George Elder

One other interesting story... The Skunk Works took an off the shelf design to respond to the airforce request of a 4 engine utility aircraft contract. P+W didn't have the engines available so Kelly decided to fly the airframe with the Orpheus engine... Approximatly the same total thrust... He said he was so happy with the Orpheus performance that he decided to make the pylons adaptable for either a two engine installation or a four engine installation.... He glowed with "and we could do all of this for only a 35lb built in weight penalty"...... Amazing

Another side note.... Jetstar s were JT 12 - 6 or - 8.... And the preceeding engine the JT-11?......... Well that was on the SR-71

Most of my good pics I put on flightaware

5086 was a significant sn break... All the manuals have 5086 and subsequent (of 5162) in the instructions... They didn't have the jt12 - 8s (3300 lbs of thrust) but the airframe had all of the - 8 mods... Jt 12 - 6 had 3000lbs thrust. It was either 5094 or 96 that came off the line as a - 8. 5086 on the data plate had - 6. Of the 162 straight pipe jetstars 65 were converted to 731 by garret airresearch LAX. 5086 was the 45th one. It was known as pick up unit # 45 and was owned by Johnson and Johnson at the time. The 731 had 3700 lbs thrust. 500 gallons an hour for the airplane. Lockheed started the line again in the 70's and made 40 JS 2 with 731's from the factory. The only real way to tell the difference from the outside is the 2 has a dorsal inlet for ram air and the originals it was on each side in the pylon.... And the other difference was that the 2 had rounded cowlings underneath the engines like a Falcon 50 the conversion cowl was sculpted to the accessory area...mine fit very well but some others struggled. Just as a side note the aux tanks (the big bullets) on the straight pipe airplanes were sort off mid wing... Some on top some on bottom... On all of the 731 aircraft the tanks were dropped below the wing. This was due to airflow interference for the outboard engines at high AOA.

Btw A320 B737 IA JET N265 and the best one L-1329

I have 2800 hours in the last flying Jetstar.... I designed the paint job and flew for the unnamed Florida family. It was a great airplane. Stable as all get out. And regardless of modern technology the systems (controlled by switches and relays) were light years ahead of its time. Regarding another post, you do not have to remove the engines to change the starter generator.... You simply drop the lower cowl... I had 5 s/gs... They last about 600-700 hours... I used to just take the high time one off of the airplane and send it out for O/H... There was a kit box in then hell hole.. I used to take the O/H sg on the road when I went to Europe. The Apu had the same S/g but a slightly different P/N... In a pinch it could be used on an engine... Long live Kelly's memory... He was the best...