"Iain Rae" wrote in message
...
Keith W wrote:
"Iain Rae" wrote in message
. uk...
Brian Sharrock wrote:

Why restrict a reinforcement to (Tornado)F3's?

I'm not, but without doing the sums I'm guessing they could get there
quickest and there would already be supplies and technicians there to
service them.

I don't know if they have weapons or spares chached for the GR4 or
Jaguar but I'd have thought they'd have based a flight of them there if
there was.


Jaguar is being phased out of service but there is considerable
commonality
between Tornado GR4 an F3, I doubt technical problems or spares would
be a problem.

The avionic suites are considerably different, they use different versions
of the RB199* and the F3's fuselage is about a meter and a half longer
than the GR4's. The only common armament is the mauser cannon(s) and
ALARM. I'd have thought that there's enough of a difference to make the
ground crew's lives interesting at the best of times.

Anybody (airframes/engines/instruments/avionics) know what the current
training course(s) content is/are for groundcrew tasked to stations
supporting these aircraft?
Is it a fair 'thought' that the fitters are so narrowly trained that they
can only work on a particular airframe and are confined to discrete Mark(s)?
Is it still the case that a RAF Fitter will be 'concept' trained and
expected to follow the APs and schedules dictated by the F720's? {not to
mention the over-arching F700).
Now, I'm not saying that it wouldn't make store-bashers 'life interesting at
the best of times'.

"they use different versions of the RB199* " . What is the parts
commonality of these different versions? IIRC, a design criteria was to
minimize the number of different parts utilised between different versions?

--

Brian