Test support Viper 83-00172

[Red Dot]

Jumping on the back of Sven's fantastic Edwards posts, here's a picture of one F-16 from the Edwards AFB show in October 1996 complete with nose wheel door art. Being a modeller, i had to risk death to step over the rope to get the picture :-). I always knew it would come in handy some day, but not 22 years later!

 

Perhaps Sven has a story behind this airframe??

 

Andy

 

 

 

 

[Old Viper Tester]

On 6/23/2018 at 8:09 AM, Red Dot said:

Perhaps Sven has a story behind this airframe??

 

Not much to say about this jet. 83-1172 arrived at Edwards in late 1989/early 1990. She was one of the last F-16B jets.  Here's '172 on the 6516th ramp in September 1990.

 

In 1989, the Flight Test Center was beginning to retire the F-4s and F-16A/Bs were trickling in to replace them in the test support and Test Pilot School roles.

 

'172 on the Test Ops ramp in October 1991. The M61 cannon has been replaced by a data acquisition system, evidenced by the orange sheet metal patch over the aft gun bay vents. This would have been in preparation for her to become a Test Pilot School curriculum aircraft

 

TPS airframes were also used for test support when not being used by TPS. (TPS student flying sessions were usually in the mornings and classroom sessions were in the afternoon.)

 

By the time I left Edwards at the end of 1992. '172 may have gone to the Bozo scheme, but I didn't get any photos of her in white. Interestingly, there are images of her from around 2000/01  where she is all white with no red conspicuity markings.

 

As your images, and the Hasegawa 1/72 "AFFTC" issue confirm, she became a TPS bird and I'm thinking by the nose art reference that she was a dedicated Flying Qualities curriculum jet. The shake, rattle, and roll legend is reference to the maneuvers used to evaluate airframe response to various control inputs and store loadings. When I went through TPS, my flying qualities airframe was the RF-4C. I'd swear we held the record for 360-deg rolls in a single mission! There I go waxing sentimental about Rhinos again...

 

Sven

[Red Dot]

i knew you'd know something about it. Nice one Sven

 

Andy

[72modeler]

23 hours ago, Old Viper Tester said:

There I go waxing sentimental about Rhinos again...

That's perfectly OK, speaking for the rest of us who have never had the pleasure of flying one! BTW, thank you for your service, sir!

Mike

[F-32]

Lovely pics, it's always been one of my favourite F-16 schemes

[modelling minion]

Nice pics Andy and good info Sven.

Thanks to both of you for sharing.

Any more pics coming soon Andy?

[Red Dot]

Lots more pics, but the coming soon bit is the issue!

 

andy