You Thought Cooking Your Turkey Was Tough? Try Maintaining An F-14!

Jalopnik ^ | 11/27/14 8:45AM | Tyler Rogoway

[mabarker1]

Tomcat may have been the F-14's official moniker, but its other nickname was 'Turkey.' Seeing as many of us will be slaving away in an attempt to cook perfect turkey today, it is only proper that we pay homage to the hard working sailors who had to the cook a perfect Turkey every time- those who maintained the crazily complex F-14 'Turkey.'

The nickname 'Turkey,' or 'Turkeybird,' came from how the normally super-sleek, muscular and famous fighter looked on the catapult going through control checks or on approach to landing, when the aircraft's entire trailing edge seemed to fan out into a messy moving mass of feather-like structures. Flaps, spoilers, speed brake, slats, the F-14's huge all moving 'tailerons' and its twin rudders, along with gear doors and landing gear jutting out from the bottom, the word 'busy' is an understatement for the big Grumman jet in its most vulnerable of configurations

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[mabarker1]

There is also this

Elite F-14 Flight Officer Explains Why The Tomcat Was So Influential

We sat at the end of the runway, our F-14's GE-110 motors humming, awaiting our clearance to begin what would be the last F-14 Demonstration ever. The Air Boss's voice crackled over the radio: "Tomcat Demo, you're cleared to five miles and 15k feet. The air show box is yours" At that very moment, I distinctly remember what my Commanding Officer told us before the show: "Fellas, make it a memorable one… just not too memorable!"

[DannyTN]

And F-14 is way overkill to cook a turkey.

[mabarker1]

F-14 Tomcat Ping...

I know We have some FReepers out there that are Retired F-14 Pilots and RIO’s. Would love to hear from Y’All.

Thank You to All Our Veterans and Active Duty Military for doing what You did/are doing.

And for All the F-4 Phantom and other Bird Drivers out there I’m working on more. I have not forgotten Y’All.

[SkyDancer]

Meanwhile at my house:

[rlmorel]

Great plane. I never worked on it, but I saw a lot of them, and I was in love with it. I thought it was the sexiest plane there was.

Funny, back in the Seventies, I never saw one in a fully loaded configuration with four Phoenix, two Sparrows, and two Sidewinders.

Boss...just a BOSS plane!

LOL, I very nearly did get cooked alive by one when I got caught behind a JBD when one went off in afterburner...:)

[mabarker1]

LOL !!! Yeah it is.

Would probably look a lot like the 1st Wild Turkey I Deep Fried. A store bought Turkey cooks for 3 minutes @ pound. I found out the hard way that a Wild one only needs to cook for 1 minute @ pound.

It was burned so bad that only about 2 finger sized pieces of the breast meat was edible.

So for anyone out there that might have a Wild Turkey they want to Deep Fry one 1 minute @ pound.

Store Turkey is 3 minutes @ pound.

Both cook at 360 degrees Fahrenheit.

The difference is Store Birds are full of steroids to speed up fattening for market. Wild Birds don't do steriods.

[mabarker1]

I KNEW YOU WERE HOLDING OUT ON US:)

[Yo-Yo]

The F-14D really came into its own when it ditched the compressor stall-prone TF30 turbofan engines with the F110.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Nice pics! Ooooh ya.

But...I'd rather cook a turkey wrapped in bacon than try to maintain a Tomcat. It's all about what you've trained for.

[mabarker1]

YIKES !!! Good thing that JBD was up !!!

They are Beautiful Aircraft.

I used to live under the Flight Path for F-4 Recon Training at Bergstrom AFB before they turned it into BIA. They went over the house every day.

[rlmorel]

Hahahaha...trailing those great black smoke trails and making a hell of a racket with those J-79’s...good times...good times.

That is music to my ears, jet engines, especially military ones...

[Chode]

one of my all time fav pix...

[mabarker1]

The TF-30’s should be sold off as Boat Anchors. They were like a Roman Candle trying to power the F-14.

[Mariner]

“I thought it was the sexiest plane there was.”

That would be the B-1B.

[Flick Lives]

If the neighbors complain about your lawnmower noise, just fire that baby up Saturday morning.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I thought it was the sexiest plane there was.

True that;

F-14 Tomcat;

But...The A-10 Thunderbolt is still sexy. But has more stamina and muscle.

[rlmorel]

B1B IS a damned sexy plane!

[rlmorel]

Lol, I love HAL aviation threads bring out this in all of us aviation nuts… :-)

I will say this… If I want a freaking masculine tool that will beat the snot out of anything, I will go with an A10… And I love those things too!

[libertylover]

LOL, I very nearly did get cooked alive by one when I got caught behind a JBD when one went off in afterburner...:)

I kinda know what you mean. WAR STORY WARNING! I worked instrumentation on F-4s and one of things we had to do was to test the probes that measure the EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature), which meant we had to climb way up inside the engine exhaust end of a (not running) engine. One day I was way up in there and I heard the power cart used to start the aircraft engine starting up... It didn't take me long to crawl out of there!

[Lockbox]

The decision to incorporate the Super Hornet and decommission the F-14 is mainly due to high amount of maintenance required to keep the Tomcats operational. On average, an F-14 requires nearly 50 maintenance hours for every flight hour, while the Super Hornet requires five to 10 maintenance hours for every flight hour.

http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/006345.html