Royal Netherlands Airforce | F-16B J-066 "Orange Jumper"

It’s nicknamed Orange Jumper because it is packed with test equipment including jumpers and cabling that are all coloured orange. Fokker built J-066 at its Schiphol Airport facility in 1989 and delivered it to the RNLAF as a normal F-16B squadron aircraft. Between 1998 and 1999, the aircraft was converted into a test aircraft at Woensdrecht Air Base to replace the F-16A, serial J-646.

“What makes the aircraft unique is that it has a state-of-the-art instrumentation system where you can plug in all the sensors you need,” says RNLAF test pilot Maj Patrick. "Nobody has such an F-16, not even the Americans. If we want to measure something, we just add some sensors. If the Americans, like us, want to measure at a large number of points, they strip a random plane empty, fill it with sensors, do the tests and write the aircraft off. They have plenty. In the next tests they take another aircraft. We have been doing this for 23 years with 066 and all its operational systems.”