Hey, Jonboy! First flight in the TA-4 – How do you like it so far?
“Taco,” a SERGRAD (ed.- a recently winged pilot retained as an IP rather than sent to the fleet straightaway) was the instructor in the back. We took off with me in control for my first front seat hop and there was a thump when the gear came up, but I didn’t know if it was a normal thump or excessive.
We went out to the working area to run through the training items and when we reached the part where I was supposed to simulate coming into the break (ed. – a hard, airspeed dissapating turn to downwind) and then dirty up downwind, the nose gear position indicator stayed barber-poled (ed – an “unsafe / not down and locked” indication).
When I raised the gear the barber-pole immediately disappeared while the main gear took some time to come up. We were sharing the working area with another TA-4 from VT-7 so we joined up and he passed me the lead so he could check us out. The nose gear door was open and the strut was visible inside the wheel well, but wasn’t coming out or moving at all when we cycled the gear.
We went through the NATOPS check list and informed base of the problem.
We burned down all the fuel in the dual drop tanks and then proceeded to burn down the fuel in the wing tank. The base crew stripped the short field arresting gear wire from the east west off duty runway while we circled overhead.
With two drop tanks, one on each wing, the NATOPS procedure was to land with the gear up, flaps down and as you can see in the picture, speed brakes open, after all the wing fuel was used to minimize the potential for fire.
Because of the modification to add a back seat to the A-4 frame, the fuselage tank in the TA-4J doesn’t hold a lot of fuel, so once the wing tank is empty, you have a relatively short time period available to land.
TACO did the landing from the back seat. He flared prior to landing and held the aircraft off for a little bit and then settled to the runway.
I had a front row seat for the landing and can still remember watching the big white stripes sliding under the nose of the jet. It reminded me of the beginning of the TV show “The Fugitive.” For a moment I was a little worried that the probe would catch one of the expansion joints and we would pole vault over, but we slowed down pretty quickly.
The drop tanks collapsed, first one and then the other and that is why we ended up just a little sideways and off centerline.
TACO shut the engine down on touchdown so once we stopped the engine was spooling down and we realized we had to unlock and open the canopy before the engine stopped turning or we would not have any hydraulic pressure.
It was a funny feeling stepping out over the side of the cockpit onto the runway. Of course the emergency crews were driving up as we were standing there, and Taco was bouncing up and down with the adrenaline rush. The corpsmen trundled us into the ambulance and off we went to the medical facility for the post mishap examinations.
I called my wife from there to let her know there had been a problem at the field and that I was all right. I was worried she would hear something about me being in a mishap from someone and get worried not knowing what happened.
It turned out that the bolt connecting the shrink link to the strut had snapped from a fatigue crack. It is impossible to see on preflight.
The nose gear strut on the Skyhawk retracts with the wheel going toward the front of the plane and the top of the strut hinged toward the back of the wheel well. As the strut is pulled up, there is a separate connecting rod called the shrink link that compresses’ the strut, pulling the wheel end aft and making the strut shorter as it comes up so it fits in the wheel well.
The bolt that snapped is located right next to the tire.
So the nose gear came all the way up into the wheel well and then the bolt broke and the strut extended straight forward into the bulkhead. They had to drain the hydraulic fluid and vent the gas from the strut and still had to use a breaker bar to pry the nose gear out of the wheel well.
One funny thing about this is that the aircraft sustained much more damage from the wheel strut extending into the forward pressure bulkhead than from the wheels up landing.
A little paint and body work and two new drop tanks would have had this “727″ back in the air. But with the bulkhead damaged, the aircraft could not maintain cabin pressure. This jet became a hangar queen for a few months until that was fixed.
Most of the “interesting” flights I’ve had have been first flights of some sort.
I told you about the first fleet squadron flight on the carrier during workups when the aircraft started rolling backwards toward the side of the boat before the engine was started.
I’ll have to tell you about my first hop in the the A-7E when the pitot tube feed came off halfway down the runway during take off.
Wooo Hooo!!! Lot’s of fun.”
Any landing you can walk away from. Nice work, Jonboy.
Hey Cap’n…
Reading this “Scooter” story reminds me—did y’all have any “Super Foxes” @ VF-45?What a great airplane…..provided of course that the slats were properly rigged.
Isn’t it a relief when you find out it wasn’t anything you did wrong?
Also – who wants to take a first hop with this guy?
I guess it was a good thing I went with a single seat aircraft then.
Surely a callsign came out of the tendency to have exciting first hops?
Speaking of which…Lex, have you written anything on callsigns and the origins of some of the more colorful ones?
Some from my days…
NAFOD (“No Apparent Fear Of Death”) ?
Surely a callsign came out of the tendency to have exciting first hops?
Speaking of which…Lex, have you written anything on callsigns and the origins of some of the more colorful ones?
Some from my days…
NAFOD (“No Apparent Fear Of Death”) – a NavCad pilot who was so-called by the LSO’s. Received in his early days, by the time I flew with him he was an excellent stick.
The Rude Asian – ½ Japanese NavCad with an extreme ability to offend whomever (of equal or lower rank) fell in his sights. He was oh-so-smooth with the higher ups.
Corpse – a capable officer in the extreme but possessing of a deadpan delivery in the extreme in social situations.
LN1 – a prior-E who was “stuck” as the sqdn legal officer ad infinitum because he was so good at it.
UB (Uncle Buck) – closely resembled John Candy’s character in the movie of the same name. (Also known as Old Man With Bad Knees).
Runt – shortest naval aviator I’ve ever seen
Darth (as in Darth Vader) – a huge F-14 NFO (XO at the time I met him)
Here is an interesting link to Naval Aviation callsigns and their origins (always interesting). Also there is a repository od sorts:
http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/media/approach/whatsyourcallsign/default.htm
Entertaining
Brian – here’s an old one on a few callsigns I’ve known.
Still love the kid named “Enya.” Heh.
Dis-Lex-ic… oh man.. that’s classic!
Howdy and Hurl did a post about their call signs. If I can find it, I’ll send you the link. It’s really cute. (Yeah. I’m sure they’d love to hear me call their call sign post “cute”, LOL)
My husband had a college roommate they all called Yobie, because that’s the sound he made when he puked after a night of drinking. “YOOOOOOOO-BIE!”
I love the “Precious” story – wonder if he managed to shed it later on.
We had a “Fluffy” in our squadron – he had a big “fluffy” behind. The stupid git fought it tooth and nail and, as you know, the more you fight the harder it sticks. CO and XO had some pitty and avoided it, but the JO’s were merciless.
Mine was “Whiz”, which had been a tag from my youth (a last-name thing) and followed me through the RAG and onto the fleet. “Walrus” was bandied about for a while when I was a nugget – seems I sorta resemble one with my mustache. I let it ride for a while and Whiz settled in as time went on. Didn’t get a sqdn name patch for my flight suit until it did, though. They should teach these things in the RAG, I mean “FRS”.
Found it!
http://camelspider.typepad.com/howdy/2005/06/callsigns.html#comments
Best callsign I ever heard: while I was an instructor in Kingsville, a USMC CAPT Kunsky. Callsign “Itchy.” Don’t think that would fly now.
Close second, a Vietnamese BN with callsign “Craw.” This guy had a pretty thick accent. Still makes me chuckle when I think about “Not da craw – da Craw!!!” If you don’t get it, watch Get Smart sometime.
You can’t outrun a callsign. Mine, Dingle (my last name is Berry), was the gift of Jet Palmatier, XO at VT-25 while I was going through the TRACOM. I thought I could outlive it by moving on to the RAG, but while on a WEPSDET down to El Centro six months later, I was out with a couple of fellow FRPs and FRBNs and walked into the Owl Cafe. Bam, there are a couple of my old VT instructors and they shouted out, “Dingle!” much to the amusement of my buddies. It stuck and when Jet was killed a few weeks later, I decided that I would wear it with honor. He was a great guy and I joined the Intruder community because of fellows like him. Nothing like a Dingles check-in on the radio!
Lex, you told us about the jui jutsu match with the O-4 from squadron “Brand X” I think we’re ready to hear the Cujo story now. Just in case, you know, you were wondering. And what about you Gents over there, Yeah you B2 & Jon boy, any interesting yarns about those monikers?
Ah, no Mark. This is a PG-13 rated blog, and the Cujo story is rated at least R. It might have to be heavily edited just to get it out of the NC-17 rating.
Besides which, that was a very long time ago, when I was quite a different person.
Well OK then, we’ll just move along, nothing to see here.
Lex, you told us about the jui jutsu match with the O-4 from squadron ?
Lex, you told us about the jui jutsu match with the O-4 from squadron “Brand X”
I don’t seem to recall that one… anybody got a link?
Funnily enough, it was that post that originally brought me to Lex, Neptunus.
And the circle of tha interweb goes on…
There was a great guy in my sister squadron on my first sea tour with the call sign “Slammer.”
It seems he got into an argument or altercation with some bouncers a long while back after tipping back a few at a watering hole and the police may have been involved with perhaps a potential short visit to a cell? Thus the callsign.
I saw him on TV last year during a news story shot at the Pentagon. He looked the same as he did 20 years ago.
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