Tweetdrvr

Two lights, two tights, two fuels, no fools.......

One of the toughest things to do was to park a perfectly good 1956 model with 21,500 hours and change in the logs at DM after it's fini flight. Kind of like having to shoot Old Yeller.

ExAF

OMG! Am I the only person that hated that little POS airplane? It was the most uncomfortable seat in the AF (except for the OA-37 where you had to sit on the life raft CO2 bottle in the canvas seat). Slow, underpowered, unpressurized, no range, loud (and not in a good way like the sound of freedom) and UGLY! The only good thing about it was that it was forgiving. While it was a good learning platform for beginners in its day, it sure doesn't rate anywhere near the top of airframes to shed a tear over. I for one am glad to see them go. The T-6 II is a step up. It really says a lot when the prop-driven replacement aircraft outperformes the jet being parked. AMF!

HercDriver130

no....what it says is the technology of the T-6II is forty years newer!!! In its day there wasnt a TP trainer that could hang with a tweet.....

Oh... and I doubt you are the ONLY person who hated the tweet.... but I think you might be in the minority!!!!

WAFP

Stick, Rudder, Rudder

saved my bacon as a stud thinking he was hot sh!t

border patrol for this kid for the rest of the sortie. damned fine plane. sad to see her go

ExAF

I'll shed a tear when they park the last T-38 (if I'm still alive when that happens), but nary a sniffle for the Tweet. I'll admit it was a great initial training platform that did it's mission well, but I for one never really liked it and won't miss it at all.

Ferd149

Ex,

Lots of guys thought that till they flew it as something other as a student. Used to talk about it a lot in PIT, but here is the reader's digest of my brief to all the pi$$ed off FAIPs. As a tweet stud, you're always played above your head, when you catch up they move you on to another category and then off to the T-38. In the T-38 you get comfortable and it dawns on you you're a pilot and on somedays can outfly your IP (stick and rudder only). But when you come back to it, you develop a love affair with the little beast.

Ferd

ExAF

And all this time I thought the only ones who love the tweet were the FAIPs, and thought the only reason was because they didn't know any better....yet.

atpcliff

Hi!

The T-37 is a piece of crap. When it was new, maybe it was a shinier piece of crap???

The two jet engines produce very little thrust.
The two jet engines are expensive to maintain.
The two jet engines burn WAY too much fuel.
The two jet engines are VERY noisy.
The aircraft is WAY underpowered.
The instrument panel is total crap, especially when they are trying to train you in instrument flying. If it was only a VFR trainer, this factor would not be as bad. One day, I brought my (no mil experience) buddy over to show him the cockpit of a T-37 (I think in ELP). He was SHOCKED at the instrument panel, and how poorly designed it was, ESPECIALLY for instrument training.
The non-pressurization is brutal on the cross-countries.
The air conditioning (did it even have any???) didn't work on the ground (I remember the T-38 A/C worked well in the air).
The ejection seat was crap.
I only flew it for about 40 hours, so I'm sure if I had more experience in the Tweet, the list of negatives would be a LOT longer.

And as far as reliable, safe, etc. I don't know the stats. I do know when I showed up for FWQ at Vance, on the first day, I saw a guy I knew who was in an earlier class. I asked him how training was going, and he said it was OK, but not great. A day or two before he had ejected out of the T-37 at low altitude. The plane caught on fire, and he and his IP made it out safely, thank God!

Did I like ANYTHING?
The side-by-side seating was good. The ability to spin was good. It was easy to land. I didn't have any mechanical problems with the plane.

cliff
NBO

Tweetdrvr

All of the above things can basically describe a C-130A with 3 blade props, did we abandon that and try to invent a new tactical airlifter? No, look at the J model. This is why the Airbus attempt at a tac airlifter will probably never get sold.

All the things you say about the T-37B are true, but they are true because they are 50+ years old. Heck, the first guy to fly the plane had 100+ missions in Europe in P-47s.

The T-6 is more comfortable to fly and it is a challenge to fly well, much more so than the blunt nose 6000lb dog whistle, thanks to torque and p-factor---TAD doesn't come close to helping new studs keep the ball centered. The T-37 was easier to teach in and I think it was more fun to fly because of the more forgiving ops limits. I could do more with a point of a finger or watch how I do this, than I can in 5 mins of "blah, blah, blah, no look at your other left." Yes it was uncomfortable, but it was nearly indestructable. I often say the only reason it had ops limits were to write an unsat on a student. I doubt there is a tweet in existence that has not been flown at 200 knots with the gear, flaps and landing lights extended at the hands of a solo. And after the poor kid was told to full stop by the RSU, it probably flew 2 hours later after MX did their cursory visual inspection and raised and lowered the flaps and lights.

The airframe and aerodynamics made it a wonderful trainer. It acted like a Cessna when you needed it to---docile and forgiving, and it acted like a jet, albeit underpowered, providing intro to great high performance characteristics like a nice stall buffet that advanced to a full on rumble before it ran out off lift. Great things to learn for the advanced training to follow in the T-38. You had to learn to pull power at the right time to coast in the last few hundred feet on a rejoin, yet add power at the right time to have those engines spooled to match thrust to park it in position. The T-6 doesn't do a lot to help guys get ready for T-38s. It doesn't run out of gas, it makes energy simply by thinking about it, and you can screw up a rejoin, get rid of 30 knots in 300' with that prop, and spool and park in position without needing to overshoot. I have to take the airplane way more than I used to in the Tweet, because of the oil system limitations and sometimes feel like I watch the oil px and torque more than I watch stan.

The tweet was a very safe airplane, I can only think of three solo fatalities in the past 30 years, a female captain killed at Vance in 1980, probably an indavertant spin in the low area and no ejection attempt, a solo who got disoriented at VFR entry at Willie in 82/83 timeframe and got into some kind of stall, and the solo at Vance in September 2000 who overshot final and stalled too low to the ground to recover.

The two best trainers we ever bought were the 37/38 combo, and the best we ever were was when everyone flew those two airplanes. If we had only known in 1972 what we know now, we should have never closed the production line on either, and there should be T-38s/T-37s on the G or H suffix with little fuel efficient turbo fans, pressurization, and glass MFDs with Garmin 1000 type displays and XM satellite wx radar.

atpcliff

Hi!

Tweetdrvr: Thanx for the info.

I think a T-37 with new engines, a good glass cockpit and pressurization WOULD be a good aircraft. Oh, and note on the C-130. The AF has not wanted them for years, and tried to get it killed a long time ago, but Congress kept it going. If the AF had it's way, we'd have a better tactical airlifter now (unless, of course, they screwed THAT airplane up, which is possible). In Juba (Sudan), I saw a pretty new Civvy C-130 with a brand new, modern cockpit. It was very nice. It was taking cargo from an IL-76 in Juba to a very narrow dirt strip North of Juba.

I never saw the benefits of formation in the T-37. We basically learned to land it, and then off to the T-38 where we learned to fly formation. It was a waste of resources, but I came to enjoy flying the T-38.

I think the only thing I really liked in the T-37 was doing the spins. I remember that we learned 4 different entries, and it seemed very easy to get it out of the spin every time.

cliff
NBO