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jflimbach

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Everything posted by jflimbach

  1. N119TG has been flying since last fall and did the vehicle airdrops for the filming of "Fast & Furious 7" in October and filmed a segment for Top Gear a couple months ago. Both at Coolidge, AZ.
  2. I dropped a cow or two out the C-123 sans parachute
  3. I was assigned straight out of C-123's in Vietnam to the 4419th Test Sqdn., USAF Tactical Airlift Center at Pope, arriving in March of 1968. We had one aircraft, 63-7768, which only we could fly and best of all, the Wing did the maintenance of which we had the highest priority. Now, I had never set foot on a C-130 before, except once back in 1961 as a passenger. This didn't seem to faze any of the powers that be in the Sqdn, so they sent me off with a couple of experienced LMs to do the final two test drops of the 10,000 lb bomb drop, known in those days as "Combat Trap". These were tests of the rigging and platform cutaway and used a "shape" that conformed to the size and mass balance properties of the 10K bomb. The program was designed to use 10,000 lbs that had been produced for the B-36. These were never used, and were stored in caves somewhere in the southwest. New Mexico is what I recall. At any rate, the drops went fine and the system was cleared for use. One of our crews was going over to Vietnam to demonstrate it using a real bomb. The next problem was that when they went looking for the bombs, they couldn't find them. Took a couple months of searching before they came to light. And of course the rest is history. The system worked so well that they used up all the 10K bombs in no time and went on the produce the BLU-82. Once they started making instant LZs they quickly discovered that there was no resistance once you cleared some jungle with a big bomb and it didn't take a genius to figure out you could have lots fun dropping it on concentrations of enemy troops. Down the road the operational program name was changed to "Commando Vault".
  4. The MT ANG F-15 pilots must be thrilled!
  5. Dropped live cows from C-123s to Special Forces A-Teams WITHOUT parachutes from about 50 feet. No refrigeration, so no storage needed. Really tenderized them. After a journalist reported this in the states, the PC police stepped in and made us use crates and parachutes. Which got them safely to the ground whereupon they were promptly dispatched with a handy .45. Was easier on us loadmasters because they were a real bitch to tip off the end of the ramp, blindfold not withstanding.
  6. Before the C-130, it was done with C-119s.
  7. Bob: I was down in Greybull a couple months ago checking out a couple of the Hercs. 57-0511 is still there. It was apparently flown directly from PDM to Davis-Monthan. H&P got it from D-M but never installed a retardant tank in it but used it as a pilot pro trainer, then parked it. The cargo compartment is pristine, even after sitting all these years. Looks as if it just rolled off the line at Marietta. Don't remember the tail number of the one I was checking into (57-0511 was parked next to it). N119TG (ex 57-0520, Tanker 88) is painted in the traditional IAR colors with a little different sweep to the blue cheat line where it ends at the cockpit. Also it has no contrasting wingtip & vertical stabilizer flashes. Looks like this: [ATTACH=CONFIG]3775[/ATTACH] Here's a picture of IAR's N121TG (ex 56-0511) in its present paint scheme. It's now based in Singapore on oil spill dispersal duty. This is the only aircraft with that paint scheme. [ATTACH=CONFIG]3774[/ATTACH]
  8. The Herc in the new Tom Hanks movie, "Captain Phillips" is 56-0511 (N121TG) operated by International Air Response.
  9. I remember another two strange programs that came out of Lockheed in the mid-70's. One was a Herc with four TF-33s, ala C-141. Never got past the analysis stage. The only way you could taxi it was with two engines in ground idle and the other two in reverse. And on, and on. Died an early death. The other was called "HOW", which stood for "Hercules On Water". This was to an amphibian version with a "bolt on" boat hull. They went so far as to build an eight foot wingspan RC flying model. Never could overcome the empty weight problem and the fact that the Coast Guard wasn't interested. Somewhere in storage I have a picture that I'll snag the next time I'm going through that stuff.
  10. Or............(and I have actually seen this done, names withheld to protect the guilty) 1. Take off the non-working geneva lock 2. Remover the cover 3. Using your Chinese made MK1 vise grip, break out the guts and discard 4. Replace cover 5. Reinstall 6. Fly the next two days sorties while waiting for a new geneva lock to arrive Oh yeah, don't forget to pull the T-handle every time you shut it down or the ramp will get real wet. And remember to push it in when starting. Alright, I guess you can't do that in the military, so the AF procedure would be: 1. Order new geneva lock 2. Offload golf clubs 3. Head to the nearest resort for a week while waiting for an engine troop and part to show up
  11. Jim: In the "old" days before the EFTC, the SLCS or "Gangbang" was used for force transfer on heavy drops, and the anchor cable supports had to be down. After the Gangbang went away, so did that requirement, however there are some newer systems like extracted 10K Dragonfly and others that are extracted but use static line deployed parachutes. These types of drops require the anchor cable supports to be extended. So, the "if required" in the checklist will catch that.
  12. This commercial for Mountain Dew was shot at KIYK last month. On TV but only in Canada at this point. :https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3j36lhpptwyuv5v/L1jsNL5lHM
  13. Bob: You're correct, as usual. FAA Registry confirms that it's in process. Makes sense as it fills the gap between N119TG and N121TG. So, the five flyable aircraft would run from N117TG thru N121TG. They owned an A model registered as N120TG twenty years ago but I believe it was sold to a Mexican company sometime in the 90's. Fritz would know.
  14. Replacing the Navigator with the Garmin Twins has solved that problem for us. Now when we screw up and wind up where we're not supposed to be, we know EXACTLY where it is!
  15. 55-0008 is now operated by International Air Response out of Mesa, AZ as N130SA. It wouldn't surprise me if they change the registration to conform with their existing fleet format, i.e. N1xxTG.
  16. Bob: I was in the Tactical Airlift branch at the Tactical Air Warfare Center (TAWC) from 1971-76. Which brings to mind another shining example of government insanity. Prior to about 1967, Tactical Air Recon and Airlift testing were directorates at TAWC. Then, as the Vietnam war was getting intense, the powers that be decided there should be separate centers for Recon and Airlift, so they established same at Shaw AFB, SC (Recon) and Pope AFB, NC, Tactical Airlift Center (TALC). Going from a handful of people in the TAWC directorates, the centers were real empires. Each headed by a BG and having a full technical staff such as photography, combat control, civilian data analysts, secretarial support, and a full blown test squadron with one each, C-130 and bunches of pilots, flight engineers, loadmasters and navigators. I seem to remember that we had around 135 people in TALC when I arrived in 1968. And we did boatloads of testing of all kinds of things like LAPES, Type 26 CDS Gate, AWADS, -4A Rail system and on and on. However, in early 1971 another genius at HQ USAF decided that all the test centers needed to be consolidated into TAWC (huh?). So we promptly shut the whole thing down and three of us (two LM and one NAV) PCS'ed to TAWC and reopened the Airlift Directorate there. We hired one more LM from Hurlburt and added a couple of civilian analysts, pilots and navs and were fully manned up with about 20 or so, down from 135, including the typists. Big difference was that we had to task aircraft from the various wings to support our testing and we had a lot more red tape since we were just one small part of a vast enterprise (TAWC). Now it gets even better. In 1975 MAC took over the C-130s from TAC so TAWC said "Adios, Dudes". MAC re-established the Airlift Center (ALC) at Pope in the same building we left in 1971, adding C-141 and C-5 crews and maintainers as well as C-130. So, in mid-1975, now being the last man standing, I was the sole body to PCS back from TAWC to ALC. What a merry-go-round. It didn't take me long to verify my perception that MAC was the ultimate triumph of style over substance, so after a year I bailed out to take the job as the first LM in the AMST (later C-17) program office at Wright-Patterson. MAC had the last laugh, though. In 1980 after I made Chief, I needed to make a move and all that was available was a job in HQ MAC. Four years there convinced me absolutely that my initial assessment of MAC (and especially the HQ) was correct, so I retired earlier than I could have thereby preserving what little sanity I still had at that point.
  17. Giz: Had to be at least '71 because I remember being stationed at Eglin when I heard it. I can't remember what I had for breakfast most mornings, but I think I remember it was a Chief by the name of John Tenney and the incident happened in Germany. As it was told to me, he was standing on the ramp aft of the troop door, and the anchor cable support bracket broke as the troops were exiting and either the bracket or anchor cable or both hit him in the head and killed him on the spot. Maybe somebody who was at Rhein Main in those days can correct that as necessary. And, yep, TAC's response was for us all to wear helmets on airdrops. Which makes sense, except that I can't stand the darn thing and only wear it when I have to be on O2. Having survived a good crack in the head wearning nothing but one of those old gray headsets you'd think I'd know better. Benny Fioritto, once he figured out I was still alive, said it only went to prove that you can't kill a LM by hitting him in the head. Speaking of anchor cables, does anyone remember the story of the LM at YPG who had the forward end of the cable come loose (while his harness was attached to it) and went out the back of the airplane and was killed when the strap on the harness failed? Seems they had trouble tightening the old style brass turnbuckle, so they lubed it with hydraulic fluid and of course it vibrated loose during the drop and out he went. Seems like that was in the 70's too and then we couldn't hook up harnesses to the anchor cable for 20-25 years. And now that I'm thinking about anchor cable horror stories, back in 2009 we were doing a test program for a German parachute company down at Coolidge, AZ. We were doing gravity drops of 463L pallets weighing up to 10,000 lbs and one of 13,600 lbs on a combat expendable platform we built for the occasion. The tests were for drogue parachutes deployed by static lines with the deployment bag being retained. One of these chutes was a real monster and had a deployment bag about the size of a G-12 bag, or maybe bigger. Of course we had the anchor cable stop at the usual location as per the -9. The only problem was that the static line was long enough to let this bag get out in the slipstream and when I looked back after the gate cut, my #2 who was trying to pull in the bag had one hand on the deployment line and the other on the anchor cable and was getting thrown around like a rag doll. Fortunately, the bag finally blew back in the cargo compartment before his shoulder pulled out of its socket and just before the aft anchor cable support pulled completely off the fuselage. As it was we had to land and tie it up out of the way and switch to the RH anchor cable for the rest of that day's drops. We moved the anchor cable stop to a location about 18" forward of the troop door and that kept the bag from getting past the end of the ramp and all was well from there on out. So, even after 50 years of doing this, including lots of time in flight test, you can still learn things the hard way (don't let your D-bag get out of the airplane) when you least expect it. The picture shows the aft anchor cable actuator and support torn off the structure and tied up with 550 cord so we could get the door open. [ATTACH=CONFIG]3359[/ATTACH]
  18. Bill: Finally found the photo of what hit me in the head. I was standing right underneath the flat bottom of the retriever backup plate. Notice how sturdy the backup plate is compared to the actual aircraft structure that takes the load (sometimes) of the static line retriever. 1/8" aluminum and a handful of rivets. John [ATTACH=CONFIG]3358[/ATTACH]
  19. Well, I guess I have to own up to the fact that I was the loadmaster involved in that incident. At the time I was assigned to the 4419th Test Squadron, USAF Tactical Airlift Center at Pope. One of the neat things about that assignment was that our commander was a BG (Joe Donovan) and the Wing CO was only an 0-6. And the General never let him forget it either. The other good thing was that we had our own aircraft, 63-7768 that we stole from the 777th. Since we didn't have any maintainers, you guys got to do that for us. And, oh yeah, since our big dog outranked yours, guess who had priority for maintenance and everything else? But, back to the story. The date was March 7, 1969 and the mission was a routine test of the LAPES towplate that one of our engineers designed. The load was three twelve foot platforms linked together and pulled out all at once by a cluster of three 28-foot extraction parachutes, which were in turn pulled out by a 15-foot extraction parachute being towed behind the aircraft. The 15 footer was held in check by a mechanical device called the Towplate. At the release point, about 50 feet in the air, the towplate was activated allowing the drogue parachute ( 15-foot) to pull out a G-12 deployment bag that had the three 28-footers packed inside. The 28-footers had vent lines installed that pulled the apex down toward the skirt for faster deployment. Once the chutes deployed, the load was released from the RH locks and began moving aft with great gusto. The aft CG shift caused the nose of the aircraft to rise, and if everything went just right, the aircraft would be at a level attitude at a wheel height of five feet when the load came off the ramp. Sometimes it actually happened that way, but after three years flying on the LAPES test program I have way too many stories of when it didn't quite go as it should have. Material for a book if I could get Sam to write it. But, as usual I digress. Back to the incident in question, but first a short tutorial on how the Towplate worked. The primary release for this particular version of towplate used the LH static line retriever to pull a slide aft thereby releasing the towlink and allowing all the action happen. There was a massive aluminum backup plate mounted between the retriever motor and the FS245 bulkhead to strengthen the mounting. The loadmaster's position during the drop was standing right underneath the retriever holding on to two metal handles attached to two cables, which were in turn attached to the towplate. One was painted Silver and the other painted Red. At the "Green Light" call, the CP hit the green light switch and since the LM being the diligent chap he was had already flipped the LAPES/CDS switch to the armed position, (Aha, so that's where that useless switch came from) the retriever started winding in and (in theory) released the towplate. At the same time, the LM pulled his silver handle from which which a cable ran all the way back the towplate on the ramp and was connected directly to the unlocking slide. So, either the LM or the CP would effect the release. Usually the LM since the retriever cable had a two turn break tie of 80-lb tape to overcome and by then the LM had already pulled his handle and started the extraction sequence. For some reason we never could convince our chief LAPES pilot and CO, Benny Fioritto of this. It got to the point we just disconnected the retriever cable and he still wouldn't believe we beat him to the release. But there's not enough room in one post for all the Fioritto stories, as some of you know. Anyway, this incident occurred because of the way the static line retriever cable was configured. There was a pulley mounted the aft end of the backup plate that changed the direction of retriever cable to forward and down. Another pulley was mounted on the floor just forward the first centerline tiedown ring. Running the cable through this pulley changed the direction to aft, and the cable was run all the way out to the ramp hinge where it laid on the floor, eventually underneath the platform(s). The retriever cable wasn't long enough to reach the towplate so we had a short cable made up with a swage ball on each end. We then attached the one end of short cable to the towplate and the other to the end of the retriever cable using a standard barrel connector. The barrel connector was tied to a tiedown ring with (as I remember) two turns of 80-lb tape. This allowed the retriever to build up enough force by the time it overcame the break tie to jerk the short cable and release the towplate. So, we deploy the drogue and start down from 600 feet with me standing blithely underneath the retriever backup plate with towplate mechanical release and drogue jettison cables in my hand. Descending through 50 feet and passing the release panels, the CP calls "Green Light' and flips the jump light switch. The retriever starts to reel in and I pull the silver handle releasing the towplate. The load starts to move aft and just as it does, the 80-lb tie breaks allowing the barrel connector to jump up in the air just as the platform arrives. The aft end of one of the platform roller pads catches on the end of the barrel connector momentarily applying the entire extraction force of 60,000+ lbs to the static line retriever cable, back through the two pulleys causing 100,000 lbs or so of force to be applied the retriever mounting hardware and the FS245 bulkhead just long enough to pull it all apart and down onto my head. Think of a carpenter driving a 16d nail, with me being the nail and you get the picture. My boss, CMSgt Jesse Goddard, was looking at me when it happened and is absolutely convinced that I'm dead So he steps over me and runs up to the cockpit yelling in Fioritto's ear, "Limbach's dead". Fioritto heads back to Pope (from Sicily DZ) at Warp 9 while I'm sleeping blissfully on the cabin floor with a big pile of assorted metal bits on top of me. First thing I remember is waking up pissed off because I can't see anything and my other boss, MSgt Dave Purdy, is yelling at somebody and keeps waking me up. Eventually I figure out that he's trying to open a first aid kit, so I yell at him to give the damn thing to me and I'll open it. A pretty neat trick since I'm flat on my back and can't see anything because blood has pooled up in my eye sockets from the head wound. You know how much a head wound bleeds, right? Holy Jeez I couldn't believe all that blood came out of me. Looked like somebody took a fire hose and shot red paint all over me. So, we get on the ground in front of base ops and somebody helps me walk down the crew entrance door and over to the ambulance. Off we whiz to the Pope clinic where the Flt Surgeon X-rays my head and pretty much loses interest once he figures out the skull Is not fractured. So he tells his Sgt. to stitch me up using thus an such a method, being a good Sgt and not being one to lose a training opportunity, the Sgt goes and gets Amn Fobnocker and is going to let him get some OJT on my head. The Sgt says, "OK, watch me" and he puts a few stitches in by way of demonstration. "OK, you try it", and Amn F. goes at it. "Great" says the Sgt, "Keep it up and I'll be back in a minute". And off he goes. Amn F. is stitching merrily along when after 15 minutes or so, the Sgt comes back, takes a look and says, "No, no that's not the way I showed you. Pull out those last 20 or so stitches and do them over". So, out they come and over he starts. I am beginning to not be amused by now. At any rate, when he finishes and gets the seal of approval, the stitch count stands at 56. They put a bandage on my head, have me sign the 1042 as DNIF and turn me loose. I walk back to our office up on hill and the boss tells me to go home and not come back until I feel OK. So naturally I go straight to the stag bar at the NCO club for a couple of stiff drinks before I jump in my truck and drive the 13 miles home. Long story, but you did ask and it won't long before I forget it, since I'm starting to forget a lot of stuff. A couple postscripts: 1. In those days my wife did medical transcribing in the radiology department at Womack Army Hospital at FT. Bragg where the Flt Surgeon sent my X-ray to be read by one of the radiologists. She was halfway through typing it before it dawned on her that it was me. Of course nobody thought to notify her. 2. I got a call the next morning saying for me go over to the Flt Surgeon's office and sign off DNIF as fit to fly. Not to come back to work, but get off DNIF. Turns out if you were in an incident/accident and were DNIF longer than 48 hours it escalated into some kind of big deal. Our general decided that the LAPES program couldn't stand that kind of scrutiny so told the FS to sign me back to duty. Which he did. I screwed around for about three weeks and then went back to flying LAPES tests. 3. Oh yeah, the fix for the problem was easy. We made a long cable that ran all the way from FS245 to the towplate and connected it to the retriever cable FORWARD of the load so there was nothing for the platform to catch on the way out. Problem solved. At least that one was. We had lots more problems in the next two years of testing. Damaged equipment and airplanes a lot, but never injured anyone else so I was the only human casualty of the LAPES test program. I have picture of the front of the aircraft after all that crap ripped out. Not sure whether I have it on the computer, but if I find it, I'll put it up here. Strange stuff, but you just couldn't make this shit up!
  20. Sam: I'm not sure of which chute we had on the C-119, but it was designed for low altitude and did not have a canopy sleeve. Word was that if you pulled the handle just as you left, you could get it open from 500' or so. Parachutes on C-119s were worn at all times and used fairly frequently. By the late 60's when I got on C-130's we had the BA-22 which was essentially the same chute used in the T-38 and other ejection seats of the day. Complete with automatic opener at 14,000 feet and a sleeved canopy to prevent blowout on high altitude/high speed deployment. All that was well and good and we routinely wore them on 600' AGL CDS drops. One year during annual refresher training at Life Support, the parachute guy was at the chalk board illustrating the deployment sequence of the parachute. When you pulled the handle the pilot chute emerged which then pulled out the main chute still in its sleeve. Once the canopy/sleeve was fully extended, the sleeve pulled off allowing canopy deployment. All this time you were slowing down to a safe deployment speed. I think he also mentioned how many seconds this took. This temporarily woke me out of my bored stupor, (how much more of this is there before we can go to Happy Hour at the NCO Club Stag Bar......god, who even remembers Stag Bars now a days..... or NCO clubs for that matter, but I digress), long enough to ask parachute guy how much altitude was lost from the time you pulled the D-ring until you had full inflation. He had the number right on the top of his head 1,2000 to 1,600 feet depending on how quick your hands were. Not much good on a 600 foot CDS drop, so goodbye parachute, hello restraint harness. Sometime later they took them off altogether since the 30 day inspections and regular repacks took a lot of manpower in the life support shop. Like most, I don't know anyone who used one on purpose from a Herk. It's my understanding that the gunship IO was leaning half off the ramp spotting ground fire and was thrown out of the aircraft when it was blown up. We never even carried them on C-123's or C-124's when I was on them (mid to late '60s). No way to keep them dry on the C-123 in Vietnam. Got wetter on the inside than the outside when you flew through a rain shower. Never could figure out why none on the C-124 since there were several scenarios in the Dash One on the Engine Smoke and Fire Identification charts that stated, "No corrective action possible; abandon aircraft". Always wondered how to do that in the middle of a 16 hour trans-pacific leg. Ditch, I guess. Fortunately the only advanced induction system fire I had actually put it self out by the time we turned around and put it back on the deck at Guam. Its not supposed to do that but, hey, I'm not going to argue with success.
  21. Well, 57-0520, ex-Tanker 88 and now N119TG dodged the smelter and flew again on 7 Nov 12. Short ferry flight from Coolidge (P08) to Mesa (KIWA) for additional inspection and maintenance, painting and etc.
  22. Pretty simple ballistic calculation at C-130 speeds. Or, you could just hang your standard HELLFIRE rack, get yourself a laser designator, and Voila! [ATTACH=CONFIG]3275[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]3276[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]3277[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]3278[/ATTACH]
  23. Contact Bill Grantham at International Air Response, http://www.internationalairresponse.com. They operate a fleet of C-130s configured to fight fire and have been doing it around the world for over 40 years. I believe they also hold a certificate to operate in Australia.
  24. Also, it wouldn't have hung straight down. All the Embraer stuff was done with a helicopter (four point suspension), and cut away at the appropriate moment with the stunt men stiill inside. Neat trick. So, the only thing the C-130 towed were the four stuntment (skydivers) they let off the ramp on a cable. It looks like the C-130 isn't doing much until you consider that the pilot, Dave Kunz, was flying formation on the Embraer, up a mountain valley below the peaks, in marginal VFR weather (there was at least one inadvertant IMC event), all while maintaining and indicated airspeed of 85 +/- 5 Knots (note the flaps at 100%). The low airspeed was necessary to keep from running away from the camera chopper which had a top speed of 90 knots. The crew did a great job of holding right on the edge of the stall while getting good footage and making it look easy in the process. Trust me, you do not want to power on stall the Herc. Back in the late 70's when I was in the C-17 SPO at Wright-Pat I used to get my flying time in with the 4450th Test Wing. One time MAC lent us an airplane to instrument and wanted us to investigate the flight dynamics of rejected landing from a short field approach. Apparently this scenario had caused them several accidents. So, the idea was to setup a landing approach to a simulated short field, gear down, flaps 100 and the airplane trimmed up. The test point was for the copilot to call "Go Around" at which time max power was applied, then gear up and flaps 50 in rapid succession. The idea was to not touch the elevator trim and let the airplane react while the instruments took the data. Being cautious souls, all this took place at 10,000 ft AGL. Obviously we knew that the airplane was going to pitch up. All the configuration changes result in pitch up moments which are additive. So we knew it was going to pitch, but the gusto with which it did so surprised us a bit. So as the pucker factor kicked in, the test pilot initiated recovery by pushing briskly forward on the yoke and trimming nose down. The flaps stayed at 50 and the throttles were still all the way forward because the airspeed was decaying at an alarming rate, considering it started at 100 flap threshold speed. Of course as everyone who's flown the Herc knows, there is a great deal of pitch inertia built in. So when the yoke was pushed full forward, the nose kept coming up and of course the airspeed kept going down. By the time the nose started down, the pucker factor in the cockpit was fairly extreme. Once back to straight and level the heart rates slowly go back to normal and pretty soon the test pilot uttered those immortal words, "Hmmm, maybe we should take another look at that". Wonder how many crews that's killed? I spent a lot of years in airdrop testing and had quite a few interesting moments after somebody said that. At any rate, now that we had seen it, thought we knew what we were doing, so climbed back up to 10,000, set up and repeated the test thinking that we could catch the pitchup before it got out of hand. Wrong! The second time it really got away and we couldn't get the nose down. The thing that saved us was that the test pilot in the left seat was not a C-130 pilot, although he had flown it once or twice in test pilot school. He had a lot of hours in the F-4 in which the trick to staying alive at high angles of attack is to unload the wings, keep the wings level and ball centered with rudder and don't touch anything else. You either recover or eject. Not having the ejection option, our intrepid pilot reverted to his F-4 training and pushed the yoke forward to the stop, kept the nose straight with the rudder, and we all prayed that it wasn't going over on its back. After what seemed like an eternity of literally hanging on the props, the rudder effectiveness went down to the point that the nose slowly yawed to the left and eventually fell to the horizon and below. As the airspeed increased he make a nice recovery from the ensuing dive. Now one of the keys to surviving a poweron deep stall in the Herc, (besides not going over on your back, in which case you're just screwed), is to not get into a spin. To not spin, you have to control yaw. True for anything from a Cessna to a C-5. The ugly thing about a spin in the Herc is that the extreme yaw causes the fuel to surge outboard in the wing opposite to the direction of the spin, this creates forces that destroy the interity of the fuel cells as the fuel surges outboard causing structural failure of that wing, followed shortly thereafter by failure on the remaining wing and the airplane then goes into "Lawn Dart" mode. You also need LOTS of altitude. We had started out at 10,000 feet and recovered around 5,000. At this point we'd had way more than enough and RTB for a mandatory underwear change and a few beers. The primary recommendation to come out of that test was that if you don't really pay attention and start trimming the nose down as soon as you initiate the go around, you may find yourself literally out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas in pretty short order. Seems like a commons sense kind of thing, but apparently a couple guys hadn't done it and crashed and burned. Which is why that asked us to investigate it in the first place. All of which is a wordy way of saying that it took lots of skill (and guts) to fly that Herc up the valley at 85 knots for long periods of time to get the footage we've all seen. Took a lot of hard work to make it look as easy as it did. Hats off to the crew of N121TG, Dave Kunz (P), David "Chicken" Gorman (CP), and Kevin Powell (FE). Check out some other IAR video clips at www.internationalairresponse.com[/HTML] John
  25. Ground runs produced numerous leaks that will require changeout of all fuel and hydraulic hoses. Certainly should factor into price negotiation.
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