Does anybody know where I can find information on the two pods that basically comprised the only payload that the sole N/AW-10 demonstrator ever carried. It'd be nice to think some resin manufacturer produced them, but I'm pretty much resigned to shaping plastic rod and adding details.

The two pods were carried on the two fuselage pylons. One carried the AAR-42 FLIR. The images I've seen make it look not unlike a slightly outsize Litening pod - cylindrical body with a ball on the front that's the rotatable seeker. I've done my Googling and other types *did* use it - mainly non-combat types in SAR or coastguard duties.

The other doesn't seem to have a name, all I know is that it carried a Westinghouse WX/50 radar. Googling seems to turn up almost nothing except pages that mention the N/AW-10 carried it. You can just make it out in some photos and it looks...well, poddy, like an anorexic fuel tank.

Any references to images or information that can help me get dimensions (and thus get scratchbuilding) most welcome.

Oh, and there are also references to the Pave Tack having been tested, presumably on another one of the many empty pylons. Anybody know which?

Finally, does anybody know if the N/AW-10 was ever flow fully "loaded up". It looks so sad with of those empty pylons.

Thanks,

Al

You're really not going to find anything worth while on the net. You might check out the Detail & Scale book, or other book references. Even so, not many reference pics on the pods are out there.

I've been researching this particular subject off and on for a couple of years now. We still have the jet on Display at Edwards. The problem is not much has been published on the N/AW A-10.

I do know a few people at the Edwards History office, as I plan to do some more research here in a few more weeks. I've pretty much looked through all the library photos, but nothing showed the AAR-42 or WX-50 Pods. Pretty much, this jet "rarely" full with ordinance, much less a full laod out of anything.

My plan is to write up a full article for Aerospace Modeler, correcting the 48th scale Hobby Boss kit.

I've pretty much checked all of the photo references sources that I can find - I've found one pic of the AAR-42 that I might be able to (with a lot of work) get some dimensions from by comparative measurement in the Warbirdtech and that gives a pretty good impression of the shape of the front end. I'm now pretty much working on finding info by looking up other types that carried the units. For example, the AN/AAR-42 was also tested with the A-7, although I can only find pics of A-7s carrying the AN/AAR-45. Others refer to tests on S-3, P-3 and on F-18s in conjunction with HARM testing (?) dating from around 1999. So there may be pics of that on any of those. Also saw something about one of the units (the radar I think) being fitted to the Grumman Hu-16 Albatross but if it's the radar, all there really is to go on is the size of that thimble on the nose.

The clearest image I've found is here:

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/gregorie.douard/Lesbombardiers8/Lesbombardiers8.html

This is also notable for the "What on earth is that thing below the front cockpit?" aspect.

With this pic (which I've just found) and the Warbirdtech pic, I think I could get the dimensions and overall shape of the pods close enough to be acceptable. The only info I've been able to find on the Westinghouse WX/50 is a lot of specs and the information that it was used by the F-16 FSD aircraft and in the TA-4J. Well, I guess that helps set a minimum pod diameter.

However, so many pics show it carrying nothing at all it might be easiest just to leave it that way - as the pic I link to above has the chopped fins, they may not have actually been deployed until later in the development program. It's also quite possible that the radar was arbitrarily podded in almost anything that had a wide enough diameter and a radar transparent nose.

Al

So what scale are you working with? If working in 48th, we should talk more on this

Yeah, not a lot to go on, but it's a start. I'll pull out the Warbord tech and take a look at it.
I just looked through my scanned phots and I have 2 pics with the pods loaded (one the same pic posted in the link), but they are not all that clear. The only other configuration was a pair of tanks on the inboard of the main gear sponsons.

What I need to do is take a day to go through all the files on the subject at the History office. There's got to be more information on the radar and FLIR pods. I'd like to make an update/correction set for the 48th scale kit.

There are some other areas that need to be addressed; like the HUD (totally different from the standard HUD), cockpit, and the "short" vertical tail extensions, which were last fitted to the N/AW A-10. You can probably make them out from the pic I posted.

Mike V

Yep, also working in 1/48th, be happy to share any info. Resources I have to hand (well, ones that might have N/WA-10 pics in them - obviously The Modern Hog Guide isn't a great source on this subject)...

Both Don Logan books.
Warbirdtech book
That little Kagero book (somewhere)

Uh, that's it I think. However, I've got a heap of Photoshop gizmos, including forensic software, so I can correct focus and adjust for motion blur, blow things up to ludicrous sizes, and remove or adjust perspective, making it a lot easier to get comparative measurements of sizes in relation to known features. Used it while under my armor-building alter-ego to help Russ at IMA in Hong Kong produce a COMRES-75 conversion for the Bronco Comet kit from only a handful of pics. Lots and lots of blow-ups, sharpening, refocussing, and perspective fixes gave him the information to actually make the conversion.

I'm not planning to go the whole Hawg on my kit - I'm leaving the tall fins, for example. Cockpit-wise, as far as I can tell most of the rear cockpit except for the main panel and HUD were the same, so the Eduard PE sets (plus an extra cockpit Zoom set) provides a good way of sprucing up the pits, as long as I can reproduce the rear main panel fairly well.

Something else I suspect will require changes, but haven't double-checked on photos yet, is the number of ALE-40 dispensers. I know the development aircraft didn't have them, but some things (like the ACES II seats replacing ESCAPACs) were retrofitted.

Well, whaddya know, one of the pics in the Don Logan book has something stuck on a wing pylon. Have to remind myself what a Pave Tack looks like :-)

Another avenue I'm taking is looking at/for pics of the early development aircraft, and other aircraft from that period that might have had the appropriate pods tested on them - Bronco, Mohawk, and so forth.

It's also occurred to me that the N/AW-10, when carrying the Pave Tack, basically replicated the functionality of the Tropic Moon chin on the B-57G. I know it's from a decade earlier, but it seems clear that the AN/AAR-42 was around as late as the end of the 90s, so it's not impossible it got hung under a B-57 at some point. I'm willing to be there are also a heap of classified projects that slung it in unexpected places but those, by their very nature, I don't expect to find much info on.

Oh, BTW, from Googling, there's very little on the WX/50. The info on other aircraft that used it all came from Japanese sites, almost the only other references wer on Eastern European sites listing what seemed to be a standard A-10 potted history. When you Google with Westinghouse and 50, you get a *lot* of very large refrigerators.

Cheers,

Al

The weird thing below the cockpit is - the wingtip. Trick of the light. However, if you follow a vertical line down from the rear edge of the stars and bars on the fuselage, you will notice a large round bump.

This, I believe is the Pave Tack ball. I'd forgotten that Pave Tack was rather large - it looks like they've just glommed the entire unit on the fuselage.

Mike, you said you'd already found this photo - was it in JPEG like the version I found, or in print? The better the quality of the source images that I have to work with, the more I can dig out of them. I have the capability to receive *very* large files, so something like a 48-bit TIFF at 1200dpi doesn't phase me. I plan to do this to all the relevant images I've got - you'd be amazed what you can pull out by mucking around with the exposure and assorted other filters.

I've also, just as a long shot, contacted a former colleague (I got laid off in January and find myself a defense-oriented systems engineer in a town that doesn't have any defense industry - stuck on the Island Of Misfit Systems Engineers, as it were) who used to fly S-3s and whose son is a phase engineer in the MD ANG, not long back from supporting their A-10Cs in Iraq) - just in case there's somebody in the unit whose history with the A-10 goes *waaaaay* back and may have information.

I still think it's going to be possible to get all of the dimensions correct to within a matter of an inch or two. The main problem is going to be that there's currently zero likelihood of getting stencil data.

Al

One more small addition - while I've not gotten around to doing fixing image skew and using relative comparison for what's visible of the two pods, I found my one major missing piece of information - a photo of the front end of the WX-50 radar pod. So I now have a pic of the front, one of the rear that show where the pod reaches maximum diameter, and the same basic details for the FLIR pod. It's just a matter of scanning, doing perspective correction using know points on the fuselage, and measuring bits of the pods relative to parts that I can compare with plans. Once that's done, I'll get some rough 3-views, maybe a basic 3D model done.

As for colors, I can only guess. The FLIR is almost certainly a dark green, the radar pod looks light grey in some shots, dark grey in others. It also appears to have a front end made of some other than the main casing (which'd make sense) although I've no idea if the covering in the pic I've got is a red cover to protect a fragile fiberglass radome, or if it's the actual radome.

I'm leaving Pave Tack out of this completely - one photo, of something that appears to have been directly mounted in place of the three center pylons, isn't enough to go on.

Al

Pages 50-51 of "Modern Fighting Aircraft", volume 6 (Arco Publishing, Inc., copyright 1984 by Salamander Books) has a side view drawing of the N/AW A-10 with the FLIR pod. Not sure about whether the scale is right, however.

I also have a photocopy of a `81 book authored by Robert DeMaio which has cockpit layouts for the N/AW bird, plus the a view of the FLIR and the radar pod. Lastly, I have a copy of a Faircihild Republic booklet that has the best pctures of the FLIR, including a head-on one with the shields open. The FLIR had a large downward angled aperture with shields that swiveled out of the way. The radar pod was pylon mounted on the pylon inboard of the port landing gear pod (pylon 7?). The Trumpeter kit doesn't include any of the avoinics pods.

My wife worked for FR on the N/AW project when we were first married, and I've always wanted to build one, preferably in 1/72 (I think Hobby Boss may make one?). The old Matchbox 1/72 kit had decals for 1664, the airframe that later became the N/AW bird and I've hung on to them for years hoping to find time since it would have had to have been scratch-built.

Not sure how much of this info is not already out there, I'd like to share the info I've collected over the years so that perhaps someone with better drafting skills than I've got could produce a set of drawings. The only thing I'd ask is that the drawings be shared.

The N/AW never carried much in the way of underwing stores since it was a test bed for the concept and the focus was on whether the radar/Flir could perform the mission and whether the gun could be used effectively. I dimly recall that the plan was to arm it with the IR Maverick (AGM-65D?) and I've never been able to find out whether teh N/AW ever fired the Maverick at all. THe triple Maverick rack was never approved on the single seater, so it wouldn't be correct to use the triple rack on the N/AW either. Still, it wouldn't be really off-base to have a dual rack on pylon 5 opposite the WX-50 and single Mavericks on 4 and 8.

Hope this helps.

FWIW, the pictures you reference in the French website are FR publicity photos. If someone wants a better scan of the N/AW photo, let me know (I think the best my scanner will do is 600 dpi).

Any scans of any images you've got are welcome - and it's my intention to try to take as much as I can that's amenable to it, suck it into Illustrator, trace and clean it. Once that's done I'll be happy to make the end results available (in .ai or .pdf).

Oh, yeah, non-lossy file formats preferred - if they're too big for e-mail contact me. I'll also try and get the pics I've got (or at least the relevant parts) into the same place.

I did much the same thing with a profile of the T26E3 Super Pershing (with the creator's permission) to turn it into something arbitrarily resizable for the AMPS-Chicagoland logo. OK, starting out with a 3-view drawing is a little easier, but I'm planning to have a try at doing something like tracing to the few photos I have of he XFY-1's cockpit in the hope of producing drawings I can scratchbuild something for the old Lindberg kit from, by doing perspective correction and scaling against objects of known size.

Oh, and Luckymodel has the HobbyBoss 1/72nd kit of the N/AW-10 for $15.99 plus $4.33 shipping to the US.

http://www.luckymodel.com/scale.aspx?item_no=HB-80267

Hope the above link works.

Cheers,

Al

Airframe 1664 never carried the built-in flare/chaff dispensers -- those came much later so its doubtful that they were ever added, given that the Air Force didn't buy off on the concept of the N/AW bird. The standard pylon mounted flare/chaff dispensers would likely have been carried on any operational mission, as they were until the built in ones were retrofitted. If you look really carefully, you can see that the dispensers that were fitted to the rear of teh wheel pods are not in any of the photos.

I guess the issue is really one of a historically accurate load-out with empty pylons or one that would represent a realisitc load-out circa 1980 for the intended mission.

Sorry for the multiple posts . . . .

This website has some good photos of the N/AW aircraft -- you can see that there are no built-in flare/chaff pods.

http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/AWA1/301-400/walk369_NAW_A-10/walk369.htm


P.S. I ordered the 1/72 kit. Thanks for the link.

I posted two scans of photos of the FLIR pod in the Kitmaker member gallery under bill_bain. I can't figire out how to get them into a forum message. If someone can help get them from there to here, that would be nice, otherwise check them out in the gallery.
Edit -- it appears that if you click on the photos button you get taken to my gllery directly. Cool, Comments are welcome.

Here you go Bill....great pics by the way.





As to uploading check here

I also suggest you try PhotoBucket, it's free and easy to use. Once your set up you just click on the image link, copy and paste to your post.

Joe

These are fantastic - I'll try to get them adjusted for perspective (i.e. usable for 3-views) at the weekend, and where possible annotate with measurements.

Would people prefer if I just kept things simple and provided annotated/unannotated images, or used something like .psd, where I could put the annotations in a layer?

Al

Oh, if anybody's wondering, with a bit of image cleaning and blowing up and not a little squinting, the placard is " Danger / Moving Shields / Keep Clear"

I'm sure those with undiminished eyesight could have managed that with just the squinting.

The label is clearly readable in the original. The scans were at 300 dpi and then resized to about 640 x 480 (actually whatever was close that preserved the aspect ratio) since that's the usual for Web images, and I wanted folks to see what I had in case it was duplicative of existing material. I tried to scan the side view at 1200 dpi (the highest my scanner would do) per your original request, but that resulted in a 384MB file!

Over the next few days I'll post more (there's a reasonable shot of the A/C that shows the WX-50) as well as diagrams of the panel layouts of both the front and rear cockpits. It looks like the gallery can support up to 3MB image files, so I'll see what the max resolution might be that'll fit that limit. Not sure what the limits are at photobucket, etc.

As far as the format of your work goes, I'm not sure what software would be required to read the images you prepare. A .jpg would likely be sufficient for most of us. I would think that the KISS priciple would be best since most of us likely don't have CAD programs to use.

I've added 3 more photos to my gallery -- two may help get the scale of the FLIR right, and one shows at least the front of the Wx-50.

Some thoughts --

1. The pod atached to the Pave Penny pylon in one of the photos is NOT a Pave Penny, it's a Low Light TV. Apperently when the WSO took over for targeting, the pilot lost the FLIR view in the front seat, so the LLTV was for the pilot's use while the WSO was doing his thing.

2. Note the lack of weapons hardpoints. That's consistent with the A/C's use as a proof of concept, although some later photos do show at least some pylons (1 and 11) installed.

For size estimation this resolution is fine - my main delay right now is in trying to figure out how to get this vanishing point thing adjusted properly then choose a feature to measure against and, if that's not in the same plane, adjust that from an orthogonal view to a perspective one too (e.g. the main wheel).

I've got a hunch we're going to discover that both pods were originally something else - they were, after all, temporary, since they were meant to go in the wheel nacelles. If the main section of the FLIR didn't look quite as constant in diameter, the way it slopes would make it a dead ringer for the back end of a napalm tank.

Oh, re your other question re chaff pods - I can't find any evidence of chaff being carrier in any other form than the AN/ALE-40s. From photo references they just seem to go from Not There in the prototype and FSD aircraft to There in the production aircraft. However, I did notice while reading Smallwood's "Warthog" that both chaff and flares seem to have been referred to as "pods" - perhaps a throwback to earlier days when they were both released from standard dispenser units like SUU-20s. The order adding the pods to A-10s was effective from aircraft 77-0227 and retrospectively fitted to the 150 or so production aircraft built before that - in other words they were factory-standard on 80% of all productions A-10s and would have been retrofitted to any earlier aircraft still in service by Desert Storm.

The only late 70s aircraft I know of carrying definite-for-sure underslung chaff pods were ANG EB-57Bs and some types of AC-130 which carried SUU-20s, one under each wing, one for flares, one for chaff. I know that by the time the USAF accidentally lost a chaff "pod" from an MC-130 operating out of Mildenhall fairly recently the picture they showed of the pod (so the public could return it if it happened to crash through the roof of their house, presumably) was quite clearly an AN/ALE-40 dispenser.

Finally, cramming three responses into one - all the photos I've got tally with yours on pylons except somewhere (in a reference I can't find today - typically) I could have sworn I've seen a color pic taken from above and ahead of the N/AW-10 with a white pod on station 9. I wish I could remember where the photo was - the pod was completely nondescript, no distinguishing markings or features.

Al

I think the old Tamiya A-10 kit had the AN/ALE-39 pods -- wish I had kept it but years ago I botched up the Maintrack N/AW-A10 conversion trying to mate it to the Tamiya kit instead of the Monogram kit it was designed for. Wish I had had the presence of mind to hang on to the ordinance when I tossed it..

There are several on-line references that reference the AN/ALE-39 flare chaff pods as being certified for the A-10. I even found some reprints of service manuals for the pods which have drawings but no photos. Kelli Johnson's photos on-line clearly show that the 2-bucket bird was not modified like the production birds.

It's likely that the N/AW A-10 never fired a Maverick, at least not at night. The LLTv version, the AGM-65C, was cancelled and the AGM-65D (IR version) didn't become operational until the mid-1980's, long after the Air Force had nixed the 2 seat version.

One other note -- the red ends on the pave penny pod and perhaps the WX-50 would have been covers removed before flight. Somewhere I've got the notion that the business end of the WX-50 was tan (unpainted fiberglass) -- have to see if I can find that reference.

Looking forward to seeing what the drawings look like! :-)

The technical order I found re the AN/ALE-40 fitting's shown in the Warbirdtech book. I also found more than any sane person could ever want to know about chaff on globalsecurity.org. I suspect some of the fog around the whole subject is that chaff is still basically considered ECM and although it's an old idea and well understood, some of the secrecy surrounding "real" ECM has rubbed off on it.

Thanks for clarifying on the radar - the minute you said "red cover" it clicked - even in the mono photo you can tell that it's red :-) Unpainted fiberglass would make sense for the business end of the unit, but I've also got pics that seem to show the entire unit as white.

Apologies for the delays in getting some actual drawings of these out - a combination of too much stuff (mostly unpleasant) going on in the real world and getting to grip with new tools to do the vanishing point adjustment has slowed me down a bit - I've got everything I need in theory to produce decent 3-view drawings with measurements - not CAD quality, perhaps, but good enough to master resin parts from - I just need to find the time to do it properly.

Oh, an odd thing I've spotted while looking at pictures of the FLIR unit. The two you've posted seem to show (from the front view) that there's a cover on either side of the body and suggest that when the cover's in place, it's like a clamshell. However, the side view shows the warning placard in its entirety on one of the two covers.

However, I've got a pic from the front of the unit with the cover in place, and the warning message is dead center. This suggests that there's just one cover since, if it was a clamshell and the message was dead center, it'd be split over the two. So far all I can think of is that there were two covers and that they either overlapped or were used alternately. Unfortunately, pics of the FLIR pod "from the other side" have so far eluded me.

Oh, current plan for the drawings is to work is to do the actual drawings in Illustrator. Fortunately, Illustrator has a round-trip import/export to PDF option, so I can produce a standard PDF and keep everything in vector format, so that it can be scaled without difficulty and there won't be any loss of detail.

Al

There are a couple of possibilities for the FLIR shields, but if you look closely at the picture I posted in the gallery (the one that's upside down) of the N/AW bird from the the port side, you can see that the FLIR cover actually has 2 warnings on it, one on each side of the split (the reflectance of the warning label is different from the reflectance of the shield itself). Also in looking at the head on photo of the FLIR, you can see the rollers for the shield are symmetrical (one on each side) and on the side view, you can see the slot the roller rides in. That would lead me to beleive that the shield was split. Aerodynamically, it would make sense to split the shield so that the drag from the shield would be split around the center axis and not introduce a yaw by the full shield being on only one side with the resultant off-axis air drag.

It's also possible that the shield may have undergone different versions as the concept was tested. Since few of the photos are actually dated, it's hard to tell how many of the photos are contemporaneous. As another example, you can find photos of a Pave Penny attached to the pylon, but there's plenty of discussion about the fact that a LLTV was mounted there to aid the pilot when the WSO was "at work", and there are photos of that installation as well.

FWIW, I've not been able to find any confirmation that the Pave Tack was ever fitted; however, since the A/C would have been just sitting around out at Edwards after the Air Force turned it down, it's certainly possible that it might have been tested at some point.

As far as flare/chaff pods go, *if* one were to model the N/AW A/C with a hypothetical combat load circa 1979, then the question of how the ECM measures would have been installed becomes relevant. Early A-10s were cleared to carry external flare/chaff pods (the AN/ALE-39), while later ones (and early ones post-retrofit) carried the AN/ALE-40 dispensers in the built-in pods. Had the N/AW A/C ever gone into production, it certainly would have been fitted with the built-in pods, particuarly as the Soviet doctrine of providing Shilkas (ZSU 23-4) as AA protection ,plus the widescale distribution of the SA-8 at the infantry level resulted in a significantly increased AA defense of its armored units. Again, we'll likely never know whether the actual N/AW A/C was ever tested with the external pods, but in a combat environment, without the built-in pods, American ECM doctrine would have dictated the use of external pods.

It's clear from the photos that the N/AW bird was subject to lots of changes as it underwent testing, so there's no single "right" configuration from a modeler's viewpoint. The best we can do is document as much as we can and then folks will have to build the variant that make sense to them. Personally, I try not to build 'hypothetical" versions, but to each his own.

*BUMP*

Any progress on the drawings? I'd be interested to see how they turned out.

Alas, real life's been getting in the way too much lately, but as soon as things calm down a bit I do want to get them done. One of the results of my currently busy real life is that I'm shortly going to have a vastly reduced budget for buying kit bits, so I'm actually going to have to start building my way through the stash :-) I'll let you know as soon as I've got something that's even semi-done - while getting the dimensions of the overall unit should be straightforward, getting the cover mechanism, etc, done is something where I'll want others to check what I've come up with, not just for "that looks too thick" but for "the mechanism looks wrong" etc.

One bit of general A-10 news (that doesn't really apply to the Hobbyboss kit) is that Quickboost has released fans for the Italeri 1/48th kit that have the right number of blades. I'm hoping they can be adapted so that I can use one to replace the resin replacement in Italeri's engine detail set (which also has the wrong number of blades, so that it matches the other side, which doesn't have the full engine) and get both my Italeri A-10s looking right. Oh, yeah, anybody considering that set should be aware that the gun doesn't actually fit into the kit, it's provided on a dolly for external display. In some ways this is a plus - you can use that aspect of the set with pretty much any A-10 kit.

I've now got four A-10s to work through. I'd like to say that's where I'm stopping, but I'm still trying to decide whether I should see what the Twobobs "Peanut/Flipper" sheet will fetch on eBay or whether I actually want to build A-10s in those schemes. Then, of course, eventually somebody's going to either release or produce after-market bits for an A-10C - externally it'll look pretty much the same as any other A-10, but I'll get to sling more inteesting ordnance under it :-)

Cheers,

Al

Still niot given up on this - I've got a few more N/AW-10 pics, with and without the pods, and also a couple of good almosst-side-on shots of the aircraft, as well as useful numbers like the wheelbase (which wasn't changed from the standard A-10).

Some things have become clearer using the additional pics:

Although tt appears otherwise in a lot of pics, the FLIR was almost always on station 6 (centerline) with the radar pod on station 7. Since I've got known measurements for the ECM pods normally carried on that station, if I can get an idea of the length of the FLIR relative to ECM pods (possibly by overlaying side views) I can get FLIR measurements.

I already think I could get a scale-free FLIR pod sketched out, if comparison with an ECM pod, or even with the wheel base (somebody remind me - hub center to hub center?) then I can get numbers that'll be good enough to produce a pod that'll be Accurate Enough.

The radar is more of a problem - good pics of the head exist, so the curvature can be determined, and the slightly odd flattened back end is also documented, but it's tougher to get profiles of what's in-between. The points along the length at which the FLIR narrows are clear enough, but there are gaps in the middle of the radar pod where no photo seems to exist. At the moment, it'll be guesswork, I think.

Al