New Contest! What Did I Just Volunteer For?

Great contest Congrats WpgLwr

When I called the Foundation, they first thought I was interested in flying the airplane as a paying customer. The quoted me a $12,500 price tag for a 2 day program. The first day was classroom learning aircraft systems and emergency procedures and the second day you fly for around an hour.

The Collings Foundation has a cool web site that talks all about what they do: CollingsFoundation.org.

They're into a lot of neat things, including a few WWII bombers and old cars.

Thank you all for the fun contest! Your many guesses were imaginative at times, for sure!

Now, we need a new contest to keep us all from being bored! Next?

And just FYI for all:

The 4 pictures posted are all the same Collings Foundation F-4D. The bottom one was when Steve Ritchie flew it. Steve Ritchie was the only pilot ace of the Vietnam war with 5 MiG kills. To mark the occasion of his flight, the Foundation painted the jet to look like the one he flew in Vietnam with the correct "Triple Nickel" (555th Fighter Squadron) colors and markings. Note the 5 MiG kill stars on the left engine intake splitter plate. How cool is that?!

Oh, wow...I just found out I won!

And yes, Moe, I have my fingers crossed that you'll be successful in your application. The F-4 Phantom II is one heck of a nice plane; I remember seeing the Blue Angels flying them back in the early '70s at the Abbotsford Air Show outside of Vancouver, BC, where we lived then, and as a result, was one of the first model airplanes I remember building.

From what I have read they were very manoeuvrable in flight and it wasn't for nothing that they were nicknamed "The World's Leading Distributor of MiG Parts".

PM follows with contact information.

That's the toal number of F-4s McDonnell-Douglas made.

(If you google "5,195" with 'Airshow", the 4th listing is for the
F-4 Phantom).

Another cool Phantom picture!

Nod2003 wrote:




Normally, in the regular "go to war" configuration of the F-4C/D/E and the RF-4C, the front seater is a pilot and the backseater is a WSO, (Weapon Systems Officer), a qualified USAF navigator. The USAF also had F-4G Wild Weasels, the SEAD, Suppression of Enemy Defenses, jet that had a qualified EWO, Electronic Weapons Officer. The weasel jet detected, jammed (electonically) and shot Anti-Radiation missiles (ARMs) at Surface to Air missile (SAM) ground stations of the enemy.


AND, it gets a little confusing since in the beginning of the Vietnam War, the USAF flew with two pilots in the jet with the rearseater being the PSO (yeah, you guessed it, the Pilot Systems Officer).

And during training of the new pilot, the instructor pilot (IP) flies in the rear seat and is qualified to takeoff, land and air refuel from the rear seat.

There is a full set of stick and throttles in the rear cockpit (in Air Force jets). The Navy F-4s did not have flight controls in the rear cockpit.

So, a short answer to your question, the pilot flies in the front seat.

Received 'em today. Thanks, Moe!