Tyne,
That pic' is a GR5 when they were brand new ( you can tell if it's a GR7 onwards, as they have the FLIR mounted above the nose ) - also this is an early shot as it has strakes underneath the gunpods; I know this intimately as I was once under there when the pilot started up the Pegasus - I finished the last 2 fasteners, then made the quickest move in my life - no-one had told him I was there, comms cock-up.
The 'gunpods' are actually made of mahogany & housed 4 high speed 16mm cine cameras 3 pointing outboard for weapon release observation, one in each cannon position to film rocket / missile firings, Photo Sonics 1VN's able to do up to 200 frames per second ( though we found 150 more reliable, and had no end of trouble hanging the things externally in CBLS200 pods - film gets brittle at -40C despite the 100W heaters on each camera !
We came up with some 'inventive' auxiliary heating / insulation.
The aircraft in question is ZD319, one of our 2 GR5's at Dunsfold for development trials.
ZD 318, the first UK AV-8B, was used for avionics work, while 319 did the hardware dropping / firing.
At that time the 25mm Aden was considered future standard kit, and I agree it would be jolly handy right now sorting out the Taliban; unfortortuantely internal politics took over - the perfectly good & hard hitting Aden 30mm as used by the Harrier GR1-3 & Sea Harrier was replaced by the 25mm which I filmed shooting its' guts out.
Strange thing, the UK have never fitted the GAU-12 gatling as used by the USMC; whenever I mention this I get private messages from outraged Royal Ordnance people; well, the fact is, the GAU12 while not without problems generally works when asked, the Aden 25 didn't !
Last edited by Double Zero; 17th Mar 2009 at 11:47.