Full tour through a General Dynamics F-111 - the Flying Pig.

hello and behind me is an r double af and x usaf general dynamic f-111 this is an iconic aircraft that introduced a whole range of new technology and in this video i'm going to take you on a tour of it first we're going to walk around the outside and then finish up on the cockpit so let's go and check it out i make videos about planes and one train if you enjoy watching trip reports on board aircraft and tours around significant planes in museums then make sure you check out my channel subscribe click the notification bell and find me on instagram and facebook let's start with the big nose this is where the terrain following radar lives this technology allowed it to fly very low and automatically maintain a relative constant altitude above ground level and therefore make detection by an enemy radar more difficult in fact there's a story of an iraqi jet that found one of these during the gulf war and the f-111 which otherwise had no air-to-air defenses just went down low to the ground using tfr dramatically rising up and down with the terrain the iraqi jet went down as well but it wasn't used to flying so low and accidentally hit the ground giving the tfr its first kill this long nose is what gave the aircraft the aardvark nickname which is afrikaans for earth pig which had a long snout which was always down in the dirt the aussies just called it the pig now instead of a traditional ejection seat this had an ejection pod where the whole part would fire up and out together this was a request from the navy who thought the pod could be used as a life raft over water and that it would protect the crew from the supersonic winds but in the end the navy pulled out on the aircraft and bought the tomcat instead now let's look at the air intake this is a splitter plate which directs the turbulent air running along the side of the aircraft away from the inlet so that's only the smooth air entering the engine air breathing jet engines require subsonic airflow so if you're flying at supersonic speeds the incoming air needs to slow down this inlet cone causes a number of shock waves sloping rearwards and across the inlet and these waves slow the incoming air as they're passed through them underneath is the pave attack weapons guidance system the beam extends down a little and includes an infrared sensor laser and an optical camera i'll explain more in the cockpit but essentially the jet can drop a guided bomb and then turn away while this keeps an eye on the target which can be viewed from the cockpit and fires a laser at it to ensure the bombs hits it now this has a really sturdy undercarriage because this was initially designed to land on carriers as i said before the navy were initially going to buy it now this variable geometry wing was an incredible piece of engineering at low speed it would extend forward creating lift but at high speed it will be swept back as you can see with this one are forming effectively a delta wing which was ideal at supersonic speed but pretty poor at low speed while the flexible wing layout is ideal it obviously adds a lot of complexity and weight in these models you can see the two different settings but because the wing would sweep the attachments would also need to rotate so that they were facing forwards this pylon allows for that rotation during flight and then the auxiliary fuel tank such as a massive one that you can see here would attach underneath it weapons could also be attached to it and these circles here on the wing are where the circular pollens would attach there were no on-board cannons although it could carry sidewinder air-to-air missiles otherwise it was capable of carrying four harpoon anti-ship missiles traditional or laser guided bombs and glide bombs we'll head back towards the outlets for the two pratt and whitney tf 30-p-103 turbo fans capable of producing 18 000 pounds of thrust each and propelling it to a top speed of mach 2.5 and a service ceiling of 66 000 feet here's the feathers and the variable nozzle which allows the pilot to adjust the diameter of the outflow think of it like putting your finger partially over a hose and the more you cover the higher the pressure of the water streaming into your face this here is the fuel dump valve and when the afterburners were lit the fuel is ignited and fires a massive flame out behind in fact there's fantastic footage on youtube of this display at a number of air shows slightly lateral to the outlets are these pods which include the ecm antenna and radars ecm stands for electronic counter measures and is the main defensive system against radar and enemy missiles essentially it releases a huge amount of radio waves so that the enemy radars are either confused thinking the aircraft is in another location or it's bombarded with so many waves that it can't make sense of anything i'll mention more about this in my b-52 video now this aircraft first flew with the usaf and flew 44 combat missions in vietnam in fact it flew the last official f-111 bombing mission in the whole war and then went into storage and was purchased by the rwf in 1982 and flew until september 2010 now it's time to get inside the cockpit which you'll see was quite a struggle for my uncoordinated 180 centimeter frame these levers here are the engine throttles which you can see are also in the center so the weapons control officer could also adjust them it's a pretty special feeling sitting in a real jet and pushing these forward next to that is the nuclear consent button the rwaf never flew nukes but remember that this was a usaf jet first so that explains why they're there and thankfully we're never used in anger that's the landing gear which as always looks a bit like an actual landing gear in front you've got the usual instruments showing the speed altitude horizon etc although this one displays the wings angle between 20 and 70 degrees directly in front here is the heads up display this large circular screen is the terrain following radar there were three settings hard soft and medium which controls how closely and harshly it would maintain the set altitude it was in the harshest and lowest setting in iraq where the pursuing jet accidentally crashed into the ground these yellow levers activate the whole ejection pod and above those other levers that open the parachute and the underside airbags which would soften the landing if they don't already automatically open at 15 000 feet which they're designed to do in fact the crew don't have much to do other than sit back enjoy the ride and get their stories straight interestingly the joystick could also act as a bilge pump if water got into the pod this device is the targeting site for the weapons officer via the pave tack pod underneath they can watch the target and direct a laser towards it via remote control on the right hand side to the pilots left is a coffee iron which i suspect after a few hours in the sky may have had some other liquids in it that certainly weren't apple juice now this simple looking device selects the wing sweep you could push it forward to move the wings forward and pull it back to swoop them back these two are lockouts to stop the pilot accidentally sweeping the wings too far back if there were certain stores and pylons attached to the wings and here i am gracefully exiting the aircraft minus my left leg that brings to an end to this tour of the f-111 here at the darwin aviation museum this fascinating aircraft continued to serve the rwf until 2010 when it was effectively replaced by the fi-18 super hornets it was meant to continue flying a little longer although it was just so expensive to maintain in fact for every one hour in flight there were 180 hours of maintenance according to a stat i read online so it must be true i've got more detailed tours from the aircraft here and many others around the world so please check out my channel for those thanks for watching please give the video a thumbs up subscribe etc and i'll see you another time

Channel: Paul Stewart

Views: 214,806

Keywords: RAAF, royal australian airforce, f-111, f111, raaf f111, aviation, aircraft, darwin aviation museum, airplane, planes, vehicle, general dynamics, general dynamic f111, plane museum, aviation museum, aviation tour

Id: CTb8JYWyBe4

Length: 8min 41sec (521 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021