Beyond the Radome | F-4 Phantom
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
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Work continues on the Phantom! Some of the crew are working on installing the brake lines and anti-skid wiring on the right main strut. My son and I get the transformer-rectifiers installed, which went way better today. We also popped open the radome and got to take a peek inside!
More videos coming this week! Weather permitting, the F-100 Super Sabre should fly on Sunday! I'll have the GoPro cameras onboard for that, so there'll be a video of the flight out this week! If for some reason the F-100 doesn't fly, I'll put out a Community post so everyone will know.
For those of you that are on Instagram, check out Jack's page, as he regularly posts stuff from the hangar. His page is at:
/ jones.aviation
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I was an MOS-6657, which was a Westinghouse AWG10 radar tech. (Marine/Navy F-4J's)
That puppy FILLED up that nose cavity, and you would stick a rail in the top, take off the 4 bolts, and slide that big monster out.
Back then, the Phantom cost 4.5 million......and the radar was 1 million of that. I had a dual trace oscilliscope, frequency counters, all of that.
When we were on the Nimitz, I would sometimes trace the problem down to component level.
Normally you would just replace the assembly or module.
But we were in the middle of the Atlantic (on a 7 month Med)....and bored.
haha
That skill I learned in the military set me for life.
Thanks, Chesty 🙂
That's awesome, thank you for your service! We were still doing component level when I got in, but that was quickly being phased out. I was a shipboard ET, not aviation.
I was a secret squirel in 1970s. That chin dome was stuffed with 2 antenna the hump area had 2 detectors and 2 amps. The system was the aps 107a later upgraded to aps 107d. Wiring was horrible, had to use a tdr to find cold solder joints in canon plugs and bulkhead feedthrus. We called ourselves "your friendly local ecm weinees" Keep up the great work
Radome paint... best shoes on parade.
Blood letting to appease the Phantom gods. Thank you for these videos. Its 1980 for me with VMFA-323 all over again. Love it.
The reward in maintaining a Phantom, is the satisfaction when you get it done right. Because hardly anything is easy.
I never got that satisfaction maintaining an F-16 ! Phantoms require a whole nother level of skill, patiance, technical knowladge & dogged tanacity.
Our E's had the Pitot tube on the radome nose. That radar is a thing of beauty, groundbreaking tech. in its day.
Nice work there getting everything installed and closed out.
Awesome to see the radar is still installed!
I haven't seen the inside of an F-4
Radome in 43 years! Reminds me
of bummer of a night at Edwards
AFB. I was working in the Aero/
Repair 6515 FMS removing the
panels around the forward windscreen for R/R and the apex
In my speed handle feel out.....and
I could hear it work its way down
Somewhere in the aft part of the
radome........the radar folks already
Went home for the night.....Red x
In the forms , called avionics
People had to come back to the
Hangar and remove the. radar package for my skinny butt to crawl
In there with a flashlight and mirror
And FIND that #2 apex........ after most of the night looking...I FOUND
The little sob ! Called avionics folks
to hook there stuff back up and
Had the RED x signed off.....and I
got to go home to the wife then.
Dang what a night to remember!
So much, I remember it damn near
45 years later!😳
That's why I enjoy your channel
Diesel brings back memories in
The Cobb webs of my mind !
Thanks for sharing this story!
That's awesome she still has the Radar inop or not. Definitely a huge part of the phantom history! Would be so cool to have the radome open at a show.
That depends on whether she's a static display or a participant in the show. We're hoping for the latter, but we need to get her airborne again first!
Love the smeared blood from previous phixers...
Sacrifice to the Phantom gods!
Oh, for a UHF amp that could pulse out high power energy and switch to listening mode in microseconds. That’s the life of a radome.
Man if the F-100 can fly/is flying again, i'd LOVE to see her flying around a WOH!
Too early to know for sure what all is confirmed to fly at WOH this year, other than the Blue Angels. Would be really cool to have the Hun and the Phantom up for the show!
I haven’t commented in a while, but I have been keeping up. Really appreciate these videos. Enjoying seeing the progress and feeling the frustration with you when things don’t move fast enough.
Looks like a tough knuckle buster job
Amazing it still has the radar and not just a giant weight with as temperamental as these things were.
Well that is essentially all it is these days, just weight 🙂
Great to see the Phantom getting so much attention.
The lockwiring however could be done better.
Some of the bolts are lockwired the wrong way.
(Pulling left).
Also the one aft of the radar dish is left pulling.
Sorry ..no clue how to get the message trough in an other way.
But please check the lockwiring🎉
Several bolts are lockwired the wrong way.
I would ground the aircraft for that.
Sry..
You know, sometimes you have to sweat blood to keep them flying.
Superb job, man. And thanks for showing the details of the radar. Really nice stuff.
Our pleasure! Was a real treat to see inside the dome!
if you need another one of those safety wire fully reversible saafety wire pliers, costaero has a special order coming in
Every time I go to a hobby show, I buy some hemostats at the booth that sells all sorts of random tools. I've broken a few of them too.
for someone that knows cars and nothing about working on aircraft this looks other worldly complicated haha
Let's see some footage of that F-100 flying!!!!
I come here every week just astounded that people kept these things operational under war time conditions.
Mind boggling to think about that, and to have it combat ready too!
Love watching the work on the F-4! One nitpick though, the safety wire on those bolts is incorrect, it should always be trying to “pull” the bolts tight. Get Crew Chief Al to show you. I’ve had to go back more than once and redo it😆
Yeah, looking at that, I am going to redo those. Good for practice 🙂
Man, I can feel your pain with the safetywire. I still have scars from my days doing safetywire.
Yeah, it’s really easy to catch fingers and hands working with it. Not to mention if someone before you didn’t bend back the ends and you get snagged by those 😬
After a while you develope titanium knuckls !
@@DieselThunderAviation one thing I used to do that helped was to wrap the excess handle of the safetywire pliers. That way it wouldn't whip around and get your fingers.
Hemostat... Brilliant! Congrats on getting the components back where they belong, tightened down, and buttoned up. I understand it but bummer that the radar isn't functional. As always, thanks for sharing.
Indeed! I imagine a set of needle nose vise grips would worked too, but the hemostats are smaller and a bit easier to work with. The radar wouldn’t do much for us with how we operate the aircraft, at best it’d be an overpowered weather radar with no spare parts.
@@DieselThunderAviation Is that a hemostat you used or a forcept? As far as I can tell the difference is forcepts have ridges for gripping and hemostats are smooth. It doesn't seem like they'd grip anything very big, say above #10 or maybe 1/4" ? Regardless, great idea and I'll be picking up a pair of forcepts.
Then these are forceps, they had the ridged jaws. I’ve seem them each in a variety of sizes. The ones I used were on the larger side. Great for fishing as well!
Now, if you can get a 104 or a 101. That would be megacool. I donate to that fund.
control the offcut as we got taught in the RAAF.
As much as I like the f-4 stuff. I want to see the hun. I wish you had more time to show the hun
Got some good stuff from her flight yesterday! Should have that published in the next couple of days 🙂
@@DieselThunderAviation I hope you got the launch. And what the crew chief is doing.
Get your T.O. out! Here comes QA!
I am not a forrensic scientist, but it looks like blood on the support brace, a tough time indeed!
I think you are right!
@@DieselThunderAviation Ha,ha,ha, Been there, did that!
Diesel, thank you for your videos! Could you tell me the spooling time of the J-79 from IDLE to MIL and from MIL to AB? I don't like immediate reaction of it to the throttle in the DCS and want to ask Heatblure to fix it!
Our pleasure! There is a chart in the manuals showing maximum time for spool up, but it does not show minimum times. I believe they adjusted it in the last patch and they may adjust it some more in the future.
How about the spool down time from cutoff to stop? They always seem to ignore that. And the sounds of spool down. Do the real engines make a klickity-klickity sound for 20-30 seconds or more until they coast to a complete stop? I remember watching a raw video from the Gulf War in ‘91 of the J52 engine in an A-4KU Skyhawk (A-4M). I think it was over two minutes from cutoff to coasting to a complete stop, with the clanking sound for a minute or so.
All that crap now will weigh 1K so be careful if you decide to pull i t out , put a point on 2 2X4s 4 bolts and have you a crane to catch it , Never worked on one like yours only s models .Good luck
Check your safety wire job. You went the wrong way with a couple of those. Been there done that when I was a young airman back in the day.
Indeed! I plan on going back to redo those!
18:04, it looks like the safety wire is going the wrong direction
looks like it
Yep, I’m going to redo that!
All good except for the bottom bolts.
I would restore the radar. Just because.
You must have someone who knows how to safely remove the Martin baker ejection seat😊
pull the handle usually works to remove it.
Safety wired plenty of the Aim-7 launchers, both bolts and breeches. Barely enough room through the access panels, and Lord help you if they had moved the aircraft while the launcher was out without the spacer block! You would have the slowly tow the aircraft around while trying the get the bolts in.
Well as I don`t know your real name (whitch in fact doen`t concerne me😁)I`ll adress you as D.T. Just out of curiosity is that real blood on that ejection seat base (or rail)? If it is, I was right on my last comment when I told you guys poured blood, sweat and tears on that project.
And would it be more complicated if you had disassembled all stuff and took it of the plane to do all that work outside that extremely tight place?
🤙. Good winds and happy landings from Portugal
What did the sticker on the antenna dish say?
To put it politely, it says “sh*t happens”. Gave me a good chuckle as I didn’t expect to see that there. 😁
Demiled killed it unless you stole it
Do you intend to fly the F-4 also?
Of course! We were hoping to have her back in the air sooner, just the electrical system and the right main gear had other plans.
That's great. How did you get the washers on the bolts for the TR that you put in?
Yes, washers were installed. Certainly don’t want to do this twice
16:17 is that handwriting on the plane at the bottom left of the screen? Does it say something?
It does, hard to make out the first word, but the second word is “missing”. Wonder if that is referring to one of the parts that was removed?
Just from curiosity.
Any chances to repair this cut fat cable in the radar compartment?
Unfortunately not. Between the cabling, missing parts, and lack of any documentation, we have no chance to repair the radar. It would also be a massive amount of work for little gain with how the jet is operated.
with all the vibration in that Aircraft shouldn't you use Loctite or safety wire?? just asking?
On the left hand TR (lower one), it’s near impossible to get safety wire on those fasteners so that one uses the self locking nuts. Since the upper one only uses bolts in a threaded hole, those get safety wired.
You can't see good enough in the video but I'd bet good money those nuts are 'crimped' (don't know the right word). They're slightly deformed so they're a friction fit so they can't vibrate loose. Sort of like if you were to 'stake' the nut before you ever installed it. The nuts on top of the plate at 10:52 are also locking nuts.
@fsj198711 Same kind of nut that you spotted on that plate are the same ones used on that lower TR. When I removed that lower one a few months ago, none of the bolts/nuts were loose. Have no idea when the last time it was removed, likely it was in place for well over a decade or more.
@@fsj197811 Crimp-Lock nuts, should be to NAS spec.