There are no carrier-based VG aircraft now, Ken. The F111 at least made full
use of each part of its wing sweep range. The Tornado could easily have done
with 45deg; it got so little extra lift from 25deg, and 67/63 was just useless
(and more difficult to fly with. My mid-life update for that aircraft would
have included removal of the hinge, the extra hydraulic power, the Krueger
flaps (reduced the stall speed by 1.5kts) and the intake ramps.
I remember discovering that I needed to fiddle with the wing sweep to cruise in
a heavy training fit (tanks and practice bomb carriers): at certain altitudes
if you flew too slowly in 25 wing you felt the stall buffet, if you flew too
fast you felt the Mach buffet so you had to move the wings to give you a decent
margin between the two, but the only sweep that would work for those altitudes
and speeds was 33 wing, and that wasn’t cleared for use (!).
Chris
> On 16 Dec 2016, at 22:26, Ken Norton <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> It felt cool using the wing sweep, but it was a dreadful waste, as I ranted
>> earlier: you see no variable-geometry wing forms these days.
>
> When you compare it to the wing designs of contemporary aircraft from
> the same era, I think they got a lot out of the swing wings. The F15,
> as well as the F16, had fixed wing designs but were never compromised
> by the need to be carrier based or given the never-used requirement of
> operating from a 2500' stretch of gravel road.
>
> The F111 was a maintenance beast, but I think the swing mechanism
> itself was actually one of the better built parts. I'm not so sure
> about the escape pod design and the side-by-side seating, but it all
> worked, I guess.
--
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