You should see the outside canopy handle…!
It’s flush with the skin, so you press a button, that ejects the handle, so to speak. Then you have to engage the handle to the canopy locking mechanism. Once this has been done, you pull the handle forwards or backwards, to close or open the canopy…
Very few pilots knew how to do this, since we, the ground crew, always opened the canopy for them, and they closed it from the inside. It was a mechanical nightmare.
Or as one of our older technical officers said " On the Draken they made a hatch with two buttons underneath it. One to open and he other for closing"
The inside handle should fold forwards to lock the canopy. LNS are aware.
That’s awesome!
I got to watch a pop-up attack, with gun pods, on the range. That was really cool!
We were positioned in a target range controller tower and the range leader called out the Viggens as they approached at treetop level. I just caught a glimpse of the first one as he pulled up, levelled and fired. By the time the grenades exploaded on the target, he was already turning. Then the rest of the four-ship arrived one by one.
When the attack was finished, the range leader told the flight lead that there were visitors in the tower and he actually requested a fly by
The towers were constructed from some futuristic Finnish cabins, called ‘Futuro’, made of glass fibre plastic and plastic windows.
This picture is actually from that target range. The range has been closed since 1998 and the towers were dismantled earlier this year. One will be sold on auction and the other will be housed at the SwAF museum. These cabins have some kind of cult icon status today…
Here’s a video made by local news media just prior to the dismantling.
Language is in Swedish, but the picture is multilingual
So, there we were, encased in thin glass fibre plastic, being " this close to four low flying AJ37 Viggens, with gunpods, coming right at us…! I’ll never forget it!
Much like the F-5 handle. Although I always like the F-84 one that just pops out and unlocks the canopy which you then lift up and locks once in the upright position.
