13 August 2012

Harder Than It Looks


This is an F-4J from VF-194 escorting a Soviet Tu-95 Bear.  The paint scheme is from aroun 1976-77.

In the flight sim, it's not easy to fly in formation and getting this lined up took about ten minutes of jockeying my position and then waiting for the pilot's head to finally scan over to be looking at the bomber like he would be while flying in formation.  By coincidence, the RIO is also looking!

3 comments:

  1. How exactly does a jet manage to stay in formation with a turboprop?

    ReplyDelete
  2. As Bugs Bunny says: Air Brakes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Bear is a very quick turbo prop. We were tooling along at 375 knots indicated air speed just under 10,000' mean sea level.

    This speed is well below the Bear's top speed and well above the stall speed of the Phantom.

    If you dig around a bit you can find pictures of the Air Force's Heritage Flight with their Phantom in formation with a Mustang, a much slower plane than a Bear.

    ReplyDelete

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