US Herk

Tiny - devastated to hear of this - you and your family are in our thoughts

I see 567 every day this week as I drive past her for sim refresher! Glad she will be preserved, sad they're going away, and hopefull the Obama administration will pull funding for MC-J and keep the MC-E alive beyond 2015!!! ;)

What is it now...15 years since the new name? ;) :D

They took 'em all off a while back...freaky - have to look closely to tell it's a Talon now! That IDANG flash would've really thrown me... Sad day, indeed.

We are who we are today because of them....never forgotten

They were actually briefing that last year. No sh*t.

Bingo. Recently someone did some "close" formation, pics were taken and appeared on facebook w/in hours. W/in a few more hours, very direct....directions....were given to remove them - in case anyone saw them. "What if someone at HQ saw?" :eek:

I thought the Polish Herks got refurbed CWB - not replaced - think it gave them something like 18K EBH to play with...but don't quote me on the number.

A somber day yesterday. We formed up for retreat in front of the squadron, by the prop; members of the 7th SOS and 25th IOS. Afterwards, we went to the squadron bar and enjoyed some Guinness and stories. Sons of the Seventh - you are not forgotten. A couple of guys are running the USMC Marathon & raising money for SOWF in memory of Wrath 11: http://www.firstgiving.com/runningforwrath11

Today (it's after midnight here) marks the 5th anniversary of the loss of Wrath 11, an MC-130H, in the mountains of Albania. Two MC-130H pilots are planning on running the USMC marathon next Oct and trying to raise money for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation in memory of Wrath 11. They have a very high goal - I hope you guys will take a moment to look over their website: http://www.firstgiving.com/runningforwrath11 SOWF is an exceptional charity that pays for the education of the children of Special Operations troops who have paid the ultimate price. Sons of the Seventh - you are not forgotten!

The classic Herk answer is - it depends. If it's cold enough outside to be able to overtorque, we call torque. If not, we call TIT. Of course, there are some mandatory TIT calls these days....

Nope - I was at the 15th at the time. Grimey (one time APS dude, later LM) was one of the dudes that invented it...

TRIADS was indeed invented by the LMs at 7 SOS and the Aerial Port SQ there at Rein Mein in the mid-90s.

The Austrians are flying 3 x former RAF C-130K w/probe, but are not refuelling to my knowledge.

Nope - I'm in the UK right now - sounds correct to me! :D

AFSOC tested some aimed primarily at FARP operations - wasn't super successful - lots of bleed-over onto radios and other issues - sounded like they were in a tin can too. I'm sure technology has evolved enough since the mid-late '90s when this was tested - would be good to have.

As a Herk pilot at the time of Jackson Hole, albeit just a Co-Pilot, I could've gotten out of Jackson Hole w/out knowing a thing about the Trouble-T. I would've done what I did at EVERY airfield - looked at a terminal area chart, figured out the terrain, figured out the best way out of the terrain, and come up with a climb gradient from that. If I couldn't meet that, I'd find a good place to spiral up. It's not hard. The knee-jerk to Jackson Hole was compounded by the Ron Brown crash shortly after. USAF pilots obviously don't know anything about flying instruments was the conclusion. Yes, there are politics involved - particularly with the Ron Brown crash. And I agree with your assessment of pragmatic operators and out of touch desk jockeys. At AIS, the departure classes was taught by a friend of mine - we went to college together and were commissioned together. He was a C5 guy by trade originally. And as we discussed and debated things - particularly using the weather mins (as all other aircraft operators are allowed to) or climbing in VMC to an MEA, his response was surprising to me; "We're just worried you'll see what you hit." As if the obstacles are a solid wall that if I can't meet the climb gradient, I'm going to hit. Maybe in the C5 world where the bulk of them never fly VFR and the missions are overwhelmingly trash-haul, they don't understand flying looking outside because they just don't do it. It's as foreign to them as acrobatics in a C5 are. It's unthinkable. But low-level flight is part of the Herk DNA. It's all about the training. Risk mitigation isn't about avoiding risk alone; which is the standard answer when someone doesn't understand something. Sometimes, the things we do are riskier and the only way to mitigate it is to do it. For example, in AFSOC we fly at 100' for specific things. We mitigate that by having a training requirement to do it frequently. Similarly, I can plan a mission into/out-of an airfield w/o any regard for weather because of specific equipment and specific training. Is a Cat II ILS more dangerous than a CAT I? Not if you have the equipment and training. Departures from unfamiliar fields are the same thing. I can't meet most climb gradients, so I have to be able to think & plan my way out of fields. I have some extra toys on my plane that help sometimes, but not always. I'm trained to know when. I practice it. That's how we mitigate risk. The continual sacrifice of capability on the altar of safety has got to stop or we'll one day wake up and decide it's even safer if we don't fly at all. That's why 20 years is enough. ;)

4th Generation Monkeys is not necessarily a derogative term. It's a well-established social-reaction to established procedures. The term '4th generation monkey' comes from how the behavior is described. If you take 4 monkeys, put them in a room, and place some bananas in the center, they will naturally go toward the food. When they do this, you spray them down with a fire hose. As you do this over and over, you teach them that if they go to the bananas, they'll get hosed. They learn this and if one of the monkeys tries to go toward the food, eventually the other monkeys will beat him to keep from getting the fire hose sprayed on them. After that conditioning, you replace a single monkey. As he hasn't ever received the fire hose, he doesn't know not to go near the bananas. Once he does, the other monkeys beat him until he learns not to go for the bananas or he gets beaten. Once this conditioning occurs, you change out yet another original monkey. The process for the first replacement monkey repeats itself, to include the replacement monkey beating the second replacement monkey - even though he's never been fire hosed - he just knows not to go near the bananas. And so you can replace each of the original monkeys, in turn, and the same process happens, so that by the time you get to the 4th generation monkey, he will still be beaten and none of those doing the beating will have ever received the fire hose treatment. The behavior will continue long after the water supply to the fire hose is removed, the hose thrown away, and the people manning it die. The behavior continues w/o reason. And so it is with the military. We do much because "that's how we've always done it". I'm a big fan of asking the WHY behind the WHAT, but I seem to be in the minority most days. It doesn't mean that I'm trying to buck the system necessarily, simply that I want to understand why I'm doing what I'm doing so I may do it better. But the military favors conformity over uniqueness and despite lip service to the contrary, really doesn't know how to integrate "out of the box" thinking. So, my remarks that the current AIS instructors are 4th generation monkeys means nothing more than they've been taught that Jackson Hole was bad and the Herk guys at Dyess (at least, maybe most USAF pilots) didn't know what a Trouble-T was or how to find out about it. My point is simply that that alone does not make them unsafe, which is the message they send (we must know Trouble-Ts in order to not crash planes). More often than not, there are plenty of ways to depart an airport safely - even if you can't meet a single parameter on the Trouble-T departure procedure. Much of it is common sense, but we tend to legislate ourselves into corners and remove decision making from crews because they might make mistakes. Not a dig, just an observation after 18+ years of flying. It is what it is. KJ - thanks for your service, thanks for your time at AIS and AFFSA - that's a hugely important job that is often on the receiving end of quite a bit of ire by line Aicrew (myself included). Education is important - it's one of the best tools we have to prevent accidents. But what most of us dislike is the knee-jerk over-reactions that tend to occur because someone in authority feels the need to do something. I always say, good people execute good procedures poorly at times. Often, they're executed poorly enough that they're unrecoverable. This should not reflect poorly on the crews OR the procedures!

...and common sense.

There are plenty of 115V outlets to use.... But, no, never used any of the 28V outlets - never could find a plug that fit...

AMC "WE" - JP8 came out shortly before I upgraded to AFSOC. ;)

I believe, yes. We always used to LSGI prior to shutdown, we just didn't wait 2 minutes. Downspeed, stabilize, shut down. I only remember this because of the NTS lite - if we didn't get it on shutdown from LSGI, we had to crank it back up and shut down in NGI to see if we got the light.

Even w/o Mode C, it would have still shown up (just w/o any relative altitude) - and would then prompt the crew to start looking...of course, if they knew the Cobra was there, they would likely have assumed it was the Cobra and he would remain clear.... They don't need to - the Herk had it. The Herk would've seen the Cobra if he had his IFF on at all, and seen relative altitude if he had his Mode C on. I got an RA of a KC135 just yesterday - in the pattern! :D

One word: Money & control OK, two words... :D

The airflow and control surfaces doesn't jive with me - the MC-130E/H/W have the high speed tail and the only structural change I'm aware of is the doubling of the longeron - no changes on control surfaces or trim tabs....