For aircraft enthusiasts (F-111 open cockpit)

[StephenM]

Hi all,

The family and I spent the morning at Caloundra for the Queensland Air Museum's "Open Cockpit" weekend, featuring their newly-acquired General Dynamics F-111C (A8-129). This aircraft first flew in August 1968, and had its final flight on December 3rd 2010. This was a great opportunity to spend a few minutes in the cockpit of such a fantastic-looking machine!

The first image is me "behind the wheel", the next two are details of the cockpit, and the last ones are the front and rear view. All taken using my Tokina 11-16mm ultra wide angle lens.

Cheers,
Stephen

[omegacrux]

Cool plane
Was at Williamstown AFB recently, They acquired one , very nice up close .
Shame the canopy was closed
Nice little museum , and can watch the F18's take off and land , I had a fun day

David

[Dennis]

Nice shots Stephen!:)

Brings back many memories of working on these superb jets when I worked out at Amberley.

Note the thermos flask behind your left shoulder in #1 and the “dump and burn” mast, (the nozzle at the bottom of the figure of 8 structure between the exhausts in the last shot) from where the fuel used to be dumped and burned for the River Fire events.

Cheers

Dennis

[andrew2008]

Very different to todays fighter cockpits. Would like to get up there and havea look at it myself one day.

[StephenM]

Thanks David! That would be good to see the F18s coming and going.



Thanks Dennis! I thought that must have been the dump and burn mast between the exhausts..

What aspect of the F-111s were you working on at Amberley? Must have been an great thing to be involved with!



Thanks Andrew! I'm sure they are different to the modern cockpits of today, but it was also interesting seeing how complex the F-111 cockpit was compared to older ones on display yesterday such as the Hawker Hunter and P-51 Mustang.

Cheers,
Stephen

[Dennis]

Hi Stephen

I was there for approx. 6 years working in the software development team. We had a genuine, full sized functional crew module located in the Systems Engineering Laboratory in which we used to spend many hours and days testing and integrating the software before running formal qualification testing.

They were exciting times!:)

Cheers

Dennis