CoolPix: Was The F-15 Originally Intended To Land On Skids?

(click pic for hi-res)

 So, was the F-15 originally intended to land on skids? Well of course not. But then what's going on in this NASA pic from the mid 70's? It's actually an unmanned, Remotely Piloted Research Vehicle (RPRV) that's an un-powered, mostly fiberglass 3/8 scale model of the F-15. The RPRV was used to test the aerodynamics of the design at high angles of attack, as well as in stalls and in spins. The airplanes were launched from a B-52 similar to how the X-1 and X-15 were launched. 

 Three of these 3/8 sized F-15 models were built, and as you can imagine, they were an extremely cheap and safe way to expand the design's flight envelope and to examine the extreme aerodynamic behavior with very little risk. It's really interesting to me that the early flight tests were recovered in-the-air by some sort of helicopter capture system, after a parachute deployed on the RPRV (wish we had pix of that!), but later in the test phase they had fitted these toy F-15's with skids and landed them as seen in the pic above.

 Be sure to click the pic to check it out in the big CoolPix size. I think it looks pretty cool with its shadow fast approaching. And I wonder where these baby F-15's are today... I sure don't know, but I did find this pic from 1978 of the airplane mounted on a B-52 when it was on display during an open house at Edwards. If you're interested in seeing more B-52 launch platform pix, check out this page from the Goleta Air and Space Museum, and you can get the NASA details on the F-15 RPRV on this page. It's all pretty cool stuff : )