Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Morpheus on June 08, 2006, 06:24:28 PM
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tomcat-alley.org
http://www.grummanpark.org/history.htm#F-14s_RETURN_TO_LONG_ISLAND
The F-14s from VF-31 are due to arrive over Long Island skies approximately 0900 hours with a flyover of Calverton (to include Grumman Memorial Park) and Bethpage. They are expected to arrive at Republic Airport, Farmingdale, NY approx. 0930-0945. The jets will be parked by the American Airpower Museum on the east side of Republic Airport along New Highway.
See also:
http://www.americanairpowermuseum.com/
The Tomcats will depart for Oceana on Friday, June 16 sometime after 1200 hours. And that will be the last time F-14s will ever appear over Long Island. However, two Tomcats permanently reside on Long Island - one at Grumman Memorial Park, Calverton, and the other at the Cradle of Aviation Museum, Garden City, NY.
Tomcats Forever!!!
Going to fly over in the morning with Rob. Would be nice to get there in time to see them land. I'm not sure if they're going to do a demo, would be nice, but I doubt it. NY'ers on the tooth pick rock would probably ***** too much about that. rolleyes:If you got a video camera, i'd bring it just in case. ;)
I'll PM you my cell, call me and i'll figure out when we're leaving to fly over.
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mile high club now recruiting.
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post pics please guys :D
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Thanks for posting the info morph.
The air show at jones was prety cool. I'm gonna try to get one of my friends to give me a ride out there so we can check out the tomcats.
Also checked out one of those links. Is this right, $265 to ride in a goon?
That would be a cool once in a lifetime experience.
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Originally posted by doogan
mile high club now recruiting.
Nightshift82 post pics please guys
:huh :O
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Hey Morph...Im almost positive i'll be going...What sucks is that I will be driving =(....The grumman I have booked will be down for maintance, and all of the other airplanes are booked up for the time slot that day....Whatever...By Air, road or rail, I will do everything within my power to finally see a tomcat fly!..... I live in Trumbull, CT. If anyone is along the route of driving, or would like to drive to Trumbull, I'd be happy to pick you up and take ya along for the show....let me know
cavvy
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Originally posted by Nightshift82
post pics please guys :D
You bet, bought a brandy new camera for the event. :)
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Originally posted by cav58d
Hey Morph...Im almost positive i'll be going...What sucks is that I will be driving =(....The grumman I have booked will be down for maintance, and all of the other airplanes are booked up for the time slot that day....Whatever...By Air, road or rail, I will do everything within my power to finally see a tomcat fly!..... I live in Trumbull, CT. If anyone is along the route of driving, or would like to drive to Trumbull, I'd be happy to pick you up and take ya along for the show....let me know
cavvy
That sucks, there's no other planes you can fly over there? Just borrow one from someone. :)
And yes, this is the end of an era, the biggest and baddest gun fighter down the tubes due to politics... It is something to see if you can make it.
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Hey Cav what do you pay for the Grumman?
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$40 dry/tach hour
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Went to EAA's "Sun n Fun" a month ago. Was surprised when I heard an F-14D turning up on the ramp. I had heard that it was decommissioned and didn't know one was going to be at the show but the sound was unmistakable. My daughter was roaming around with her friends and she said there was an F-15 at the show...just about had to bop her on the side of the head for mistaking the two. After takeoff they did a fly-by but no performance demo...:-(
Guys, see if you can get the names of the crew if you can. Just curious.
Mace
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It wasn't "due to politics" it was due to 3-4 times more hours of maintenance for every hour of flight time than the F/A-18. It is a matter of economics not politics. having said that the Tomcat rocked and held the #1 spot for thirtysix years. there is nothing in the air currently that can decisively beat it. It is also the last fighter to come from the legendary Grumman iron works. a sad day indeed.
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Yea it sounds like the tomcat was a maintance pig, and required as much, if not more maintance than rotary wing aircraft flying in Iraq!
Anyways..How does thw cat stack up against the F-15 in a knife fight?
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Originally posted by cav58d
Yea it sounds like the tomcat was a maintance pig, and required as much, if not more maintance than rotary wing aircraft flying in Iraq!
Anyways..How does thw cat stack up against the F-15 in a knife fight?
F-15 won't get low in a knife fight with the Cat.
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ummm....i dont get it lol
Tell me in terms of WWII planes lol
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Well mike call me, we'll see if we can work something out with my 152 if you would like.
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It was politics plain and simple. Sure it costs more to maintain more of an air craft. A fighter that was and is more of a joint strike fighter than the F18 super hornet ever would hope to be. The F-14D certainly was not at the end of its life.
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the part of me that isn't bellybutton is all ears and eyes. do tell how politics killed the tomcat.
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Originally posted by storch
It wasn't "due to politics" it was due to 3-4 times more hours of maintenance for every hour of flight time than the F/A-18. It is a matter of economics not politics.
Actually, it was both politics and money. In the politics side the Hornet was made in more states than the Tomcat and the Hornet mafia did a great job in claiming to be able to do it all with just one guy. Only politicians win the first point and facts don't back up the second. Case in point. During Desert Storm a flight of F-18's were over Iraq and about 50 miles from their target. The Fighter/Attack Guys had already switched to air-to-ground mode when the E-2 started calling bandits approaching at 30 to 40 miles. The E-2 makes numerous calls and is almost shouting before the Hornet pilots buy a clue and comprehend what he's saying. The bandit is within 10 miles now. One Hornet pilot promptly launched an AIM-9 Sidewinder out of range, then, he follows his long shot of his short-range missile with a short shot of his long-range missile, his Sparrow. :rofl In "Fighter-speak" this guy is known as a freaking idiot. If the Iraqi had his xxit together a couple of Hornets could (and should) have been dead meat. Also, by every measure of effectiveness the Tomcat won the competition in Afghanistan even given that not one of the F14's that participated could have possibily been newer than 11 years old and most probably averaged 15.
Speaking of age, greater maintenance manhours per flight hour is only partially true and must be judged comparing apples to apples. F-14D and F-18C with similar numbers of airframe hours and similar parts support were very similar in MMPFH with the Tomcat costing only two to three hours more, not 3-4 "times" more. Problem was that there were very few F-14's with total hours similar to the Hornets in the fleet at the time (specifically the 54 F-14D's made in 1989-91, the last brand new F-14 airframes ever built). Also, many F-14 parts were no longer being produced which meant the community had to continuously swap parts between planes. VX-4 had a mix of both old and new Tomcats (A, A+ and D) and Hornets (C and D). Old airframes were hard to maintain. New airframes were much easier. This is what we call "intuitively obvious to the casual observer." The maintenance cost was a red herring and would have been eliminated had they spent the money for the F-18E/F "Stupor Hornet" on new, 1990 technology Tomcats.
Bottom line though is that there is really only one substantive reason the Hornet was chosen over the Tomcat...1 vs 2 crewmen. The RIO was the biggest cost difference given his projected pay, medical and retirement. This was much more expensive than the few MMPFH difference in similar aged planes and a piss poor reason to pick the Hornet, especially given the proven effectiveness of a two-man crew in a high workload, high threat environment as well as the obvious advantages the Tomcat held in range, speed, payload, loiter, bringback, etc. The USAF suffers because it needs ground bases. Naval Aviation suffers because of the Hornet. Guess I should really right a book about this...lol.
Mace
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That's it, in a very small nutshell.
Thanks.
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Originally posted by cav58d
ummm....i dont get it lol
Tell me in terms of WWII planes lol
No WWII terms available, as the F-14 would pwn it with the Pheonix missiles before it got close enough to knife-fight. :D
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Thanks for the reply mace but everything I've read on the F14 v F/A18 battle going on for over five years points to economic reasons and maintenance being the biggest expenditure. according to VF31 skipper Cdr. Richard LaBranche "The F14 is not getting chased out because it can't keep up with the world's current fighters, it's because our maintainers have to work two to three times as hard to get the jets ready to fly compared to the Hornets. That can be found in the current issue of Flight Journal. Flight Journal has done a good job of covering the the F14 for as long as I have been a subscriber, about seven years now.
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aside from your mags, what's the point in your coming in to this thread, that really has nothing to do with you anyways, and trying to pick a fight, storch?
Are things going that bad for you that you feel this is needed in your life?
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Originally posted by storch
Thanks for the reply mace but everything I've read on the F14 v F/A18 battle going on for over five years points to economic reasons and maintenance being the biggest expenditure. according to VF31 skipper Cdr. Richard LaBranche "The F14 is not getting chased out because it can't keep up with the world's current fighters, it's because our maintainers have to work two to three times as hard to get the jets ready to fly compared to the Hornets. That can be found in the current issue of Flight Journal. Flight Journal has done a good job of covering the the F14 for as long as I have been a subscriber, about seven years now.
Rich is talking about now and I'm absolutely sure he's right but the context is wrong. This has nothing to do about today or today's maintenance issues. The death warrant was the decision made 15 years ago to cancel F-14D production and that's what got us to today. There are no new F-14's and no production line, there is no way the plane could have been kept alive after Calverton was shut down. But, had the Navy made the right decision in the early 90's we would have continued to build new airframes while updating the F-14 with 1990-2000 technology, fixed the vast majority of maintenance issues we had, AND ended up with an aircraft far more capable than any possible version of the Hornet. Stuff like Kapton wiring (which got brittle with age) and hydraulic swivel joints (vice newer tech flex lines) were all easy to change if the F-14 was given the budget the Hornet had. These alone would have fixed most of the biggest problems of the original design which were primarily electrical and hydraulic leaks. Also, had we built new F-14's the average age of the F-14 fleet would be closer to 5 years than 25. Of course their problems are even worse now than before, the newest airframe is 15 and parts haven't been made for years. This all could have been fixed for far less than the development costs of the "super Hornet". Also consider what is arguably the best fighter bomber the US has, the F-15E. It is easily the most effective in the US inventory and a great example of what we could have done with the F-14.... and the F-15A entered service in the 70's right after the Tomcat. Which aircraft is the F-15E closer to, the F-18 or F-14? Range, speed, weapons load, two men,...jeeze sounds a lot like the Tomcat and, while they're not retiring F-15E's they are retiring F-16s. Now I'm not saying the F-18 is a bad airplane, it's just not the right one. Like Meat Loaf wisely said, "There ain't no Coupe DeVille hiding in the bottom of a Cracker Jack box" and the Hornet has always been too small to do the job asked of it.
Finally and with all due respect, I didn't get my info from a magazine, I was there. While Rich was probably just an Ensign I was the F-14D Operational Test Director at VX-4 when this all happened. The argument hasn't been going on for five years, it's been going on since 1989. The decision was so preposterous and caused such an uproar in the fighter community that the CNO himself (a boat driver) came out and basically told us to sit down and shut up because they could not come up with a good counter argument to support the F-18 and Congress was starting to question the Navy's decision.
Mace
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thanks for the insight Mace. I have always been a big fan of the F14.
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Originally posted by storch
thanks for the insight Mace. I have always been a big fan of the F14.
Roger that Storch...aren't we all.
Mace:aok
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Rich is talking about now and I'm absolutely sure he's right but the context is wrong. This has nothing to do about today or today's maintenance issues. The death warrant was the decision made 15 years ago to cancel F-14D production and that's what got us to today. There are no new F-14's and no production line, there is no way the plane could have been kept alive after Calverton was shut down.
Bingo, not that I am informed at all, but this is what is plaguing the warthog too. Once these airframes are wornout they are gone. It's a shame on both counts, but lets face it, piloted firghter aircraft all together are next to go. I will be a sad day for sure. Could you imagine going to an airshow and watching pilotless drones being flown around demoing our latest tech.
I hope we see the 14 get a second life in the Airshow community, would need deep pockets that is for sure.
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You're absolutely right about pilotless eventually taking over. My son is in NROTC right now and is shooting for an aviation slot but I seriously believe he may be the last generation of true fighter pilots. Believe it or not, the USAF had a serious debate regarding awarding Air Medals to UAV pilots sitting in some tent doing essentially what we do in AH. I don't know what they eventually did but the fact the idea wasn't dismissed out of hand as a joke is disturbing. BTW, you can see pilotless drones at airshows now. Just go early, they usually have RC models flying before the show starts....see the future now!
I seriously doubt you'll ever see a privately owned F-14 flying in an airshow. Just too many moving parts and too expensive to fly. In full afterburner the F-14 can burn all 16,400 pounds of JP in about 8 minutes. That's something like 3,000 gallons. At $3.00 a gallon that would be $9,000. Maintenace costs used to be around $4,500 per flight hour (those were government rates...lol) so you'd be looking over $16,000 per 1.5 hour flight and that's not counting all the parts you'd need to buy or the maintenance troops to take care of it.
Mace