
The slowly fading art of flying and maintaining Cold War fighter jets - bootload
http://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2016/01/the-slowly-fading-art-of-flying-and-maintaining-cold-war-fighter-jets/
======
e2e8
YouTube channel featuring many videos on older jet engines:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/AgentJayZ](https://www.youtube.com/user/AgentJayZ)

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Theodores
Ultimately there is too much to oxidise or otherwise corrode, rubber parts,
e.g. those tyres can't avoid oxygen even if they can avoid use. Maybe
materials science can come to the rescue with fittings that do not perish,
therefore enabling things like jets (cars and other things) to live on a bit
longer, or to stretch their metal-fatigue lifetime out longer.

~~~
elmin
You can keep anything running if you are willing to put in the work. You just
fix what you can, replace what you can find, and manufacture what you can't.
It becomes much more tricky doing it under the auspices of an FAA
airworthiness certificate though.

~~~
sokoloff
Most of these jets are registered as Experimental-Exhibition, which has
(slightly) relaxed conformance rules vs other multi-engine turbine-powered
aircraft.

Single engine turbine (or multi-engine piston) operated under Part 91
(approximately "not-for-hire") was already reasonably relaxed about "owner
produced parts".

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crdb
Great article, great photos.

No mention of airworthy Cold War jets is complete without Thunder City [1]
which until a crash in 2009 flew the last English Electric Lightnings [2] in
the world.

The Lightning is a fascinating aircraft for two reasons: first, its design,
optimised for intercepting Soviet bombers, was highly original and efficient
at the job, beating many records, and it remains the only production fighter
with vertically stacked jet engines; second, it was the very peak of British
military aerospace engineering, the last time British engineers could say they
were ahead or at least on par with what came out of America, and its success
caused the Americans to put pressure on the British government to cancel the
very promising TSR-2 [3] program, destroy the production equipment, the plans
and most of the airframes, in order to favour the export market for the F-111
(which the British didn’t even end up buying) and in the longer term to
effectively destroy their main competition.

To give you an idea of the importance of the Lightning in the British
aerospace community, I spent some time at Rolls-Royce in Derby back in the
late 2000s, and the production manager managed to mention the Lightning and
the techniques they derived from building the Avon engines that powered it in
our first meeting, a half century later! Even Jeremy Clarkson has one in his
garden [4]. The Lightning intercepted U-2s, flew as high as 88,000ft
(27,000m), and in a NATO exercise in intercepting Concorde, was the only
fighter to do so leaving F-15s, F-16s, F-14s, Mirages and F-104s behind.

A fun anecdote involves airframe XM135 (which is still preserved at Duxford if
you are in the area, as well as an incomplete TSR-2) [5] [6]. A persistent
electrical fault that appeared only when accelerating meant that the people
working on the jet had to accelerate it. Whilst taxiing, with the ejector seat
on safe, no canopy, and wearing only noise guards (so no radio), Wing
Commander “Taffy” Holden accidentally went airborne. He had a few hours in a
Tiger Moth but nothing comparable to the Lightning (“I had never flown a jet
aircraft, no”), so he had to figure out how to fly it, and since he couldn’t
eject, how to land it, which he did eventually after three attempts,
contacting Air Traffic Control via hand signals.

On another note, the most performant Cold War aircrafts flying in the US today
are probably the two FAA-approved brand new SU-37s from Pride Aircraft [7]
which were sold by the Ukrainian Air Force with zero hours on either the
engines or the airframes and completely Westernised with English language
controls and modern electronics.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder_City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder_City)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric_Lightning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric_Lightning)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2)

[4]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnGXerN0tlo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnGXerN0tlo)
(Jeremy's jet fighter garden feature - Speed - BBC) “Do you stock Lightning
jet fighters? Oh you do! Could you please leave one aside for me?”

[5]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfeN3FoZYj0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfeN3FoZYj0)
(Wing Commander "Taffy" Holden ENGLISH ELECTRIC LIGHTNING Inadvertent Take Off
Incident)

[6]
[http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?20807-Lightnin...](http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?20807-Lightning-
XM135-inadvertant-flight-by-W-Cdr-Holden&p=970933#post970933) ("The flight in
Taffy's own words")

[7]
[http://www.prideaircraft.com/flanker.htm](http://www.prideaircraft.com/flanker.htm)

~~~
strongai
While on summer camp as a university cadet in the early 1980s, I was fortunate
to fly (as a passenger, of course) in the training variant of the Lightning
from Binbrook, in Lincolnshire, one of their operational bases.

It has always been hard for me to recall cohesive memories of the flight. In
the space of about 3 hours, and as a wet-behind-the-ears 18 year old, I was
rushed through ejection seat training, sea survival training, flight suit
checks, oxygen mask fitting and the flight itself. I think I also had to be
squeezed into an immersion suit - the flight was over the North Sea.

As we taxied out to take off, the prevailing wind and the geometry of the
airfield meant that we had to pass the rest of my cadet group as they sat
outside in the sun in deckchairs, watching flight operations. I gave them a
confident thumbs-up and we were off.

It turned out that I would be the only one of us to get a ride in a Lightning
during that summer camp (I'd won the draw that made me the first to go) - some
combination of weather and aircraft availability.

Edit: typo

~~~
crdb
Amazing! How did it compare with what you had been flying until then? Did you
fly any other jets since?

~~~
strongai
Heh. We were there in the summer vacation to boost our flying hours on
Bulldogs -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Aviation_Bulldog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Aviation_Bulldog).
I had joined the cadets relatively recently and so, as it happened, my first
solo occurred during that camp also. Because the Lightnings were using the
main runway, we were using a parallel grass strip, and flying mirrored circuit
patterns. On my solo trip (really just a flight around the airfield) a
Lightning passed next to me on its approach and caught me in its wake,
flipping me onto my side. Exciting but no drama - I just went around again.

After uni I did sign up as an RAF pilot, but circumstances (and my own
fundamental lack of aptitude) conspired against me and I flunked the course
(just) before getting my wings. Welcome back to civvy street!

