Model Forum / General / Models / October 2007

By God, it does have a yoke type control stick...I just looked up a
cutaway of it in one of my books.
Apparently, you can control the radar via one of the handgrips of the
yoke, so you can scan for the target and lock your missiles onto it
without having to take your hands off of the stick
I saw one of those give a flight demonstration at a airshow up at Minot
in the mid-late 1970s; that thing can climb like a SOB and it looks like
it has a rocket engine in it when it's in full afterburner...huge ball
of fire behind it.
The pilot at the demonstration brought it in at low altitude going just
subsonic, hit the afterburner, threw it into a near vertical climb and
broke the sound barrier on the way up as the air pressure dropped around
the aircraft with rapidly increasing altitude.
Nearly blew the crowd's ears out...they loved it!
The airshow commentator informed us that in full afterburner the
aircraft would use up its fuel supply in about five minutes.
They had a great demonstration flight by the Canadian Snowbirds at the
same airshow. In some ways this was better that the Thunderbirds because
the lower speed of the Tutors let you see what they were doing more than
the Thunderbird's F-4s of that time period, which would go be like a bat
out of hell to keep up enough airspeed not to stall.

Pat