viper1234 wrote:I'm curious if you remember its theoretical top end at high altitude. I'm sure the low altitude limits remained unchanged since the canopy and inlet appeared unchanged. I would be surprised if actual top end was much higher (in practice) than the current Vipers due to the poor high altitude performance of the inlet/engine.
Can you remember any Air-Air missile testing from the inner stations? It sure looks like there was a potential for substantial interference issues (missile exhaust to engine) from those positions assuming they were rails rather than ejectors (which I assume based on bomb clearance)
Cheers
I don't know of any work done to determine the max speed/altitude capability. 810 kcas/2.0 mach was the structural design limit. The airplane exceeded 2.0 at 50k and had more available. The powers that be were correctly reluctant to go much beyond what could be supported by analysis, even though everyone wanted to see what it could really do.
There was no missile launch work done from the inner stations. I have mentioned on another thread, those missiles were complete dummys, bolted in place with no launchers installed. A production XL would have had ejector launchers.
The aft missiles inadvertantly led to an inflight structural failure of the left speedbrake. The missile was mounted directly in front of the lower speedbrake panel. What no one realized was the missile blocked airflow on that panel. The speedbrake mount is designed for a maximum 60/40 distribution of load between the upper and lower panels. Wih the lower panel blocked, that ratio was more like 80/20 and the mount failed at 1.6/30k when the speedbrake was extended. That knocked out one hydraulic system too, so the airplane landed safely on one system.
geogen wrote:I'd be further curious: what performance enhancements, e.g., improved sustained G and acceleration, could be estimated from say a GE-132 power upgrade? If any at all? Perhaps they would have had to put a 'max speed limiter' on it at half-throttle though?
Sustained g can only be improved two ways, less drag or more thrust. So going to a higher thrust engine , whether GE or PW, would benefit sustained g.