Forum: F-16 Procedures

Hi, I´m new in this page; you can say to me if is real the rumor that mexico will buy 12 F-16s?

And also can you tell me too wich plane is the most easy to maintain: the F-16, Mirage 2000, or the MiG-29?

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Hi Balam, welcome to the forum.

<b>Mexico</b> - that is just a rumor. We'll have to wait untill other sources confirm it. Confused

<b>F-16 maintenance</b> - interesting question. How much groundpersonnell does it actually take to keep one bird flying?

F-16 Maintenance - It is pretty easy to take care of the F-16. Granted, there are tasks when many people are required and can seem difficult, but all in all it is a prety easy aircraft to care for. No more than 2 to launch, 3 to load, 1 person can do many of the basic tasks.
With todays technology, aircraft computers and all, IMHO maintenance is much easier on the F-16 than say the F-4.

20 year USAF Weapons/Armament Technican

That's largely depends an aircrafts version...A/B or C/D. The later is harder to maintain.

I want to make it clear as an F-16 Crew Chief for 5 years back in the late 80s and early 90s the differences in maintaining the F-16 and the Mig 29s and F-1 Mirages that you listed.

I'll start by saying that the F-16 is much easier to maintain than the two examples you compared. I spent 6 months at Transient Alert at MacDill while the 56th was transitioning to Hill AFB Utah and I got to see a Mig 29 up close. We had two of them actually and thats how I got an up close look at their construction. I was shocked to see that there was no logical ordering of panels on the Fulcrum, everything looked like it was just patched and thrown together. We all noticed it right away.

The Russian pilots told us some horror stories about the training and abilities of there maintenance teams, they complimented us on our professionalism and knowledge of aircraft.

The F-16 was designed to be easily maintained and flown in all weather environments. Ask any Crew Chief and they will tell you "Give me a speed handle, a screw driver and a rubber mallot and I can fix it". Its not quite that simple but every panel on the F-16 can be removed with a speed handle, and most of the components are LRU or line replacable units, you just open a panel and replace a malfunctioning unit, good examples of LRUs changed by Crew Chiefs are Engine Start System Controllers, Main Engine Control(MEC) on GE powerplants.

For specialists IE pointy heads examples include the PSP Programable Signal Processor, HUD PDU, and just about every panel in the cockpit. These LRUs are repaired or trouble shot in the back shop while the plane continues to fly with the new LRU already installed in the aircraft.

When I was crewing the F-16 our FMC Fully Mission Capable rates were very high even on the older block 25 and block 30 models. Even the Block 10s that the 72nd Fighter Squadron had were not bad even though the Pratt Whitney F-100 engine was a pain with all of its chip detectors and BUC Backup Engine Control.

So overall there is no comparison of ease of maintenance between the F-16 or the Mig 29 or the Mirage. The F-16 wins hands down.

I've got HILL AFB on the brain. In my previous post I said the 56th was transitioning to HILL. I went to Hill but the 56th went to LUKE AFB AZ.

I wouldn't call a MEC an LRU I would rather change an engine than a MEC on the aircraft . It is faster to change the engine.

Rigo

Quote:

I wouldn't call a MEC an LRUI would rather change an engine than a MEC on the aircraft . It is faster to change the engine.

I fully AGREE!!!

BALAM wrote:

hi, i´m new in this page; you can say to me if is real the roumor that mexico will bought 12 f-16?;

Just a rumor...been around for years. They still have a nice squadron of F-5s Very Happy

Another issue to be mentioned is the ease of supply. Almost all of the large mechanical parts like brakes,some flight control actuators, flaperons etc. can be installed on either side.

I'm not up to speed on the new block numbers but on the earlier blocks that is why the static dischargers on the flaperons were on the top of the trailing edge on one side and the bottom of the other.

As a prior F-4 mech I can say that the '-16 was made for maintenance. An F-4 engine change could easily take 2 weeks (if you had engine bay write-ups). Sometimes the supply warehouse would be full of left main landing gears and you would need a right. And when I heard that you had to take the canopy off a '-16 to get the seat out I couldn't believe it. Taking a canopy off of an F-4 would guarantee you some down-time in the hangar (while in the mean time your bird invariably became the 'cann bird).

So yes, I am in complete agreement with Rigo, Dave and Rocki.... the F-16 is very easy to maintain.

check six
stik

I don't see Mexico getting F-16s for two reasons - one, because their economy won't permit it (at this time) and two, they have no real threat to defend against.

Isn't W Germany getting rid of its MiG-29s because of maintainability problems? The story I heard is that getting spares or replacement parts out of the former Soviet Republic is too unreliable.

I have had the opportunity to crawl all over the MiG-29A and UB and my layman impression was that of a piece of farm equipment. Panels looked like they had been hammered out by hand, external hinges on the control surfaces, visible cloth patterns in the fiberglas radome, but built extremely ruggedly - like a farm tractor.

Not being a maintenance troop but having been around the environment a lot, The Mirage 2000 isn't that bad (FBW and modern avionics)... the other thing about that jet though is I don't think most Mirage 2000 users have the "kind" of flying hours that lets say a USAF F-16 unit does. ( always hanging lots of stuff from the F-16 ) Also being a completely different kind of wing, I don't know what kind of wing related issues ( if any ) you have with the Mirage 2000.

MiG-29. At least for the Germans when they got theirs, they were lucky that some of the maintainers had F-4 experience ( as an F-4 crew chief once told me: "The F-4 told you whether you had what it takes to be a maintainer ". The MiG-29 is ahead of lets say the MiG-23/27 family and far ahead of a MiG-21 ( pull the whole body (aft of the wings) off the jet to change an engine ) and MiG-21 avionics were not meant to be worked on at the flightline/shop level the way we do. ( if you really want to compare the F-104 to the MiG-21, compare how they are maintained Very Happy

) Other than that it would be nice for a German crew chief to comment more on the MiG-29, Most of the bad stuff I have read about it with ( non-German users) customers was poor supply chain management issues and quality of spares. And remember, the Germans had to "de tune" their engines once they got them from the ex-East-German AF. Poor engine life.

What I hate about comparisons like these are most of our mission up rates are public as are some on the Mirage2000. What is hard to find are public mission up times on MiG-29 users.

habu2 wrote:

I don't see Mexico getting F-16s for two reasons - one, because their economy won't permit it (at this time) and two, they have no real threat to defend against.

Isn't W Germany getting rid of its MiG-29s because of maintainability problems? The story I heard is that getting spares or replacement parts out of the former Soviet Republic is too unreliable.

I have had the opportunity to crawl all over the MiG-29A and UB and my layman impression was that of a piece of farm equipment. Panels looked like they had been hammered out by hand, external hinges on the control surfaces, visible cloth patterns in the fiberglas radome, but built extremely ruggedly - like a farm tractor.

No, Mexico has no real threat, but they do use their F-5 to good effect to counter revolts and battling the drug trade. Maybe they could use a few Vipers, but for what? It would mostly be for show. Trust me, as a Mexican citizen, i'd love to see the FAM triangle on a Viper, but that's probably just never going to happen. Their F-5s are doing a damn good job as it is, and they'll be around for a while.

As far as the MiG is concerned, juts like you said dude, it's built like a farm tractor. But that's the Soviet design philosophy. It is and always has been that way. Big, robust, heavy, almost indestructable. They really weren't designing them to look pretty, although the Fulcrum is a sexy looking fighter. But so much so that they put mudguards on a 4th generation fighter??!!?? But yet, it's part of the design philosophy. So I wouldn't look at ugly panels as a fashion faux pas, as much as it's good exectutuion of the intended design.

Habu, I agree. I didn't mean the tractor analogy to be a slam, just a comparison. Part of that Soviet design philosophy included the ability to operate from undeveloped or damaged runways, even operating from open fields. The rugged construction, mud guards and FOD screens were all part of that. They didn't build them any nicer than they needed to be to do the job.

Well, those mudguards do help the MiG-29 qualify as having rough field capability... but as you said, who the hell is gonna put front-line fighters and a mud airfield?

And I would argue that the Soviet design technology is based rather on cheapness and ease of maintenance (even though their planes contradict that). See, the Soviet Army was a conscript army. They tok the troops for 2-3 years and then they let them go. Under these circumstances you had to make stuff easier to maintain, coz otherwise it would take the troops ages to get back into it when they were mobilized. But of course, their planes contradict this... and since we're talking about the USSR, it's not all that surprisisng IMO.

And yeah, getting the right, good quality parts was a real bitch. Back in the 80s Romanian Air Force MiG-23s were falling like flies coz of poor spare parts and fuel. We've only got 3 left and we used to have squadrons of the things...

Forum: F-16 Procedures

F-16 - Ease of maintenance