I do miss the 'old girl' at times. Chasing down B-1Bs off of the coast of Denmark was immense fun; as was shouting "Beep! Beep! Coming through!" over the common exercise frequency as we took guns footage on each of them.
For what it was designed for: Long-range loiter way North of Scotland with the ability to chase down BLACKJACK, BACKFIRE and FENCER. Then the F3 was pretty damn good. It wasn't a dogfighter and was pretty poor above 35kft for any subsonic. But at low level it was the fastest of anything before or ever since. The F111, B1-B and the F16 drivers always looked surprised when we chased them down at low level over the sea (or in a supersonic overland training area).
Now, I'm off to my armchair to smell of wee...
LJ