Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!rutgers!att!cbnews!military From: shafer@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Yet More F-104 Trivia Message-ID: <1990Oct15.034256.14064@cbnews.att.com> Date: 15 Oct 90 03:42:56 GMT Sender: military-request@att.att.com Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 59 Approved: military@att.att.com From: Mary Shafer Paul Tomblin (cognos!geovision!pt@dciem) writes: >ntaib@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Nur Iskandar Taib) writes: >>In article <1990Aug23.014401.1193@cbnews.att.com> phil@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Phil Gustafson) writes: >>#A decade or so ago, a civilian in (naturally) Southern California had >>#managed to get hold of a flyable F-104. (This is difficult -- the >>#services go to considerable effort to see that combat aircraft being >>#scrapped will never fly again. The old fighter in your playground with >>#kids crawling over it most likely has a big chunk cut out of its main >>#strut.) This is Darryl Greenameyer. The airframe that he got was the loads test article. Lockheed was selling it for scrap. It didn't have the longerons cut because it was never an airplane, just an airframe. He did some super-serious scrounging and had to make a lot of parts that he couldn't find elsewhere, but he did turn it into a real airplane. The engine was the hardest part. >>If this was the one with the red and yellow color scheme, >>its gone. He flamed out and had to resort to the ejection >>seat everyone's been talking about. Fortunately for him, >>it worked. No, on 27 Feb 78 he was doing touch-and-goes at Mojave and got a gear light (that some of the gear was not down and locked.) He came over to Edwards AFB and tried a soft touchdown. The left main collapsed, so he went out over the PIRA (bombing range) and, at 10,000 ft, ejected. This was a classical ejection, right in the envelope. He wasn't injured but the plane was, of course, destroyed. He was either low on fuel or had dumped most of it, though, because there wasn't much of a fire. >It's quite possible that it was a CF-104 from the Royal Canadian Air Force >(Canadian Armed Forces). Our government is not so leary about selling its >old fighters as they are in the U.S. Some aircraft companies in the U.S use >Canadian fighters. For instance, I seem to remember seeing pictures of a >CF-86 Canadair Sabre flying chase on the drop test of the Shuttle. Not likely. Only NASA planes flew chase on the ALT tests, which were conducted here at Dryden, and we certainly didn't use any F-86s. I recall that the chase planes were JSC and Dryden T-38s, although one of our (Dryden's) F-104s might have been used. You may be thinking of the CF-86 that belongs to a museum in Texas and is flown by NASA Astronaut Hoot Gibson (JSC) and NASA Test Pilot Ed Schneider (Dryden). This same museum also has a (two-seat) TF-104, a MiG-15, and a MiG-21. They also have an A-4, which won a prize at Oshkosh in 89. Their TF-104 came from Norway. -- Mary Shafer shafer@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov ames!skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov!shafer NASA Ames Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA Of course I don't speak for NASA "A MiG at your six is better than no MiG at all"--Unknown US fighter pilot