Forum: F-16 Design & Construction

Quote:

The actual canopy plastic is almost 5-6 inches thick.

Sorry Rigo but the canopy is no where near 5-6 inches thick. Its closer to 1" thick but it is thicker in some places more than others.

They had problems with the gold tinted canopies in the past. The ground was breaking down from the canopy to the frame and the gold was acting like a capacitor. Eventually it was "filing up" and it would discharge....usually into the pilot while he flew.

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I was gonna say... 5-6? Maybe... maybe... 1"

The canopy piece I saw was from a wrecked bird it was well over 1" thick.

As for the electrical discharge, ALL canopies behave this way since most are made of plastic nowadays. It has mainly to do with the fact that the canopy is causing friction as it moves through the air. A-7's were notorious for electrical disharge. The gold lining really has nothing to do with it .

Rigo

While the canopy thickness is approx 1" (don't have the exact number right here) think about how much material a pilot looks through when looking out the front of the airplane. If you take that 1" thick piece of canopy and lay it back at a 15 degree angle you would be looking through almost 4" of material.

habu2 wrote:

While the canopy thickness is approx 1" (don't have the exact number right here) think about how much material a pilot looks through when looking out the front of the airplane. If you take that 1" thick piece of canopy and lay it back at a 15 degree angle you would be looking through almost 4" of material.

15 degrees?
I think not!
Just did it in AutoCAD...

1" thick material @ 15 degs.=1 1/16" (approx.)
@ 30degs=1 1/8"
@ 50=1 9/16"
@ 70=2 15/16"
@ 80=5 3/4"

But I bet there's areas of the canopy where your line of sight is about 80 degrees. Wink

Just a comment on the cleaning aspect.... It was very tough to completely get them clean. We were only allowed to use water (on the inside) and that tended to streak if you didn't clean them in the morning before they heated up.
stik

Habu, I was thinking 15 deg from horizontal line-of sight, which would be your 75 deg from vertical. Same thing, same "slant range" Smile

Oh haha....well that works then.

When I was at Misawa in the 14th the OG bird 801 actually had a canopy that had static discharge strips like on the radome but they were only a few inches long. They were mounted in the 10 and 2 o'clock postion on the canopy. I never asked to find out how well it worked. I haven't seen it since either so I'm betting it didn't really make big difference.

I know the number I gave was too thick for the canopy, been working too many hours lately on this current phase bird so I was quite tired last night , sorry guys. I saw that canopy section back in '96.

Here is an interesting note though: At Kunsan in 2001 we had one go down at night doing some ACM training, sadly the pilot ejected into the ground. The canopy survived that impact though with only a crack in it .

Rigo

On the cover of KokuFan Special #70 there is a photo of one of the Nellis aggressor birds during refueling. Youcan see small "strips" at the front of the canopy and a longer one along the top at the rear. I always wondered what those were as I've never seen them on any other canopy. If I can I'll scan and post the pic.

Wow we are really dragging out some knowledge from the people that know. Interesting stuff for sure. Crew Chiefs / Maintainers Rule !! Cool

Scan the pic GD! I love aggressors. Very Happy

Quote:

Here is an interesting note though: At Kunsan in 2001 we had one go down at night doing some ACM training, sadly the pilot ejected into the ground. The canopy survived that impact though with only a crack in it .

Riga - that doesn't surprise me too much. Low alt ejections often are fatal unfortunately. The canopy surviving doesn't surprise me either. The F/A-22 canopy is quite a bit stronger than the F-16 one, and I have photos of several after sled test ejections. I was told that the only one that shattered hit the hard surface of an access road near the test track.

Kevin
The Ejection Site

Forum Veteran Joined: Nov 07, 2003 - 09:12 PM Posts: 901

Quote:

So the gold coating would in effect reduce the Radar Cross Section - are there any data available by how much ?

Hi Stefaan, Habu2,

Well, I guess the data has gone public. Have Glass is the code name of the tinted canopy program. And this site says 15%:

danshistory.com wrote:

Have Glass is the code name for a series of RCS reduction measures for the F-16 fighter. Its primary aspect is the addition of an indium-tin-oxide layer to the gold tinted cockpit canopy. This is reflective to radar frequencies, while it may seem odd, adding a radar reflective coating actually reduces the plane's visibility to radar. An ordinary canopy would let radar signals straight through where they would strike the many edges and corners inside and bounce back strongly to the source, the reflective layer dissipates these signals instead. Overall, Have Glass reduces an F-16's RCS (radar-cross section) by some 15 percent.

Pumpkin

The AMA/ACMIU probes discussion has been moved to a dedicated topic: <a href="f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-281.html">F-16 AMA/ACMI probes</A>

stefaan

Forum: F-16 Design & Construction

Golden canopy