Thirty good years.
And counting!
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Targets of Opportunityblog advertising is good for you Credo"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones "Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra" "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche "A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier "Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas "Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex Amazon AssociateFor the Effort!Winnar! Subscribe CategoriesPagesTagsacademy
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Is that counting it’s time as the YF-17 as well?
A close personal fiend of mine flew the YF-17. Interesting how the development of the “other aircraft” in the competition became such a robust performer.
9 June 1974 was YF-17 first flight according to wickedpedia. (for SSG Jeff(USAR)
Nice. Looks like a fighter, only smaller.
It can’t have been that long. It seems like only yesterday that yours truly and Snuffy (Sir Snuffy) Smith cajoled Byron Duff during his CQ aboard America in the F/A-18. It was our first experience with the Hornet. Somehow we all made it through, and I loved every minute of it.
xxbradc, good to see you commenting again.
xairboss,
When was that? My airwing (CVW-1) was on the AMERICA when His Snuffiness answered to “Captain.” (1985 – IIRC). My rememberer is rather foggy on when Snuffy left and Sweetpea took over.
Snuffy & Sweetpea? My mental picture is hilarious.
I was on a cross-country passing through Tinker years ago, and the YF-17 was parked on the line, just returning from England. I asked the driver if I could take close look, and he replied “You can do anything you want with it. No one seems to want the damn thing.”
Snuffy & Sweetpea? My mental picture is hilarious.
Thats how they used to address each other on the SATCOM
Oh well, it met a better fate than the F-20 Tigershark, eh?
In 1984, I had to fly home to Dayton Ohio for a family funeral. On short final into Vandalia airport, the driver of our 737 came on the intercom and said we had been asked to do a quick 360 because another aircraft was making an emergency landing.
After he reefed it around in an impressively tight circle, we settled back onto final and landed uneventfully. As rolled out on the runway, we went past the one-and-only bright-red-and-white Tigershark sitting on a taxiway, obviously having rolled to a dead stop there.
The pilot had dismounted and was alternating between kicking the nosewheel vigorously, and waving to us in apology for our inconvenience.
I never read anything about the incident, but as I was attending a traumatic family funeral, I did not look into it, either, and it was only a few years ago that I suddenly recalled it with clarity.
Yak:
We must have been shipmates. I relieved Dick Davis as Boss and left a month or so after the Libya strike. Were you there for my going away monologue about “The Great Grey Elephant Who Swam In The Sea”?
I think Sweetpea relieved Sir Snuffy in early 85.
I remember looking the Hornet over at the Nav Air 75th Anniversary Air Show at Miramar in 84. It had the same white, blue and gold paint scheme as the Revelle model I had built a few years earlier. The F-20 was there as well, but it had the grey paint scheme with the white lettering. This was right about the time Gen. Yeager was doing his AC-Delco tour with the F-20. I have never been a big fan of the Hornet. I don’t like a computer in the plane telling me what’s wrong with it. It’s not like anything can go wrong……go wrong……go wrong…
Jim, it’s getting where you can’t fly an airplane without the ‘lectron eaters any more.
Developed from a plane that lost…..to the F-16? I was at the Flying Beagles in 1985 getting my airframes systems training in the Venerable A-7E Corsair II FFT Atkron One Four Seven. I had a former Swordsmen buddy in the stinkers of vfa-113. He had nothing but lavish praise for the Hornet. He was a jet mech and stated with a trained shop he could wap an engine in less than 30 minutes. I still wonder, Is this after the computer tells him to swap the engine?
Intruders forever!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It isn’t the computers that worry me, it is our dependance on them that has me concerned.
On one of our deployments we had to change both engines on one of our Sea Kings due to their being high time. We ordered two engines from AIMD and spent the day changing them over. The next day one of the engines failed its PMCF because of a power turbine overspeed condition. We then had to replace that engine. Next PMCF the other engine had a fuel control issue and needed replacement. This went on and on until the ship was out of engines. Eventually we ended up rotating engines beteween helos. When we would bring one down for 28 day corrosion inspection, we would pull it’s engines and put them into the helo coming out of 28 day. Lots of extra work all around. Later we found out that there was a glitch in one of the “black boxes” that controlled the test cell. There was nothing wrong with the engines. The AIMD techs adjusted them so that they ran good in the test cell, but the test cell was setting them to the wrong parameters and the aircraft’s instrumentation was reading them as being bad.
There was no one on the ship who could check the test cell, the problem was found when we pulled into port and the test cell itself failed it’s regular check-up by civilian techs.
Sure it might take less time to change the engine on a Hornet, but what happens when you run out of engines? Nobody at the squadron level can repair an engine, they can only change them out. The engines have to go to Depot level or back to the manufacturer for repair. What happens if we have a Carrier in a position where re-supplying it becomes a problem and we can’t get those repaired parts to the squadrons?
I have seen pictures of engines being totally rebuilt on WWII carriers and have heard of Machinist Mates making needed components from raw materials. We no longer have that capability. We have become too reliant on civilian Tech Reps and manufacturer support teams.
Yes, the computer on the Hornet can tell me whats wrong with the plane, but what if the computer is the problem?
Following on Jim Collins about being at the mercy of the tech reps, During the height of the war in Vietnam every F-4 Wing in SEA had a Litton tech rep attached to keep the INS tweeked. Imagine my surprise upon leaving SEA and arriving in USAFE that we had only ONE Tech rep for all of the Continent and England combined–worked out of a Recce-tech Wing at RAF Alconbury. When that guy left it was SIX MONTHS before his replacement was on board, leaving zero coverage. In SEA the parameters were
+or- 5NM allowable INS deviation; in USAFE sometimes it was as bad as + or – FIFTEEN (15)! ………..Nothing like leaping out in the middle of the night in a blinding snowstorm if WIII begins on a nuke strike msn knowing that you had a 4-NM error factor to avoid our own nuke strikes to get to your tgt, but your bird’s INS had a 15NM deviation factor!
Wait till JSF comes out in numbers and Hornet pilots will be in the same position Tomcat pilots were in the late 90′s and 2000′s. Step-children…………..
Phantoms Phorever!
Mr. Collins: If I’m reading right: your computer was saying engines were bad, so you were rotating one set of engines.
Were those engines reading okay on your bad computer?
uhhhh, Sea Kings? As in T58s? Alth0ugh some of the point (about reliance/dependence on computers) is not lost on me, nor is the fact that that we’re still flying some pretty old aircraft in all the services, we’re WAY beyond worrying exceesively about reliances on smart boxes, smart aircraft, systems etc. Leaps and bounds even. Ghosts in the machines or not, we’re there and moving forward. Sometimes more complex is not more better, but: check out some of those videos of thrust vectoring/high AOA, AIM-9X flying off the wing with JHMCS, etc at profiles never thought possible.
And Jim, no disrespect intended. My first sqd was SH-3Ds. Loved that angel. ASW and life-saving; quite a mission mix.
No. Spade. The measuring instruments on the engine test cell were bad. When the engine’s fuel control was adjusted to bring it into the proper range, it was actually being mis-adjusted. When it was installed into the aircraft, the aircraft’s instruments showed the mis-adjustment. Without knowing that the test cell was bad, it was assumed that the engines were defective.
None taken bc.
Naturally Lex is gonna link to an official Navy foto of the bird, but a little bit of surfing the plane pr0n sites turned up this:
http://www.pbase.com/gwetzel/image/106105982.jpg
BeachBum:
NICE pic, FSH!!!
Spaz: Don’t laugh about Snuffy. He was a product of LA (lower Alabama) and could lull you into thinking that he had just fallen off of a passing turnip truck. In reality, he was a very smart NA graduate, talented pilot, and very funny man. We call him Sir Snuffy because he was knighted by HRH ElizabethII for his leadership during the Bosnia thing. Someday, I’ll share a few Sweetpea stories with you. Boss.
E Yat (I’m Yat to figa out what that means) I’ll look forward to tall tales & true re Sweetpea. Sir Snuffy must be a hoot.
xairboss,
I was a Mauler from March 1985 until February 1987. Assistant Ops and Training. Also was the S-3 rep attached to the FOF-3 staff aboard HMS ILLUSTRIOUS for Ocean Safari 85, so I missed all that flying. I don’t remember being a Tower Flower as a Mauler, I do remember CATCC watches, tho. If you did your speech during Forecastle Follies I was there. Did you leave when we were in Cannes?
That port visit sucked (not!).
Yak, I left a month or so after Cannes. My speech was at my going away dinner in the Ward Room. Sorry you missed it.
Spaz, E Yat is short for Electronic Yat. A Yat is a term use to refer to people raised in certain parts of New Orleans, my home town. Instead of greeting a fellow New Orlenian with “Hi, how are you” we say “where y’at” (Where you at). The proper response is “awrite” (all right). Almost as easy as understanding some of the terms in “Waltzing Matilda”. Bad bob added the electronic part in honor of my past Prowler history. G’day mate.