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What units and how many aircraft were modified with AWADS?


Herkeng130
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Loadsmith has it right. It was a highly sensitive Radar system. I know because I was working on (SKE) Station Keeping Equipment at Langley when it first showed up and we needed 1 AWADs plane to lead for 0 - 0 visibility ferry operations. The round radome on top of the forward fusalage is SKE antennas.

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Actually I thought the 122 radar (X and KA band) were really sweet for the operators. It had some really good res and even I could learn to read the scope.

Now what really sucked butt on the system though is the minuscule service life of the RT's and waveguides.

Ended up changing all that crap out myself in Aviano once, the crew chief I was with was a friggin moron (read that as the guy who put 502 in a drainage ditch) so I wouldn't even let him touch the equipment.

The freon light level warning light came on after we landed so he "switched the bottles" and instead of just shutting off the empty one and opening the good bottle he literally "switched the bottles" and in the process completely buggered the aluminum fittings on the bottles - god I should have just killed the guy and saved the AF oh so much money!! (or maybe I should have given him to the Naples transvestites for a good time instead LOL)

Dan

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I went out to California for the QOT&E flight testing of the APQ175, and that Ka picture was unbelievable. It painted a great picture of the plowed fields below us, right along with all the irrigation piping, and just about everything else.

It's amazing what 70kW at 32GHz will do.

RADAR troops do it with higher frequency.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Propylene glycol. It had to be heated (heat switch at nav panel). I was an AWADS nav 1979-84 and taught at the Central Training Flight. Great mission. Went to "dumb" birds after that. What a let down.

LARRY ALLEN

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Tiny,

Did you ever get the s*** knocked out of you trying to adjust the centering on one of the IP-268 scopes. I did, three times in a row setting at Cam Rahn Bay. I was cpvered with sweat and told the shop chief I quit for the day my hands were shaking so bad.

Gary Robinson

I sure remember that damn IP-268 scope! Got nailed a couple times as a young airman at Little Rock trying to adjust center dot. I even had one implode/explode while changing the CRT...talk about messing your pants!!

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When they closed Khorat, they actually in-processed us into Clark AB. Well, all of our stuff got shipped there, but almost all of us ended up going to Hill AFB.

Not that Ogden isn't the wildest place to go after leaving Thailand, but...

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  • 2 months later...

Was at Pope in the Radar shop from 73 to 75. Worked on the AWADS and 59 birds. I remember the "AWADS test bed 130" was 63 7885, anyone know what happened to it? I remember this aircraft because the AWADS installations were just a bit different than the rest.

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That would probably be an APN59 RT, which I am very familiar with, especially being shocked.

There was a capacitor on the transmitter deck that would charge up real good if the thyratron tube didn't fire (or if I took off the top cap of the thyratron).

Turning off power and shorting it to ground would sound like a .22 going off.

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I don't know what the saying was. It was heavy, and I was big, so they ball and chained me to that RADAR mockup.

We used to sneak up behind people working on it, and this included me, with some bubble wrap, packing tape to rip a big piece off, or an end bell to drop to scare the crap out of person working the bench.

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Tiny,

Wow..that was pretty cruel and unusal. Somewhat potentially lethal as well.

Hey I see you're an AFET at Moody. I knew ACC had a lot of AFETs throughout the "lawn dart community" (fighters), I didn't realize there were any on 130s though. I guess you're mainly with special ops birds?

I was an Avionics AFET on C-5s here at Dover from 1986 until I retired Jan 2007. Loved the job. Miss it actually. While we did travel overseas training and troubleshooting, we never had to deploy to combat areas like you guys. You really have my respect.

J Rice

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I went out to California for the QOT&E flight testing of the APQ175, and that Ka picture was unbelievable. It painted a great picture of the plowed fields below us, right along with all the irrigation piping, and just about everything else.

It's amazing what 70kW at 32GHz will do.

RADAR troops do it with higher frequency.

Just a higher frequency to jam ...

:):cool:;):)

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APQ175 was X band and Ka band.

The replacement for the APQ122 had to be form/fit/function. They had to put a lot of crap into that system that wasn't necessary, just to meet the "guidelines".

Ku band is only 12-18 GHz.

From the shop manual:

Frequencies (SRGM) (nine selectable channels)

32.2 GHz +/-50 MHz

32.3 GHz +/-50 MHz

32.4 GHz +/-50 MHz

32.5 GHz +/-50 MHz

32.6 GHz +/-50 MHz

32.7 GHz +/-50 MHz

32.8 GHz +/-50 MHz

32.9 GHz +/-50 MHz

33.0 GHz +/-50 MHz

70.8 kW peak min at RT/antenna interface flange

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Tiny,

Hey I see you're an AFET at Moody. I knew ACC had a lot of AFETs throughout the "lawn dart community" (fighters), I didn't realize there were any on 130s though. I guess you're mainly with special ops birds?

I was an Avionics AFET on C-5s here at Dover from 1986 until I retired Jan 2007. Loved the job. Miss it actually. While we did travel overseas training and troubleshooting, we never had to deploy to combat areas like you guys. You really have my respect.

J Rice

We got sucked into the ACC program when that command took control of the C130s back in 1992, and then promptly gave them back to AMC as soon as they woke up and decided they may have to chew their arm off to get away from the old girl.

We're the red-headed step children of the program. We are deployable, but haven't as of yet, since we don't send a full squadron as the fighters do. Not that I don't want your respect, but I can't take credit where it isn't due.

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thanks to tinyclark for the list of planes converted to AWADS. 64-0505 is not on the list because it crashed at Guam on Dec 17, 1972. I was he primary crew chief on her 1969 to 1970. She was a great bird and I was sad to find out about her crashing. Killed everyone on board during that crash. We made many trips to Cam Rahn Bay and Bangkok.

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That would probably be an APN59 RT, which I am very familiar with, especially being shocked.

There was a capacitor on the transmitter deck that would charge up real good if the thyratron tube didn't fire (or if I took off the top cap of the thyratron).

Turning off power and shorting it to ground would sound like a .22 going off.

I remember being zapped by a PFN I discharged myself while working on an RT289. I was at Castle and it was a humid day in the shop, reached up to move the handle on an o-scope out of the way and when I touched the handle the PFN arced out, hit me in the lower, left gut and came out my left index finger at the handle. Burned a pinhole in my fatigue shirt and t shirt, small burn on my stomach and a big red welt on the finger. A great way to remember a piece of equipment.

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At least it didn't go across your chest!! Usually, you're OK if that doesn't happen.

Yea, I hated working on that thing, but I like to think I raised the reliability rate on the RT289 in Europe quite a bit while I was there. I basically overhauled them when they came in. Tube checks, new PFN, TR tube, ATR tube, thyratron, magnetron, etc.

They were always bitching about what we spent on our bench stock though.

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I did the same thing when I got to the 316th at Langley. Got the shop on board with pulling all the Doppler Shop LRU's, during every Phase/ISO, for tube tests, power out checks, bench check, alignment, and a good cleaning. The results were really amazing. The very first TAC rotation I took into Mildenhall we had a 16 bird flight that had been through the process. We didn't have a single in-flight writeup until four or five weeks there. I initially had to listen to the Moldyhole regulars bitching about how all their work was on the stateside 130s on rotation and what pigs 130s were. Our rotation shut that talk down. We actually shocked them, so much so they gave me an out-of-cycle 9 APR. Talk about cleaning, on the inital pull the Altimeter and Doppler RTs were caked with dirt. Cleaning them out had to have helped alone.

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