fun and a broke bank account. I flew a lot of old biplanes but only one came close to the beautiful characteristics of the Stearman and that was the Curtiss Wright/Travel Air. Can't remember the exact model number but I think it was the 16Q. Wonderful little airplane.
