
Gums wrote:Salute!
As the only guy on these forums who has ever sat in the cockpit of an F-20, and have about 40 - 50 sim hours......... I feel qualified to comment.
The death of the plane was not straightforward, but one poster has nailed a biggie - trying to sell the plane to folks that didn't want a "super" F-5, but not making it easy for the existing F-5 folks to pay for it. So the failed Korean sale was the second to last nail in the coffin. And it didn't help that they lost one of the three FSD birds there due to gee-loc.
Northrop was trying to get the Air Guard to buy it as an airspace sovereignty asset. If USAF had some, the thot was small countries would have bought it. By then, the Viper was getting Slammers for the air defense mission and had much better range and multirole capability. When GD lowered the price for a stripped down Viper, the Koreans jumped on.
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- No way that beast could have ever been navalized .
- The radar and main computer was about as good as the Hornet except for the map, which it did not have. I flew the Hornet sim as part of my evaluation of the two planes and the map was just like the one I had in the Sluf, but digital
- The human interface for both the F-20 and Hornet was way better than the Block 15 Viper I had just gotten out of and I don't think even the Bk25 was equal. Seems that Bk 30 and 40 were close, but still no projected map.
- My flight was cancelled hours before scheduled, so I only have sim time to compare. It seemed like a Viper with two bags and light loadout.
- The avionics were super, and it had a better radar than the pre-Bk 40 Vipers. Took me about 5 minutes to be real comfortable, and data entry/mode selection was in a class by itself. Hornet was almost the same ( and that was part of the lawsuit I was part of as an expert witness).
In cllosing, I feel the plane would have been ideal for all countries that had the F-5 and even some others. Perfect air defense plane with that 2 minute inertial alignment time and the A2A radar modes. Limited loadout and range, but it wasn't intended to fly 400 miles then CAP or bomb and come home unrefueled. It was too pricey, and Vipers were getting cheaper everyday.
Gums sends...
To clarify... "It seemed like a Viper with two bags and light loadout." Was the F20 sim with bags as well or clean?