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Elite Joined: Oct 30, 2006 Posts: 627 Status: Offline

We used to drop heavies (2500 lbs {fuel}wing tank) off the F-111 all the time; I know the J-4 jammer will support the weight, but will the Viper? With one heavy left on the wing while the other comes off?

I never knew the Viper would tip wing to nose until I saw the video of the B-1 blowing her over.

Thoughts?

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Veteran Joined: May 23, 2005 Posts: 444 Status: Offline

Attaching a dry 370 to just one wing at a time should be no problem. They don't weigh a whole lot dry and they are drained before attaching or detaching. I'm not sure what the warnings and notes are in the TO for this are though.

Veteran Joined: Mar 24, 2007 Posts: 379 Status: Offline

I am not familiar with a J-4 jammer, so I can't answer your question directly, but there is a more severe case of left/right unbalance which is cleared. In FSD flight test (1977-78) one of the test conditions was to takeoff with 2 GBU-8s (sta 3/7) and drop one on the range, then land with the other still aboard. That is 2200 lb x 120 inches roll moment, quite a bit more than a full 370 (2800 lb) x 80 inches.

The landing was uneventful, and the pilot reported no particular problems, noting roll and yaw trim was required. Taxi back was "interesting" as turning into the heavy store was fine, but turning away from the store almost tipped the airplane over, similar the B-1 blow over incident. After the first "interesting" turn the pilot easily compensated by slowing more and using wider turns. He also commented than in a stiff crosswind landing, it might be possible to run out of aileron power if the wind was from the right and the store was on the left, so it would be best to keep the store on the windy side.

Back to your question, the Viper should have no problem landing with one tank. It goes without saying (I hope) that hard maneuvering at lower airspeeds may be hazardous and should be avoided.

A full F-111 tank is considerably heavier than 2500 lb, since it has 600 gal of fuel in it, about 4300 lb. including the tank.

Another interesting thing is that every time tanks are punched off, the Viper flies with one tank still in place, but for only a very short time, less than half a second. The tanks do not go simultaneously, to prevent tank collisions under the airplane. The tanks tend to move inboard after separation and could collide if dropped at the same
time.

Edited-
After reading Raptor_DCTR's post, maybe I did not understand the question correctly. I thought you were talking about in-flight dropping. Sorry.

Hell yes you can as long as the Jammer can handle the weight of the tank. What's the question here? No problem as far as the weight off one wing for the viper...crap what's the question here? It's not take-off config but....

Alot of times if we have one bad wing tank we lock out the other wing tank and defuel what we need to drop it. It wont tip over or anything.

Elite Joined: Jul 11, 2007 Posts: 666 Status: Offline

J-4 will handle 8000 lbs.

Elite Joined: Mar 26, 2004 Posts: 656 Status: Offline

It was a dark and stormy NATO TACEVAL and the bus scheduled for NATO sprung a leak. "We" dropped the full tank with a jammer. Popped it on the fuel pit to drain. When and got a full tank off of the spare and loaded that bad boy up.

definitely a NOT RECOMMENDED PROCEEDURE

One question...how did you do the leak and XFER?

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Can you drop a “heavy” 370 off the Viper with a J-4?