That is a picture of the "Fatigue Airplane" as it looked during testing in the Farmingdale, L.I. laboratory. The way those tests work is that hydraulic cylinders apply loads to simulate gravity (g's), lift, drag, thrust, sideload, etc. In that test no thermal changes were included and no vibration either. When it was running you could tell what portion of a flight it was in by the motion and the sounds. During taxi the airframe was motionless and a lot of noise came from the landing gear attachments. For flight conditions, there was quite a bit of bending motion going on, a few feet at the wing tips and a foot at the gun muszzle. The wings bent up ,the fuselage and tail bent down. Rolling conditions bent the fins over. It was also easy to see impact landings (spin-up, spring-back) bending the dummy landing gear fore & aft. All these load conditions were totally balanced by the hydraulic cylinders in a way to the actual thing. There were arranged in a logical sequence called the "Flight by Flight Spectrum". After a few years of testing, the noises from the airframe get pretty loud, but you get used to the normal "groaning". Occasionally, a big bang is heard which also means big trouble for us (the stress analysts). After the test is declared over the airfame is totally disassembled to look for cracks. The jumble of parts is probably taking up space in a landfill if it has not been melted down to make beer cans.
The Fatigue airframe was the fourth one assembled. The build sequence for the DT&E program was tail # 731664, 731665, Static, Fatigue, 731666, 731667, 731668, 731669. To my knowledge, there were no "tail numbers" assigned to the ground test airframes. The static (ultimate strength) tests were done in a lab at Wright Patterson in Dayton. I wouldn't consider these test articles another A-10 since they did not have any systems in them, a subset of control surfaces, no engines. They were only structural shells.
On the F-22 the first flying airplane, and the first constructed, had the tail number ...4001,. Again the build sequence was 4001, 4002, static, fatigue 4003 etc. Internally, we called static 3999 and fatigue 4000 but I do not think the government assigned those "tail numbers" so you shouldn't see them in any official list.
Have you heard about the single seat <b>A-10 cabriolet</b> version that dispensed with the canopy so the pilots could wear goggles and scarves again? It was styled by Ghia and built in the Karmann works in Germany in 1978, a little known fact.
THE CRAPTOR ENGINEERING TEAM <img src=icon_smile_big.gif border=0 align=middle>
"The F-22...It's the poo"
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