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13th of May 2023. Celebrating 50 years of the Cat with other veterans that flew her, worked on her or associated with her.

Gunston talks out of his arse on the subject.

With regard to maintaining the Jag. I seem to recall the wheel change jack up procedure was a little more involved then just a bottle jack. If I remember correctly it involved a two-legged trestle type jack that had be arranged over the bogey that pulled the undercarriage up rather than lifted it. I remember taking an inordinate amount of time to clear Lossie's runway whilst dealing with a blown tyre/fusible plug. I also remember using locking wire to stitch brake chute noddy caps back together..

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My first view of the Jaguar, Paris Airshow 1971.

You would be correct. Same for the nose. If they had stuck a jack pad on the trailings arms. A bottle jack would do. Noddy caps. British designed bit?

The specification for NASR 362 was that the aircraft would be capable of carrying 10,000 pounds of stores maximum. 8000 was the maximum really.

And a dann sight easier to work on.

The Jag had sod all to do with the Etandard bar Dassault buying Breguet out during the development phase of the Jag. The BR 121 had been chosen over Dassualts Cavalier in the ECAT competition preceeding the amalgamation of the MOU of Anglo French projects in May 1965. That pissed Dassualt off. The AST 362 of rhe RAF actually stated the RAF wanted supersonic performance, great short field performance with ability for rough strip and advanced avionics. The paper virtually said variable geometry to do so! French wanted something simpler. If Breguet had stayed standalone from Dassault, things may have been different for exports. The Jag was never suitable for a carrier in any form off or onto the deck. The frames ordered however were built as A models instead. Having read most of the development files from Kew, one sees the real picture.

No. Jet Provost basic flying first.

Yes I've got that book as well and I'm not sure where he gets his information from regarding tonnage as he gives no reference.
P 383 103 and 57 squadron.
According to the operational record books, 103 on 1.1.44 carries the bomb load I quoted earlier and 57 slightly less. His figure is rather higher, but nothing to reference it to.
I'm happy with my figures as they are from the official records.
When I did my Air Power dissertation, my prof said never take at face value from others, always check official sources.
Still rings true.
That's me done, as others want to get back to the Jaguar.

A lot of light aircraft set up with fixed gear had jacking pads that were shaped to the section of leg with a pad welded on it and were simply held in place by the Jack, I could never understand why they never came out with similar, they could have secured it with a pip pin through the tow cable attachment if needed.

“We plough the fields and scatter the Jaguars from the land”

Cat 4/5 Accident Rates per 10,000 flying hours
Jag 1.02/10,000fg hrs (>1973)
GR7/9 0.97/10,000fg hrs (>1988)
GR1/4 0.59/10,000fg hrs (>1980)
F3 0.28/10,000fg hrs (>1985)

Quite shocking and goodness knows what that accident rate would have been in the hands of inexperienced students. People often think that the Harrier was the worst in recent times, but the dear old Jag had a truly shocking loss rate in training accidents linked to its handling characteristics at high alpha and lack of SEP.

Here is a list of those losses: https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/type/JAGR

CFIT and mid airs in the main. Look at the number of maintenence and technical accidents and the Jag wasn't worst than anything else. Low level flying on a IN system that could have its moments, was an awful layout and no TFR. Also exceed its limits and 9 times out of 10 you would have to bang out. With Terprom and GPS put on the Jag, CFITs stopped. Bar the last accident in Alaska. No terrain database.

Quite a few ‘loss of control’ were suspected in these accidents too so the C really doesn’t belong in CFIT! I recall watching a T bird video where the student was flying simulated breaks against a bounce at low level - I think the aircraft departed around 15-16 AOA and the instructor yelled “I have control” as it did a crazy whiffadil at not many feet having bled off a lot of speed quickly. Lots of heavy breathing on the video with the student afterwards asking a somewhat quizzical “did I do that?” type question. Incredible that they did not crash.

Indeed why the advanced trainer lark was removed completely by 1970. The unpredictable departure characteristics were well known by 1967/8 by model testing and that similar aircraft designs had the same pitfalls. 65 airframes lost and 28 aircrew killed in RAF and I didn't have to look that up. The first Jaguar loss was a Boscombe T Bird doing high alpha testing. Stuff that BAC had already proved as do not attempt. AOA limits we all know were very shallow and even more so with certain role fits. 17, 14 and 12 are from my engineering memory, sure BV will correct me if I am wrong. The guys were lucky, the T Bird was worse than the GR once departed in unpredictable behaviour. The lack of FDR or CVR of course made investigations a lot harder. A lot of assumptions and guesswork in any crash investigation without hard data. I saw only one crash site in my time. A Type 9B Mk3 seat pan bereaved from the rest of the seat, sitting on its rocket pack on the middle of a road I can remember vividly.

limits
 

I've read that the Jaguar had somewhat tricky handling just beyond it's limits - could someone please expand on this?

Was it FBW?

Also with regards to maintainability in a previous life I was a mechanic / MOT inspector - it's a pet theory of mine that when the designers were designing if they had hands on experience of actually working on their own vehicles they'd either consciously or unconsciously make it easy to work on with those little features
i.e. a Toyota Hilux doesn't require special tools and most components are easy to remove say at the side of a road in the bush in deepest Australia whereas a modern Range Rover or most German stuff is something of a joke - lots of things literally require a body off the chassis (although they are now mainly a monocoque but still full of gormless ideas)

So a jacking pad on the bogey wouldn't necessarily occur to them within the design brief.

No Fly By Wire - hydraulics and push rods only. However, there was a highly modified Jag, XX765, with large LERX and FBW. Apparently it handled really nicely, but the programme was axed in 1984. Some of the FBW data was used in EAP and thence Typhoon.

The aircraft is now at Cosford:

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yeah, lead in technology for the Eurofighter. Totally unstable with C of P forward and G of G in a position that would be impossible for a normal Jag MAC to manually control. FBW system could. RAFM throw out significant research airframes outside?

Long fuselage, narrow swept back wings, no aileron control, roll spoilers that were masked at high alpha. Aerodynamics hid all the pre stall buffet until one wing gave up lift and aeroplane would depart. Its roll and yaw coupling characteristics made it wallow like a leaf. Not spin in a consistent direction. Like a Hunter or Gnat did. Impossible to jugde for most pilots. Worse with certain load fits.

Jaguar was control runs of alloy rods and idler levers, bellcranks, gearing devices and mixer units for the primary flying controls of all moving tail plane halves, rudder and roll spoilers. Don't mention spine bending either when high G would impart uncommanded rudder inputs to spoil your day. Spine bending potentiometers saved the day. Messier Dowty didn't think to put a pad on the gear. ATR did for a similar design. Could have been a mod on one component. Alas the relationship was well broken then

EJR had a similar main gear arrangement to the Jag. Bottle jack only required.