Got this note from a reader earlier in the week, and thought the crowd might also be curious about the response:
Question: You’ve mentioned your days of flying adversaries twice today. This reminded of a couple of questions I’ve been meaning to ask you. Did you fly only one type of adversary (A-4,F-5,F-16) each tour, or assignment…not sure on the proper term, or were you qualified to fly all of the jets at both Key West and Fallon? How long did it take to become qualifed in the jet(s) before actually flying as an instructor?
Answer: We had three types of bogie jets at Key West, the A-4E Skyhaw, the F-16N Falcon and the F-5E Tiger II. For the first year or so, new aviators only flew the A-4, which was a very similar aircraft to the one we had flown in training, the TA-4J. At the one year mark, having “paid your dues,” you got transition training through the Air Force in the F-16. Once you started training in a new aircraft, that was the only one you flew until you were fully adversary qualified in it – a matter of maybe two months training. Finally, at the 1.5 year mark on a three-year tour, you qualified in the F-5. It wasn’t that the F-5 was more complicated than the F-16, or A-4, to the contrary in fact. It’s just that it was the last type of aircraft the squadron received, and so when it arrived only the more senior pilots flew it. The pattern perpetuated.
Every Monday morning the pilots would have to take a boldface – immediate action – test in every jet we were qualified for before we could go flying. After a couple of years, it got to be quite the blizzard. Fortunately, the philosophy of the USAF, which had written the flying manuals for both the F-16 and the F-5, was to put only those things you absolutely had to get right from memory on boldface. The Navy, for whatever reason, seems to have a more expansive definition of what must be memorized.
“The Navy, for whatever reason, seems to have a more expansive definition of what must be memorized.”
A bunch of us were standing around in maintenance control one morning in McMurdo Station Antarctica looking out the big window–cold outside nice and toasty inside– that overlooked the helo pad. We were watching the maintenance officer begin a functional check flight. When he started up, the rotor brake–which is mounted almost directly over the pilots head–caught fire. Pretty exciting stuff. The plane captain, good lad that he was, made the appropriate fire signal and rushed in with the fire bottle, the maintenance officer did an emergency shutdown and egress– I assume perfectly correctly. But when he left the helo in something of a hurry he forgot to unplug his pigtail. If you’ve ever seen a dog run full speed and hit the end of his chain you know the effect I’m talking about. And right in front of a bunch of witnesses. Since nobody got hurt and no real damage was done it was oh so funny
The QAO said that at the next UH-1N NATOPS conference he was going to reccommend making UNPLUG PIGTAIL a boldface item.
Craig, I know exactly the effect you describe, but could you please define in this context “pigtail”?
Dave,
The pigtail is the radio/ics cord that plugs into the back of the helmet. The connection is robust so it won’t come loose too easily and the cord is coiled like a telephone handset cord–hence the name.
“expansive definition”
Rich.
B2