Lately I have been collecting parts of Tornados, so far I have acquired a weapons control panel (WCP2) and what is described as a fairing assembly, which is the first part of the tail fin with a black strip of neoprene (I would be interested to know the purpose of that) and also there is an oval shaped hole at the front end of that it looks like something may have fitted into that area as there are screw holes all around it. This part was removed from ZG714.
I am now awaiting delivery of another Tornado part, which is the CSAS control unit from the pilots port console,
I have noticed that there seems to be 2 different versions of this, mine seems to be the least common. The one I can find most pictures of shows it having grey rectangular windows with legends such as Air Data, Roll MD etc these would have illuminated red or amber in the event of a failure of one of those systems.
The one I have is otherwise identical apart from it does not have those grey rectangles with the legends written in them, instead they are replaced by black squares, the info about which square relates to a particular system is written text above the square and I would guess that if a failure occurred the corresponding black square would illuminate.
I am wondering if this particular version was the original unit or if it was the one that replaced the other ones, the only image I have found so far which shows this particular version in the cockpit is in a Tornado F3
http://www.jetartaviation.co.uk/wp-c...-cockpit-6.jpg there does seem to be a slight difference in that particular one as the switch gaurd looks like it is white with black diagonal bars, the one I am getting is yellow with black diagonal bars and that seems to be the standard colour on all CSAS control units, but I don't think they were unique to the F3 as I know that the aircraft mine came from was a GR4 (ZA462).
I would like to know more about the CSAS, such as was this something unique to the Tornado, I think it is a fly by wire system which other planes do use but perhaps they just called it CSAS for the Tornado? was it vital to the operation of the Tornado?
Hope someone can help answer a few of these questions.
Cheers