The tail did not receive damage on the high speed taxi test/first flt.. The static discharger on the right side scraped the ground and the wheel on the rear of the missile on the right wing was also scraped. I was there and inspected the aircraft when it was put back in the hangar. The aircraft flew only 6 minutes or so this day.The first flt was accomplished days later. G.D flew first. The YF17 flew later.

I was on duty the day Neil flew the prototype and had to bring it in between Carswell and General Dynamics. I was in the fire department tower when the red phone rang. An excited voice on the other end informed me the pilot had a problem with his landing gear. They wanted to know how long it would take for the fire department to foam the runway. I told him approximately 5 minutes. I guess that was too long, because Neil brought the F-16 in and landed it on its belly. It was truly amazing. I guess that said not only something about the aircraft, but the bravery of Neil as well.

Also, if you take a look, the shield under the wing is for the 20th FW, not the 57th Wing at Nellis.

Isn't it a 2.75" FFAR? The caption says 3.75".

The larger APG-65 radome was a mockup, the aircraft was never flown in this configuration.

This is 75-0747, FSD #3

This is 75-0747, FSD #3

That is not a mock-up, but the real thing. YF-16 No. 1 during manufacturing. They needed some publicity photos, so rolled the work platforms away.

Note the large horizontal tail installed on this FSD airplane and the camera installed under the tail leading edge. This was a test flight to measure store seperation loads on the MSER and weapon pylon. The MSER was never put into service as far as I know - too heavy, too much drag.

Note this FSD airplane has the larger horizonatl tail introduced on block 15. From looking at the shadows of the left wing there is no GBU-8 installed. This flight was apparently conducted to determine the effectiveness of the large tail for highly assymetric wing store loadings,

If you look closely at the nose tire....you can see that it is mounted backwards! Try changing that thing without bumping your head!

I helped park the aircraft that day, it was early 1978 and I was fresh out of the Airforce and was hired by General Dynamics as a hydro mech working on zoom 745 (FSD A1). The YF-16 had come back to Edwards AFB from Forth Worth for some flights and someone thought, what a great photo op, all the planes here at once. Every thing was going good until we realized that the left stab was removed from 745 ( This would not look good in the photo !) So with a large cardbord box, Broom stick, Duct tape, and a can of white spray paint problem solved! After the helocopter took off and took the photos it flew over the aircraft and blew my stab off the plane.But the now famous photo had all ready been taken. Stewart Maus F-16 Joint test team, Edwards AFB April 1978 to April1980

Notice, that the Sparrows are mounted on the Main Landing Gear doors

I am sure those sparrows were nowhere near their normal weight.

On stations 4 and 6, they tested the F-16 using MER's(multiple ejector racks which holds 6 500lb bombs)but did not go past testing.

This would have been a great paint scheme for F-16s that where stationed at European Air Bases in the 70s and 80s, at leat I think so.

This is a neat paint scheme, I wonder why the USAF didn't go for this one?

Great shot and just the image I needed when I go to paint my 1/48 scale model of the YF-16, however, the colors desribed here should be light blue/off-white; not light brown. That might look so due to the someones montor color being slightly off.

This is also the same aircraft that was fitted with a J-79 and the original Falcon Eye, it's commonly refered to as B-model #2

IMO, you're instead looking at two Mk.83 (GBU-16) or .84 (GBU-10) weapons with the earlier PI CCG (narrow chord, longspan, canards) but the unusually, the later PII (folding, narrow chord, fin) tail group. There is only one pod and it is actually an ATLIS-I or II (French 'AutoTeLepointeur Imaging System' or close) laser designator pod used, in conjunction with a helmet sight, to prove the utility of single pilot 'precision attack' as far back as 1978 I think it was. The idea was the pilot spotted a general (builtup) target area by eye and then used the helmet reticle to quickly slew the pod to this proximal bearing before refining the targeting cursors and magnification on the REO display (the YF-16 may have used other) before initiating laser designation and dropping his LGB. Designation was then maintained through impact via a 3-4G 'wheel' of turn around the target 'basket' periphery created by the ballistic requirements of the LGB. It worked, in daylight, but 'proved' only that LGB attacks were almost as vulnerable as conventional ones without a boosted weapon or secondary buddy designator to keep the engagement farther out from the target terminal defenses. The helmet fast-cue was excellent however. The other unique items are not pods but ejector-launch shoes, fitted to the main gear doors for testing of conformal AIM-7 Sparrow heavy AAM launch/carriage (close to the CL removes some assymetric handling and drag problems). There was also a dedicated midwing station (not the conventional 3/7) tested for raillaunch of same, neither being adopted for use.

Well, they can carry aim-120s on their wingtips, but i didnt know that they can fit the larger sparrow on them too...

Very interesting given the fact that production F-16s didn't have the radar package necessary to fire an AIM-7. It wasn't until the ADF mod that the F-16 could carry an AIM-7. I wonder what killed the idea of production F-16s carrying AIM-7s? It must have been a little bit of "Eagle" politics I imagine.

The Sparrow loadout was probably for demo purposes only to show how it might be configured, although the wingtip mounted Sparrow is interesting. Never thought the wingtip could take that big of a load in real-world flight conditions.

These are both YF-16s as evidenced by the nose shape and paint. The near YF-16 tail was changed from "YF-16" to "F-16" for the Paris Air Show. The black paint on the radome of FSD #1 (75-0745) wrapped around the tip whereas the YF-16s always came to a point on top.