wrote:
Flying the F104A with the aging J79-3b engine we practiced
'precautionary patterns' a lot because we still had problems with the
oil system. On a nice VFR day with winds not a problem, you started
....
runway. They were a lot of fun when you were practicing, somewhat more
serious when you'd been sweating engine failure on the way back over
the field and on down the slide, waiting for that tell-tale engine
vibration that would tell you the bearings were starting to fail. Walt
BJ

Wow, once you were on deck and started breathing again, I bet the
first beer tasted pretty damn good.

Were these the ones with the downward ejection seats?

Also, did the -1 have anything about engine life expectancy without
oil? Some NATOPS manuals will have a note about things like that, ie
a gearbox being designed to last x number of minutes with no oil. My
opinion is notes like that _should_ read something like "a brand
spanking new example of this piece of equipment was successfully run,
without oil, in a lab, for x number of minutes. Your mileage may vary."