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I don't know if I should laugh or be amazed.A fellow on the crew chief site said he was on a C-130E that was at 61K doing HALO drops.I questioned it and he affirmed that was what he said.I spent quite a few years on Herks,The best altitude I was ever at on one was during Apollo13 support off of Samoa we were at 37500.and literally hanging on the props.Anyone ever seen 61k in a C-130?

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I was crew on Elwood"s "High Altitude" flight in Vietnam and 34,500 was all we could get. He wrote about it on his blog. We Left Da Nang empty with minimum fuel. He did our typical  level at 50 feet, gear up, flaps up hit 200kts  and pull the nose straight up with a wingover left turn. Felt like about 4 Gs on climb out.. We went up pretty good to about FL28.5 then stair stepped a couple of hundred feet at a time to 34,500. I almost passed out in the back putting away chains and stowing gear..FE said we were holding 8,500 cabin pressure. That was in my 2 pack a day days and I couldn't catch my breath. Two amazing things happened that day.. ALCE let us come home empty and we got over 34,000 feet..We wouldn't tell anybody our FL. "Spare 634 say flight level" We ignored them till we got down to 20,000.....

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I think your crew chief is a wannabe or smoking something.  I did a HALO from 32K over Spain in a Talon back in the 80's and let me tell you it was no pic nic.  I calculated and we took off with 26k on fuel and I can tell it was the worst flight I was ever on.  2 no-drops with all the prebreathing and the old helmets it was miserable.  At that altitude you had to get clearance from the Doc. and he with a med tech had to be on board.   61k, now that's a joke.

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bob, i think your right. around 1968 the marines had an " F" model out in elcentro doing halo jumps at fl440. I had  an empty "T" model belonging to vr-62 up to f/l 380 from elmendorf direct navy brunswick 7hrs 42min. we were hauling ass.   frank thomas

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8 hours ago, Retired Talon F/E said:

I think your crew chief is a wannabe or smoking something.  I did a HALO from 32K over Spain in a Talon back in the 80's and let me tell you it was no pic nic.  I calculated and we took off with 26k on fuel and I can tell it was the worst flight I was ever on.  2 no-drops with all the prebreathing and the old helmets it was miserable.  At that altitude you had to get clearance from the Doc. and he with a med tech had to be on board.   61k, now that's a joke.

Absolutly not my crew chief,I totally agree with you.

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Back in the mid-1970's, while flying empty from Jeddah to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in a spanking new 1974 H-model, we got to 44,000'.  We were trying for 45,000, but at 1,000' short, a turbine overheat light blinked.  I must've gulped down a liter of LOX!  The airplane was literally hanging on the props. I can't remember the AC's name, but he was really cool.  He got out some time later, built a cement boat and sailed to Honolulu. 

Don R.

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