Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military From: jordan@Morgan.COM (Jordan Hayes) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: F14/15 improvements Message-ID: <1990Aug21.025334.2236@cbnews.att.com> Date: 21 Aug 90 02:53:34 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: Morgan Stanley, & Co., Inc. / New York City, NY Lines: 36 Approved: military@att.att.com From: jordan@Morgan.COM (Jordan Hayes) Mary Shafer writes: The motivation for examining STOL fighters is battle damage to the runways. When I was a kid, I had a paper route and there was this cool guy who was on my route who had a hobby (that's what I remember, though who knows if it was his full-time occupation) of building model aircraft. One day, we were talking, and he asked me if I wanted to see "something cool" -- what a stupid question to ask a 12 year-old who was *consumed* by reading Janes -- and he took me into his basement and showed me a 1/4 scale F-4 that he was building. He explained that he was working under contract (to who, I don't remember, but I think it involved Bell Aerospace) to help build a model that could be used to test out various things for this type of situation (runway damage). There was some talk at the time (this would have been roughly 1978) of using hovercraft attached to the gear that would allow (for instance) a fighter to take off at about 4-6" off the ground, thus missing the holes in the runway after being bombed. He said that the model was going to be used out at Niagara Falls to test this. He said they would be jettisoned right after takeoff, perhaps recoverable. Did anything ever come from this program, or does anyone know anything about it? It sure was a *cool* model! Very realistic, and it had some of those football-sized jeet engines that are common today on 1/4 scale models with Gas Clothes Dryer Ducting in the back ... /jordan