RE: Panavia Tornado F3: Spotted
Discussion
OP said:
the Tornado F3 could also reach a top speed of Mach 2.2 (1,490 mph) and an altitude of up to 50,000ft.
The Tornado was one of the fastest things with wings at low level (what it was designed for) but was spectacularly bad at high level, unless clean, and even needed to employ reheat when engaged in air-air refuelling with Victor/VickyTen's at high altitude....
It also guzzled fuel at a terrific rate at altitude as well, which meant, trying to get one to FL50 when clean even after topping up from a tanker meant you really didn't have enough fuel to hope to get to M2.2.....
I have talked to one ex.F.3 pilot that claimed to have seen M1.8 at FL43...once........ and he reckoned that was an achievement.....
Jarama s said:
The Mig 23 Flogger also for sale on here is much cooler !
There's something I find irresistibly cool about swing-wing fast jets. They kinda defined a specific, short lived time in development before strake wings became favoured.Or maybe it's just childhood memories of Topgun...
aeropilot said:
OP said:
the Tornado F3 could also reach a top speed of Mach 2.2 (1,490 mph) and an altitude of up to 50,000ft.
The Tornado was one of the fastest things with wings at low level (what it was designed for) but was spectacularly bad at high level, unless clean, and even needed to employ reheat when engaged in air-air refuelling with Victor/VickyTen's at high altitude....
It also guzzled fuel at a terrific rate at altitude as well, which meant, trying to get one to FL50 when clean even after topping up from a tanker meant you really didn't have enough fuel to hope to get to M2.2.....
I have talked to one ex.F.3 pilot that claimed to have seen M1.8 at FL43...once........ and he reckoned that was an achievement.....
BOBTEE said:
The tape player was for the sat nav! The mission would be plotted on the ground via computer and then downloaded on to a TDK90, then popped in the jet and fed in to the on board computers
Really? When we programmed then at Boscombe we had ruggedised strorage units that plugged in and transferred the software, Ada I seem to remember.The Harriers had the same, but they were machine code
Mind you, that was 25 years ago...
GIYess said:
comments are comedy gold. 
Love it. I'm sitting here thinking about where in my yard it could sit! Imagine the kids faces when the lorry rolled up with that on the back!
I know of a big petrolhead (owned the first Ford RS200 sold to the public) that has a Lightning F.6 in his back garden Love it. I'm sitting here thinking about where in my yard it could sit! Imagine the kids faces when the lorry rolled up with that on the back!
ElectricPics said:
It's an F3 which is the interceptor variant so the drop tanks were generally only used for ferrying, but they could still carry four Skyflash and two Sidewinder missiles.
4x AMRAAM or Skyflash under fuselage, 4x ASRAAM or ‘winders under wing. At the same time you could carry 2x drop tanks (large or small) and also a towed radar decoy/chaff pod on the outer stubs.And it could do Mach 2+, I have done it (Falklands, dedicated tanker)...
Edited by frodo_monkey on Tuesday 22 May 17:28
I used to work on the GR1 version of these, the ground runs were of particular note especialy when you went to Max reheat or even into Combat and the front dived down so you were looking out at the concrete. Moving the wings was also interesting. One thing I wasn't too keen on though was the seat adjustment, it was a rocker switch on the right side of the cockpit. Just the idea of sitting on a live ejector seat that is moving up, even very slowly felt wierd!
V41LEY said:
LotusOmega375D said:
What happened if it chewed the tape up?
Old tech secure against electronic attack ?You can see the tape player here. Didnt one of the iron eagle films show a pilot replacing their non-tornado version with an 80s rock music casette??
Anyhow, the F3 is my favourite aircraft. Yes, I even prefer it to the spitfire. No reason, no logic. I love how it looks and when I was a boy the only thing I wanted to do when I grew up was th fly in one. I am but one small lottery win away from owning this...
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