Tag Archives: F1

Do My Eyes Deceive Me?

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Is what I am seeing real or is it a Mirage?  Sorry, pretty crummy pun usage.  When I was going to Nellis for Red Flag, one of the things I wanted to shoot was the Mirage F1s of Draken International.  It is a long time since I have seen an F1 – it was back when the Spanish Air Force was still flying them and they came to RIAT.  Now that Draken is using them for aggressor support services, I was keen to catch one or two of them.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to wait long.  The first time I drove up to the base, a pair of the Draken jets were recovering.  I grabbed the camera as they came in straight towards me before going over my head.  I had not set up the camera as I would have intended but just turned it on and pointed it at the jets.  Not bad luck and some of the shots came out okay.

I did get a couple more opportunities.  These were departures at the Speedway.  In one morning I had a pair of them heading out without flexing.  The camo pattern they have is the same but the colors vary.  The black and white scheme was interesting.  However, I prefer the brown scheme and the last two jets I got to shoot before I headed to the airport were F1s flexing north.  Top and tail the visit with Mirages!

F1 Engines (New and Used)

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I was too young to see a Saturn V launch.  My one and only space launch has been a shuttle flight and that was very impressive.  I can only imagine how cool the Saturn V was to witness.  Maybe when the new generation of heavy launchers comes into service I will get to see something similar.  The power for the first stage was provided by the F1 engines, five of which were clustered together.  We made a trip to the Kennedy Space Center a long time ago and a Saturn V is on display there lying on its side.  You can get face to face with the engine nozzles.

More recently, we checked out the Apollo exhibit at the Museum of Flight, here in Seattle.  They have a display of an F1 engine but this one is not looking so pristine.  This is because it is a used engine.  Not just used as in test firing used but used as in flew on a mission, free fell to the ocean, hit the sea at speed, sank to the bottom of the Atlantic and stayed there for decades.  Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, funded a project to recover the engines from Apollo 12.

The nozzle is gone which is no surprise given how thin it is as you can see in the pictures of the undamaged version.  However, the combustion chamber and the turbopump seem to have come through the experience in remarkable shape.  The injector plate is also on display and has been pulled out of the assembly to show it off more clearly.  The F1 was quite a feat of engineering – 1.5 million lbs of thrust and the pinnacle of 60s technology.