https://azurpolygroup.com/s-2ft-tracker-project-reveal/
AzurPoly has posted an announcement on their website that they are developing a 2024-native Grumman S2F-T Tracker. No ETA yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
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More Grummans, more better!
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That’s cool. I kind of wish they’d build it as the S-2B with P&W radials instead of the T model with the turbines.
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I would prefer the radials too. Maybe they could offer both versions in the package. That would be great.
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They have direct access to the French Sécurité Civile plane that is in Pilotfirst9999’s photo. Makes it much easier for them to model.
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I hope we can use it for firefighting in career mode 
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Didn’t think of that. Of course you’re right.
This has got me excited indeed. I’m an old (sorry very old) avionics techie that worked on S2Es. They were an absolute nightmare avionics maintenance wise over a hundred boxes if I recall. I never got a flight in one which I would have loved but hey ho this is going to be the next best thing.
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What avionics did they use, Loran or Omega or just analog, and were they ever updated in their service life with anything else?
To be honest I don’t remember Loran or Omega. I am going back to late 60’s and very early 70s. Back then we had only analogue systems. The high end of sophistication back then were TACAN and SMADF. Most of the kit was for ASW detection. This is going to sound crazy but there was a system called SNIFFER. We had to fill it with distilled water and it literally used to sniff the air for impurities. i.e. diesel fumes from snorkelliing subs. Not sure how effective it was. Pretty useless against a nuke.
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That’s really interesting. I have never heard of SNIFFER before. I think that was during the era where many subs were still diesel and on the road to being replaced by Nukes. I guess it works a bit like cadaver dogs who can “sniff” body fats from underneath the water that corpses emit.
Sorry to ask, what is SMADF?
If I remember correctly SMADF stood for SMall or Sub Miniature (something like that) ADF. It used to home in (wait for it) on commercial civilian medium wave stations. If i understood it correctly the SNIFFER would draw in air and “bubble” it through the purified water and shine a light to try discover contaniments (soot if you like).
When you mentioned Loran it got me thinking wasn’t that a very old system. I think I saw that once on a DC3. Had a moving paper map or something. Thought it was cutting edge tech at the time, which it probably was.
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Loran and Omega were hyperbolic nav systems. Decca (a WW2 development in the UK) preseded Omega (which uses VLF radio waves) and which was a patent grab by the US Military from the Decca system (There was a court case, in fact 2 about this).
Loran (or Long Range navigation) used frequencies around 100KHz, started off as Loran -A and became Loran-C. It was used by shipping and airliners and decommissioned in the 1990’s.
Omega Used only 8 stations around the world. They had these massively tall towers with a range of up to 2000 miles.
Decca that was the moving paper map thing and what we had on a couple of our DC3s. I was in the UK at that time with FAA. You’re starting to jog the the ancient brain cells. UK of course didn’t have Trackers that was with my time with the Australians at HMAS Albatross Nowra NSW. They’d just taken deliver when I was relocated there in 1969 along with the A4s.
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Yes, the paper “flight log”. A pictorial representation of the flight path.
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I would have also preferred the radial engine version (they used to do circuits over my house when I was a kid), but I have no doubt this version will also be a ton of fun.
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Russia, and the Chinese and North Koreans more so, had quite a few diesel subs back in the day if I remember correctly.
Regarding P&W vs TP, obviously, development of the two would be quite different, so I wouldn’t expect both to be in the same package. But, yes, I’d personally prefer the radial S2’s etc., with carrier launch and landing capability. But this model will make a lot of career fire fighters happy.
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