DC10FE

Thanks. It was a long time ago & many brain cells have perished since then, but you don\'t think another FE would ever lie or exaggerate, do you? Never mind -- rhetorical satire. Thanks for clearing it up, though. Don R.

bobsoc, are you sure it was a Lockheed crew on 74-1683? It was a Dyess airplane & I seem to remember one of the FE\'s there talking about being on that crew. I wasn\'t at Dyess at the time; I got there about 3 years after the crash, but the FE was still there. Don R.

Does anyone out there have any photos of 64-0550 (4045) @ Naples when it broke off one of the main gear assemblies (left, I think) after a screwed up landing? This was in the late 70\'s or early 80\'s. It sat there for a long time before flying out. All I remember of the crew were the co-pilot was Bill Beale & the FE was Billy Legg. I had a line on some pics a couple of years ago, but it didn\'t work out. Thanks in advance. Don R.

Interesting, but where & when? Don R.

Skip, Thanks -- that was too cool. I\'m an old fart & even I hadn\'t heard of some of those bases. Don R.

Actually, my best TDY after getting to Langley in 1963 was a 2-month TDY to the Civil Engineer Squadron. It was like a 2-month base clean-up, except all I did was drive a farm tractor pulling a huge lawn mower. There I was, a young 19-year old 1-striper cutting grass all over the base, but my favorite place was the Capehart base housing -- all those teenaged girls out of school for summer vacation. Per diem sucked, though. Don R.

I\'m afraid I can remember a couple of FE\'s at Rhein Main who would rather break an airplane & have the mechanics bust their butts on a cold, miserable German winter early morning while he sits in ops drinking coffee & bragging about his feat. I won\'t print any names, but CB comes to mind. I don\'t mind flying a broke airplane -- I just don\'t like surprises. Tell me the truth; I can handle it!!!! Just remember, if you ever take your FE skills into the world of commercial aviation, you ain\'t gonna get paid if you ain\'t flying -- except for your guarantee. And, if you break too many planes for chicken-s**t squawks, you ain\'t gonna have a job either! OK, I\'m stepping down from the soapbox now. Don R.

Question. I was at Dyess back in 1974 when we started to pick up the H-models & integrate them into the E-model fleet. At that time, the FE was required to carry two -1\'s & two -1-1\'s for the two different models. Did you guys at Yokota have that problem too? The pilots had a hard time not overtorqing the -15\'s at first. Unlike the civilian world where the FE sets the power, the pilot would push the power up & the FE would call out the torque. Many times I remember saying \"15, 17, pull \'em back.\" Don R.

Just as an FYI on ballast fuel, if we had to ferry an empty DC-10 freighter & we didn\'t have ballast pallets (we never did), 50,000# of ballest fuel had to be carried in the aux tank for w & b. That\'s more than half the BOW for a C-130! I had the hardest time getting used to the big numbers on the 10 compared to the Herc. Don R.

Thanks, US. It\'s pretty confusing since, in Lars\' book, they\'re designated as C.1 (original C-130), C.3 (stretched model) & a \"P\" suffix for IFR capability. I\'ve been told by a friend that the \"P\" was dropped after they were all modified. \"Slightly\" being the key word there? Don R.

jbob, Actually, on the DC-10 freighter, the only time the cockpit crew knew what was in the back was if there was hazmat back there. By the time we got to the airplane, it was usually already loaded & the fire curtain & 9G net were up. Once in a while, just out of curiosity, I\'d ask the load what we were hauling. Commercial aviation is a whole different world from military flying. Don R.

This isn\'t really Herc related although I\'m sure there are some Guard & Reserve pilots out there who are also airline pilots; also retired active duty. I just received the followng from a retired DC-10 captain friend of mine. It says a lot about today\'s airlines. Don R. In the age of the 707 and the CV-880 Those were the good ole days. Pilots back then were men that didn\'t want to be women or girlymen. Pilots all knew who Jimmy Doolittle was. Pilots drank coffee, whiskey, smoked cigars and didn\'t wear digital watches. They carried their own suitcases and brain bags like the real men that they were. Pilots didn\'t bend over into the crash position multiple times each day in front of the passengers at security so that some TSA inspector could probe for tweezers or fingernail clippers or too much toothpaste. Pilots did not go through the terminal impersonating a caddy pulling a bunch of golf clubs, computers, guitars and feed bags full of tofu and granola on a sissy-trailer with no hat and granny glasses hanging on a pink string around their pencil neck while talking to their personal trainer on the cell phone!!! Being an Airline Captain was as good as being The King in a Mel Brooks movie. All the Stewardesses (aka. Flight Attendants) were young, attractive, single women that were proud to be combatants in the sexual revolution. They didn\'t have to turn sideways, grease up and suck it in to get through the unlocked cockpit door. They would blush and say thank you when told that they looked good, instead of filing a sexual harassment claim. Junior Stewardesses shared a room and talked about men -- with no thoughts of substitution. Passengers wore nice clothes and were polite, they could speak AND understand English. They didn\'t speak gibberish or listen to loud gangsta rap on their IPods. They bathed and didn\'t smell like a rotting pile of garbage in a jogging suit and flip-flops. Children didn\'t travel alone, commuting between trailer parks. There were no Mongol hordes asking for a \"mu-fuggin\" seatbelt extension or a Scotch and grapefruit juice cocktail with a twist. If the Captain wanted to throw some offensive, ranting jerk off the airplane, it was done without any worries of a lawsuit or getting fired. Axial flow engines crackled with the sound of freedom and left an impressive black smoke trail like a locomotive burning soft coal. Jet fuel was cheap and once the throttles were pushed up they were left there, after all it was the jet age and the idea was to go fast (run like a lizard on a hardwood floor). Economy cruise was something in the performance book, but no one knew why or where it was. When the clacker went off no one got all tight and scared because Boeing built it out of iron, nothing was going to fall off and that sound had the same effect on real pilots then as Viagra does now for these new age guys. There was very little plastic and no composites on the airplanes or the Stewardesses\' pectoral regions. Airplanes and women had eye pleasing symmetrical curves, not a bunch of ugly vortex generators, ventral fins, winglets, flow diverters, tattoos, rings in their nose, tongues and eyebrows. Airlines were run by men like C.R. Smith and Juan Trippe who had built their companies virtually from scratch, knew most of their employees by name and were lifetime airline employees themselves -- not pseudo financiers and bean counters who flit from one occupation to another for a few bucks, a better parachute or a fancier title while fervently believing that they are a class of beings unto themselves. And so it was back then -- and never will be again.

Does anyone know if the RAF C.1P\'s & C.3P\'s kept their designations when they were sold to Austria (3), Mexico(4) & Sri Lanka(2). Or did these countries revert back to the C-130K designation? Thanks, Don R.

Neither have I. Any hints, besides having to buy a C-17? Don R.

For you guys in the commercial world, this may interest you. Last Monday (9/1/08), Swiss captain Urs Anderegg died in a plane crash after departing Rickenbacker International, Ohio. At the time, he was flying a Convair 580 for Air Tahoma. He started his career in American commercial aviation as a DC-8 FO & then a Herc captain for Transamerica. I met him in Khartoum, Sudan in 1985 when we were flying famine relief flights with St. Lucia Airways. I flew with him again in Angola in 1991 when we were flying for Frameair. I also flew with him in 1988 when we flew an A-model out of the boneyard at Davis Monthan AFB to Tucson International. The other 2 crewmembers on the Convair were James Monahan & Sean Gardiner. He was a grumpy old fart (58 years old), but a good pilot. He\'ll be missed. Don R.

I was talking with my neighbor yesterday evening. He retired 2 years ago as a MSgt 702 (admin type) after 23 years. We were talking about TDY\'s & he said that, besides professional military schools, he had been TDY just one time in his whole military career of flying a typewriter & opening & closing file cabinet drawers -- & that was a 2-month TDY to Ramstein a year before his retirement!! Now, this will be difficult for the dinosaurs on this board, but it got me thinking -- do you remember your first TDY? Mine was in 9/64 from Langley to Sewart to get the forward cargo door of our B-model permanently sealed up. My crew chief was TSgt Stanley Craft & I was so green, I didn\'t even know I had to file a travel voucher! This was before I knew about Airmen\'s Clubs & beer. My first night there, I went to the base theater & saw The Beatles in \"Hard Day\'s Night.\" Don R.

OK, here ya go. 07-1468 (5594) 07-4635 thru 4640 (5595 thru 5600) BuNo 167923 & 924 (5590 & 5591) Don R.

Thanks Jake, I guess it was one of those stories that got started over some beers in the hotel lounge. Don R.

Many, many, many years ago, I was told by a Southern Air Transport FE that they had one Herc that had neither the AC Inst & Fuel Cont inverter nor the Co-pilots AC Inst inverter installed. Can any old SAT or Transamerica guys confirm that story? Or if you\'re really, really old, maybe it was an old Saturn Herc? Don R.

I\'ve received that joke in emails with a lot of different punch lines, but the best & most believable is that he\'s a retired Southwest pilot! Don R.

Duncan, Thanks for the reply. The Belgians are a great bunch of guys. I worked with them a bit back in the 80\'s in the Sudan. BTW, what ever happened to Frank V. there at CAE? Don R.

Ooops! You\'re right, Bob. I guess it was during my second tour @ Rhein Main -- 1977 to 1983. Or, like Hush suggested, maybe it was just a long night at the Legion. Don R.

I seem to remember when I was stationed at Rhein Main back in the late 1960\'s, there was an all-female C-141 crew on the stateside air evac. The problem was that they got disoriented (lost) on the way home & had to be escorted by fighters. Of course, this could\'ve happened no matter what the gender of the crew -- just too bad it was all females. Anyone else remember that incident? Don R.

My two cents -- In my 7 years flying for Transafrik, I averaged changing at least one tire per month; usually on a dirt strip in the rain, and we didn\'t carry mechanics. Steve1300 is correct, the jack will usually go down before the airplane goes up. I have no idea what Transafrik used as tire pressures, but I\'d bet no one there even had an air pressure gauge. Here\'s a photo of a rare one on a paved airport at Malange, Angola. Don R. [img size=1200]http://herkybirds.com/images/fbfiles/images/Malange.JPG

Bill, I thought the Belgians had their own sim at Brussels. That\'s the one that Transafrik uses. Don R.