Can anyone enlighten me?
On a build I am doing on Hasagawa’s A-4E for a customer, he has informed me about how his plane was loaded for combat. However, not wanting to TOTALLY display my ignorance I thought I’d try here.
On an aircraft’s hard point for mounting bombs, missles, ect., how were the pylons numbered from a pilot’s point of view? I had read about different loads on number 2 & 4, points 1 & 5, ect. I’m lost!![soapbox]
The hardpoints are numbered sequentially from one side to another, I believe, starting from the pilots left. On an A-4 the outboard wing pylons would be 1/5, inboard wing pylons 2/4, and the centerline pylon 3. I hope there is someone here more versed in this stuff to confirm or correct this.
I can’t help you on the A-4E and later versions with five hardpoints, but the switches on the panel for the A-4B and C which have three hard points are labelled left, right, and center. None of my books on the A-4 make any mention of numbers, it’s always left outboard, etc.
Stikpusher is correct. The stations are numbered from left to right. Station one would be the left outboard station and station five would be the right out board station.[;)]
Reddog