Main Forums > The Roundtable

Snowbird down

<< < (7/8) > >>

Perd Hapley:

--- Quote from: French G. on May 18, 2020, 09:44:12 PM ---I don't know that plane but the F-18 has a nasty habit that it's engines are very close together so a FOD of one can blow a compressor and it chunks through the fuselage and gets the one motor you need to get home with. That's what happened with the F-18D that went splat in VA Beach a few years ago. Midday, landed on an apartment complex, God looking out for fools that day, the only casualty was one house cat.

--- End quote ---

The one house cat foolish enough to be in the house.

230RN:
I was complimenting WLJ for posting the video and had some questions that kind of looked like I was asking WLJ, but Fly230 answered.

Ooops. Answered already above.

HeroHog:
https://youtu.be/AER-zXA5fHg

230RN:
Very interesting, HeroHog, apart from the Snowbird maintenance issue itself.  Up to now, I thought all counter-liberal viewpoints and information outlets in Canada had been thoroughly squashed.

It's nice to know I was wrong in that respect.  Ms. Gunn-Reid provides the evidence.  I note the symbolic megaphone in the backdrop. Good show !

My one problem is I wish she would stop calling liberals "liberals" and start calling them what they are.

Terry

Hawkmoon:
The woman who made that video may be more than a little lacking in her understanding of the logistics involved. Here's what a friend (who follows aviation stuff avidly) had to say about it:


--- Quote ---Interesting, but more than a little bit silly. And quite a bit misleading.

Yes, the planes are old. Crazy old.

The USAF's trainers are older.

And unlike the Canadian jet, which is only used for demo purposes, the T-38 (in USAF service) is still the advanced/transition trainer (the bulk of the training being done with a much smaller and newer turboprop). It is also used operationally, specifically as an aggressor (aka "Red Air") for F-22 pilots. And in this role, it's not upgraded at all, it still has all its 1950s avionics; the ones used for training have been modernized a little bit.

(Trump approved the replacement for the T-38, but it will take a while for them to go into service and replace the T-38 completely)

Anyway... the contract this lady refers to clearly refers to the plane's engine, that's what "J85" is. Guess what, USAF's T-38s also use this engine. Not identical (the T-38 has the afterburning version, the Canadian jets don't) but there are still a lot of these engines out there. Some old Learjets had this engine as well, and a newer version of it is also used in the Northrop F-5 (still used by the Marines and others for aggressor training). Many F-5E/F jets are still in active use around the world, mainly in Central/South America and Asia.

(Greece used to have A LOT of F-5s. When they were retired their J85 engines were all sent to our training squadron, which uses the T-2 Buckeye trainer, which has the non-afterburning J85 like the Canadians. That helped keep those jets flying for so long)

The lady in the video makes a big deal of the secrecy in the contract. She may have a point there, but it's pretty common for military contractors to be told to keep quiet about contract details.

She also puts emphasis on the term "cannibalizing", used to describe the process of sourcing parts from grounded jets for keeping other jets flying, or transferring parts from a working jet whose airframe has reached its 'end-of-life', on to another previously retired and stored jet, which still has hours left on its wings. Her use of the term is pretty stupid. The term has been used this way since WWII, if not before, and its common practice when you still have a few of something you're still using, with many more in storage. That's exactly why the US keeps so many jets in desert fields!

I'm no fan of Trudeau but I don't think this is really his doing, Canada managed to put itself in a catch-22 with the Snowbirds, and it started over a decade ago, when they decided to outsource their military's flight training -- way before Trudeau came into being: training is being handled by a company (whose name escapes me right now) in Canada, which uses British-made Hawk trainers -- an updated version of the birds flown by the Red Arrows, USN is using a carrier-capable variant of that jet, too (as the T-45 'Goshawk'). It's an older design than some others out there, but quite capable and still in production so maintenance is a non-issue. The company trains the Canadian military, as well as a number of participating NATO countries' pilots.

Usually, if an airforce has a demo team, it uses whatever plane they have as a trainer -- the US is the exception, using bigger, meaner, cooler fighters*. Everyone else sticks to trainers. The Canadians did the same with the Tutor, when it was being used in the training role. Well now they've outsourced their training, so they had to either a) keep flying the same old plane, using available spares, or b) buy a dedicated type for demo purposes only. IMHO either option is pretty bad, but it doesn't surprise me they went with keeping the old. It would be pretty silly to buy and stock up spares for just a handful of planes. They probably should have negotiated a deal with that company, i.e. buy some of the same Hawk trainers and arrange to have them maintained by that company... or something. But maybe it wasn't that simple, since there was NATO funding involved there, who knows. Otherwise, buying only a handful of demo planes, with no commonality with their existing fleet, would probably be more expensive than repainting some of their CF-188 (better known as F/A-18A and B, i.e. what the Blue Angels use) jet fighters, and use those instead. Except that they're a bit short of F/A-18s, but that's another long story (a funny one, though, and that one DOES feature some stupidity from Trudeau).

I know these details because Canada's way of dealing with training has been discussed at length in Greece as a 'model' that they might imitate (...), since they too have some very, very, VERY old trainers, and are basically skint: Greece has good flying weather, and very few restrictions on military flying, compared to elsewhere in Europe, so the idea was to create a "flying academy" with NATO and/or EU support (hah!) and fund the purchase of some new jets this way, either at the state level or via a private entity. Interesting in theory, except NATO already funds that company in Canada, plus the Italians next door, have pretty much the same deal going in the south of Italy (also good weather, also with little flight traffic and restrictions)... and unlike Greece, Italians MAKE military jet trainers of their own, and they're actually good at it.

So Greece may be stuck with T-2s (also older than the Canadian Tutors) for some time to come... or bite the bullet and send their pilots over to Italy for training. If we keep the T-2s, at least they have two engines each... and they DID receive an upgrade for their ejection seats at some point, so pilots can eject even when they're on the ground. The Canadians haven't done that.


*...except during the oil crisis in the 70s, when USAF's Thunderbirds used the T-38.

--- End quote ---

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page