Last flight Orange Jumper

On 31 March 2022, F-16BM Fighting Falcon J-066 Orange Jumper, which was a testbed for the Koninklijke Luchtmacht (KLu, Royal Netherlands Air Force) Flight Test Centre for a period of 23 years, made her last flight out of Volkel air base (Netherlands). During this last flight the Orange Jumper made some touch & go's at Eindhoven, Gilze-Rijen, Leeuwarden and her home base Volkel.

The F-16BM was delivered to the KLu on 23 June 1989 and started her career at Twenthe air base with 313 Squadron. After 313 Squadron, the dual seater was also operated by the following squadrons: 311sq, 312sq, 315sq, 623sq, 322sq and 323sq before it was used as a dedicated Mid-Life-Update (MLU) testbed. In this specific role, J-066 was operated by Kantoor Testvliegen (KLu MLU Flight Test Centre) since 1999.

The KLu Flight Test Centre was founded in the eighties and performed numerous tests for new F-16 equipment like the testing of the AGM-65 Maverick Air-to-Ground Missile (AGM) and AIM-120 AMRAAM (Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile), but also testing of new systems like the improved Head-Up-Display (HUD), a new Forward-Looking-Infra-Red (FLIR) system and finally testing of the F-16 MLU programme.

Orange Jumper was not the only test aircraft for the flight test centre. In the past, F-16s J-646, J-653 and J-655 were also used as test aircraft before J-066 finally became the testbed for this unit.

Photo by Geurt van den Berg (Scramble Archive)