F-100A: what's going on here?

GO-9048 means General Order 9048, the North American Aviation charge number (internal accounting code) to which this work was billed (others included SO - Sales Order and so on.) This looks to house an enlarged feed horn for the APG-30 gun ranging radar. (This system provided range data to the gun sight for trajectory lofting and correction.)
 
Yet the F-100 managed to house the APG-30 scanner within a reasonably conformal housing: maybe a different radar?
 
Well, the APG-30 didn't scan; but this could be for an early Autonetics NASARR testbed...?
 
Flateric beat me to it, I was going to post the same link.

On the other hand, NAA was working on proposals to change the fire control radar that would have sported a similar "beak", like on the F-100J. See here for more.
djcmwsruiauhlwf-jpg.623486


And Elmayerle (in a post below in the same thread) talks about a "picture I saw of a modified F-100 with the gunsite radar replaced by a more capable one, resulting in a bulged radome on the top of the inlet."

In 1964, though, it appears that despite whatever testing modification 53-1601 had undergone, it was returned to a more usual look and was in service with the Connecticut ANG.
 
overscan (PaulMM) said:
Hmm, I tried F-100A 53-1601 without quotes and didn't get much but Google had done its usual recent trick of excluding the second search term 53-1601 and just given me results for F-100A on the first page. Must use quotes!
Click to expand...

Also, I generally get better results if I select "Verbatim" from the Tools section of Google Search. It should cut out most of the "Did you really mean" results that Google likes to shove in because normal users write bad searches (and because they can place more ads that way).

1712835735621.png
 
TomS said:
Also, I generally get better results if I select "Verbatim" from the Tools section of Google Search. It should cut out most of the "Did you really mean" results that Google likes to shove in because normal users write bad searches (and because they can place more ads that way).

View attachment 725197
Click to expand...
I had never noticed this "Verbatim" option until now! I generally use quotes and boolean. Thanks for the tip.
 
Stargazer said:
I had never noticed this "Verbatim" option until now! I generally use quotes and boolean. Thanks for the tip.
Click to expand...

My pleasure. I literally search Google for my day job (among many other tools) so I've learned a few ins and outs.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the same Google search terms will produce different results for different people, based on your location, past search history, etc. I seem to get better results than some other folks because I generally follow links to certain kinds of pages (high-content, less SEO, for example), so Google serves more of those in future searches.
 
Note that wedge shape in the first post photo is quite different from the second photo bulge.
 
The extended inlet “lip” is reminiscent of the proposal for a “Super Fury” (which was, of course, based on the Super Sabre) that North American put forward in the competition that resulted in the F-8 Crusader, as shown in post #91 in this thread.

I’d link it directly, but I’m on my phone and it’s not cooperating.

At any rate, it looks like North American found a design element they liked.
 
CiTrus90 said:
Flateric beat me to it, I was going to post the same link.

On the other hand, NAA was working on proposals to change the fire control radar that would have sported a similar "beak", like on the F-100J. See here for more.
djcmwsruiauhlwf-jpg.623486


And Elmayerle (in a post below in the same thread) talks about a "picture I saw of a modified F-100 with the gunsite radar replaced by a more capable one, resulting in a bulged radome on the top of the inlet."

In 1964, though, it appears that despite whatever testing modification 53-1601 had undergone, it was returned to a more usual look and was in service with the Connecticut ANG.
Click to expand...
53-1601, according to the Baugher serial number list ended up being sold to Taiwan, so it's possible the mod was done for that reason and similar to the one shown for a Japanese F-100.
 
To avoid confusion, 53-1601 saw a number of service assignments before it ended up in Taiwan, so that aspect is a red herring. Baugher's site is useful as a starting point, but is missing a lot of detail, which should be:

F-100A s/n 53-1601 for Project AMC-4F-531
Available 17Nov55
Accepted 13Dec55
Delivered 28May55
North American Inglewood 27May55 (bailment test)
Redesignated JF-100A 28Nov55
Redesignated F-100A 07Aug57
3595th Combat Crew Training Wg, Nellis AFB 09Aug57 (student and combat crew training)
Redesignated JF-100A 01Apr58
San Bernardino Air Materiel Area, Norton AFB 16Jul58 (depot work)
4520th CCTW, Nellis AFB 23Oct58 as F-100A (student and combat crew training)
Sacramento Air Materiel Area, McClellan AFB as JF-100A 16Mar59 (storage)
North American Inglewood 13Apr59 (contract work)
118th TFS, CT ANG Bradley 08Jul59
Redesignated F-100A 20Aug59
North American Inglewood 05May60 (contract work)
118th TFS CT ANG Bradley 20Jun60 (118th FIS from 03Jan62; 103rd FGp Bradley etc)
Davis Monthan 09Feb66 (storage)
North American Inglewood 06Feb70
Sacramento Air Materiel Area, McClellan AFB 10Nov70
To Military Assistance Program 08Dec70, to RoCAF as 0222

The only minor anomaly is that its 'JF' (temporary special test/TO exemption) designation was reinstated for assignment to Nellis in August 1957 despite its mission being 'student and combat crew training' at that time. It's possible that Nellis was used as a service-test location for something at that point (similar was done with Gun-Val F-86Fs at CCTWs; also TF-86F trainer), but equally it's feasible that it was done to signify that this aircraft would be TO-exempt until it could be routed to a Depot for rework/mod (done in July 1958).
 

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