In March of 2006, a person named Steve reached out to me with the following story:
First I’ll tell you the story of how it was that aircraft 007 was chosen to perform at the airshow at Soesterberg (pronounced Soo-sterberg) AB in the Netherlands. Your aircraft was almost brand new to Bitburg AB. It had arrived from the McDonnell-Douglas factory in St. Louis and had minimal hours on the airframe (about 10) when one of the pilots took it on a cross-country mission to Scandinavia.
(I’m not sure of your background, so I’ll take a minute to explain cross-country: A cross-country is where they give you an aircraft for the weekend and allow you to fly it wherever you want in order to get training and flying hours for the wing. Generally you are committed to six sorties – two each Friday and Monday and normally two on Saturday or Sunday, giving you one day off in a country. In Europe, cross-country’s were critical to maintaining wing flying hours because of the typical lousy weather over there.)
Anyway, it was summer and the squadron was going to have a big party, so on Sunday the pilot bought a whole bunch of Norwegian shrimp, which was packed in its own frozen brine and ice. He stored the boxes of shrimp in the large area behind the ejection seat Sunday evening. Well, given the temperatures and the two additional sorties he flew on Monday, there was naturally some melting and leaking from the boxes behind the seat. When he landed at Bitburg the pilot spot cleaned the area behind the seat, but unbeknownst to him the now-liquid brine had made it’s way into lots of areas of the aircraft.
Also, little did anyone know the corrosive effect brine had on aircraft aluminum. After about a week of flying a crew chief noted lots of rust behind the pilot seat(*). A closer inspection revealed sheet metal damage, and some corrosion on wiring and tubing. It was determined that the damage was so extensive that the regular Wing Level sheet-metal repair shop and maintenance could not handle the job, so the aircraft had to be sent to F-15 PDM (Programmed Depot Maintenance).
(*) When the initial rust was discovered and the story of how this happened came out, and even though the maintenance folks didn’t find it amusing, pilots being who they are could not help but see the humor in the story and so the aircraft was given a name: “Shrimp Boat”. Just so you know, very few AF aircraft are/were named anymore…so it had to be something special to actually have an aircraft name all the pilots would recognize. Most times when you called maintenance after a flight you just called in the tail number….but 007 was now Shrimp Boat.
As an aside (maybe this is why I remember Shrimp Boat) my squadron had an aircraft (364) that departed the runway on landing and from then on was known forever as “Mud Slide”. It was the only “named” aircraft in our squadron. About a year later the aircraft departed the runway again and the Chief of Maintenance claimed it wasn’t a maintenance problem, but rather pilot sub-conscious because everybody called the aircraft Mud Slide.
Anyway, after about a month, the refurbished and newly repainted aircraft returned to Bitburg. The Soesterberg Air Show was coming up. (Note: Even though Soesterberg was also an F-15 base, the USAFE F-15 Demo pilot was stationed at Bitburg, so that’s why a Bitburg F-15 was performing at Soesterberg). When they choose an aircraft for an airshow, they try to find the nicest looking aircraft, because in addition to flying, it is also used as a static display. Well, aircraft 007, aka Shrimp Boat, having just returned from Depot, had a brand new paint job and it was determined that the Bitburg F-15 Demo Pilot
would fly Shrimp Boat at the Soesterberg Air Show.
THAT, is how your cockpit got to the Soesterberg Air Show….
A few days ago, a photo of ‘007, mid-crash was posted to a Facebook group called “The McDonnell Douglas(Boeing) F-15 Eagle”. (It’s a private group – join it! A great bunch of folks hang out there!)
One of the comments on that post lamented, “There goes the shrimp boat”. This triggered a fun “correction to the record” by Georg Saare, a former maintainer with the 22nd TFS out of Bitburg.
Georg wrote, “80-007 was NOT the ORIGINAL Shrimp Boat. The hull of Balls 7 replaced 76-035 as the ABDR trainer at Bitburg and the name stuck. Aircraft 76-035 was the airplane that was contaminated by thawed frozen shrimp from Bodo, Norway. Balls 7 was brand new from McAir to Bitburg. The CNA airshow was actually it’s first assigned mission after arrival at BT. And it’s LAST LOL“
Georg would know, as he’s among the folks that stripped parts off of ‘007 to keep other aircraft in the air!
I always had suspicions about the Shrimp Boat moniker and ‘007, so it’s nice to finally know for sure what the real story is. Thanks to Georg Saare for cluing us in! 🙂
Not exactly F-15 specific (F/A-18 actually…), but I figured the folks that follow my shenannigans would get a kick out of this. A year(ish) ago, I found a LAU-117/A launch rail for sale on Facebook, and before common sense could override the PayPal transaction, I’d bought the stupid thing.
Enjoy the video!
I decided some weeks ago that the existing AC power infrastructure that I’d originally implemented really wasn’t going to do the job. As a result of that decision, I pulled all of the old wiring out and replaced it all with a much neater, safer, and useful configuration.
Check it out in the latest update video:
As I discovered in the last video, I had some flight grip switch problems during the testing of the new control loader.
The Castle Up switch and the “pinky” switch weren’t triggering inputs on the VPForce controller. Today I was able to tear into things and figure out what the issue is.
The good news is that the grip switches & SFS box wiring was ok.
The bad news is I had to remove the SFS cable from the cockpit in order to fix an improperly seated pin. Getting that sucker back into the cockpit took about an hour. 🙂
In order to re-install the cable, I basically nailed it in place using a copper Cleco and used a 1″ impact socket to hold down the half of a nut ring that I had for the installation.
The hard part of this process was threading the #4 screws in from below the cockpit floor while not being able to see the connector, the hole, the screw, OR the screwdriver! It took about an hour of constant fiddling, but I got it done.
I was also able to get the pitch axis tensioner pulley moved inboard the 6mm required so the belt would stop rubbing on the pulley bracket.
Hopefully, more updates next week!
Some months ago I embarked on getting a control loader installed into the F-15C. With flight simulation and air combat “games”, it’s more commonly known as “force feedback”. While the VPForce FFB system I’m using as the base for my simulator *can* do “force feedback” things, the primary task is to provide control loading similar to what a real F-15 pilot would experience. At its most basic level, the flight control system in the F-15 will adjust the amount of force required to move the stick based on the current G loading of the aircraft. The system can require as much as 25lbs in pitch and 20lbs in roll to move the stick at high G loads. The VPForce system can’t quite hit those targets, but it’s close enough for my purposes. I don’t want to become a gym rat just to be able to enjoy my simulator. 🙂
Here’s the YouTube video I put together during the test and configuration of the system. Enjoy!
Before I can get the VPForce-based control loading system installed in the F-15, I needed to build a cable that connects the SFS wiring harness in the cockpit to something that can read the switch inputs from the grip. In this case, that device is the VPForce Shift Register board.
It’s a lot smaller than I expected. 🙂
The SFS (Stick Force Sensor) box is where the flight grip is mounted. It has a post that bolts to the flight stick base in the cockpit. In a real SFS box, the grips mating plug is part of an assembly that contains a load cell. This is where the “Force Sensor” part comes into play.
You can see how I built the SFS for this project at this blog entry: https://www.f15sim.com/?p=272
Here’s the video I made that shows how the new SFS interconnect cable was made, and where it was installed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fHs_51rHa8
Wow. I’ve been really remiss on posting project updates here. Let’s fix that!
Project update video in February: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZFnfHmnnZc&t=19s
Last week I posted a video that covers the new control loader system I’m installing in the simulator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUWSFDEAGdQ&t=668s
The control loader is based around the VPForce Force Feedback controller and servo motors. It’s a really cool and flexible system. There’s going to be a video about that coming soon, so keep an eye out for it – subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already!
One of the things I nearly missed doing is the cable that links the SFS box & flight grip to the VPForce “shift register” board. Had I missed that, I would have had to un-install all the hardware for the control loader in order to regain access to where the cable has to go.
The cable is 1m long and has a 66 pin cannon plug on one end and will have a DB25 connector on the other. The end of the control loader video above has the details about where it’s going to go. This evening I got the sockets set into the cannon plug end, and tomorrow evening I’ll be hopefully finishing it up.
The magnifier is basically required these days! 🙂
More soon! Thanks for taking the time to stop by and check out the site.
I posted a short video yesterday that covers the new ACES II decals that I bought from Invictus Cockpit Systems (https://invictuscockpits.com/). I also covered a bit about how the VPForce FFB system is going to connect to the existing flight controls, as well as the apparent broken-ness of the inertia reel assembly in the ejection seat.
I was finally able to get the last of the work done installing the NOS ejection handles into the ACES II ejection seat. Most of the delay was due to the high temperatures in the area of late – it really limits the amount of time I can spend in the workshop, unfortunately.
Well after dithering about how to “correctly” solve the issue with the NOS initiator handles in my ACES II seat, I finally got off the dime and removed about 10mm of material from the front of the handle well.
With that done, I was able to re-install the spring mechanism that connects the handle to the torque bar. The torque bar spans the seat width and connects the two handles together.
There’s two things left to do right now – I need a spring compressor in order to collapse the spring enough that I can install the retaining pin at the top end of the guide rod. I’ve also got a temporary fastener installed on the bracket attached to the torque rod. That has to be replaced with the original 10-32 bolt. Once that’s done, I can repair the other side!
Next steps will include dumping the spring into rust remover and getting the latching/guide mechanism that’s under the seat pan cleaned up and re-installed. I’ll be posting a video about this soon.
