ZD902 is still for sale. Chris at Jet Art tells me he is looking for a six figure sum. Every day I daydream about winning Euromillions and learning to fly 'my' Tornado. My starting point is just a humble, faded gliding certificate. I wonder how many hundreds of hours of instruction I'd need to go solo? Maybe I'd never be good enough to get a rating for such a fast, complex beast? I'd certainly need a rather exotic syllabus.

Getting the aircraft airworthy and keeping it that way would presumably incur a seven figure bill. And from what LOMCEVAK says you'd want to add lots of new bits to enable single pilot operation from the front seat.

After all that time and money, what would one be permitted to do? I suppose noise rules mean you can't fly from most civil airfields these days. How far out to sea do you have to be for a sonic boom?

I fancy sticking the ferry tanks on and going to New York via Greenland. I wonder what the MoD and Homeland Security would have to say about that.

You wouldn't be allowed to fly it from ANY civil airfield, the CAA rules and regs would see to that! Before he finally gave up and sold his Lightnings to Mike Beachy Head in South Africa, Barry Pover had tried for years to get permission to fly at least one of his Lightnings on the UK civil register, everytime he met the conditions laid down by the CAA they moved the goal posts again and added further conditions until in the end it was obvious the CAA were never going to allow a privately flown Lightning in the UK, some may argue for very good reasons, and he packed it in...

-RP

And that is why the CAA appeared at Carlisle airport one quite day and ran a cutter/grinder through the main spar of the lowest houred lightning left after its delivery from Warton.
It was one of the ex Saudi airframes that was flown in fully serviceable, I believe the CAA appeared first thing in the morning after its delivery terrified someone would try to fly it.

Are you serious Above TC? The CAA is permitted to physically disable aircraft?

That is a new one on me.

Have a look at this one

Rare tornado jet lands at multi-million pound training centre in Bury (From Bury Times)

Oh yes very serious and no they were not permitted, but they did it anyway. I believe the owners of the airframe tried to take them to court for the damage not sure of the outcome, but if you look up in to the wheel wells there is a cut through both mainspars.

As I said earlier it was the lowest houred lightning airframe and probably the easiest of them all to keep airworthy but the CAA were terrified someone could get in and fly it, as it had just landed airworthy from Warton.

The one that flew to Bruntingthorpe I believe did not get the same treatment, maybe 'Nutloose' can confirm this.
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Regarding Lightnings on the civil register, I've read in more than one place that the CAA policy was because the Lightning no longer had support from the manufacturer and it had suffered a very high accident rate even when it did have support and was in service. The same can't be said of the Tornado.

And why would the CAA allow civilian Hunters to operate, but not the Tornado?

Its all about flying control system redundancy, the lightning was all hydraulic, the hunter was hydraulic and cable, the vulcan also only hydraulic but it had four systems.

My understanding is that Tornado (and Lightning, Buccaneer etc) is a 'complex' aircraft, whereas the Hunter isn't.

So no 'complex' aircraft on the civilian register, even if they are maintained with manufacturer support?

I suppose I'll have to move to the US and buy a Mig29.

I've been looking at some CAA rules in "Operation of ‘Permit-to-Fly’ ex-military
aircraft on the UK register" http://bit.ly/2lK5zmK. It looks like complex aircraft are not ruled out. From page 16:

So theoretically, if you threw enough money at an outfit such as hunterteam.com to set up a maintenance facility, it still seems doable.

ISTR that for complex types, Design Organisation support is mandatory. From industry's perspective the PR benefits of ex-military flying are slight, the costs are high and the potential civil liabilities are huge. In my opinion support would only be forthcoming if the DO owned the aircraft themselves and even then it would be unlikely. I was told that a famous engine company wrote their legacy aircraft support policy to prevent their MD making a positive support decision.

EAP

I've been looking for that policy in various CAA documents but not found it. Can you remember where you read it?

Nick H. It was in one of the CAA's documents but I can't remember which; it wasn't a recent publication. From memory for 'simple' types it wasn't necessary, for 'intermediate' it was recommended and for 'complex' it was pretty much mandatory (although the wording wasn't quite so clear cut but the CAA confirmed their expectations). I'm sure if you called the CAA SRG (if they still exist) they would confirm or otherwise.

To be honest I've been out of the loop for a while and the rules may have changed. The Australian CASA (CAA equivalent) came under some criticism (in respect of the absence of DO involvement) from an inquest following a fatal Strikemaster/JP accident in the outback a few years ago. It wouldn't surprise me if the rules had tightened somewhat.

EAP

I recommend this link discussing the same topic.
I think an F3 project would make the Vulcan look quite simple.
Good luck.


http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?141649-Does-the-airworthy-preservation-of-historic-aircraft-end-with-the-60-s

Can any Tornado rear-seaters verify the truth of the allegation that Foxhunter was so susceptible to ECM that simply switching on an F-16 radar in its vicinity would render the display unreadable ?

That seems like a problem, albeit one we no longer need to worry about.

Fonsini - absolute hoop I'm glad to say. There were problems with spectrally impure RADARs in the early days but the addition of YIG filters solved a lot of those issues. By the time we were on Stage 2 RADARs any issues were well ironed out. The early issue wasn't with F16 RADARs by the way, but with more 'agricultural' spectrally impure RADARs.

The EW/ECCM features on Foxhunter were pretty good when looking at other types flying on TLP. That said we never really knew what we all had 'hidden up our sleeves' for when the real shooting war started!

LJ :ok:

Many thanks LJ, you certainly seem to know what you're talking about. My curiosity resulted from the following comment:

"I well remember the 'exceptional ECM capabilities' of the F3. Without doubt it was quite the worst fighter radar I ever saw in a jamming environment. In fact, in the early days, a co-channel radar or most F-16 radars would remove all the plots on the screen without setting a jamming spoke."

Fons

The key words are "in the early days" - I would agree mostly with that. There aren't that many that saw W-list to the Stage 2H FSP RADAR - chalk and cheese spring to mind! :ok:

In the early days we needed the Hawk to carry a RADAR reflector to be able tp see it beyond 25 miles! We also had all sorts of issues with the Track While Scan that those with an F4 background were using the RADAR in a reversionary mode as it performed better in that mode. It was Op GRANBY that really saw rapid improvement and the company avionics rep could be seen making tweaks to the RADARs on the line with I believe a Psion Organiser to make some significant improvements (during SCUD attacks!). I believe he got an MBE for his efforts...:D:D

LJ

Interesting stuff - it's amazing how quickly improvements can be made when combat beckons.

I always wondered how Foxhunter benchmarked against Blue Vixen, which always seems to be discussed in a "best radar in the world" type way.

A fascinating subject, if only because I work in IT these days which exposes me to some interesting characters who were former military techs and hackers.