herkfixer

Most Air Force Reserve Units have ART's (Air Reserve Technicians) that are Wage Grade (WG) employees. As a civilian you are able to wear civilian clothing during the normal work hours. Thus what you are seeing is an engine run at a AFRES base with a crew of ART's at the controls. I was an ART for 13 years at Peterson (302nd AW) and did many engine runs in civilain clothing. Of course on a drill weekend or on AD we were in military uniforms and in full 35-10 standards (yes I know it is some new AFI standard but I can't remember it, been retired to long). 73, Rex

When I was in the 302nd at Peterson we used to go to Tampa, FL to Reflectone, now known as CAE as previously mentioned. a great place with excellent instructors, great location. We went their because it was so hard to get into the Military sims at the different locations, especially McChord. http://www.cae.com/en/military/tampa.training.center.asp 73, Rex

How long do you suppose this will last? one or two runs by the flight crew. Just one time of having to call a crew out of "Crew Rest" for a 1-2 hour engine run and then "crew rest" starts all over again and the next days mission has to be move forward by however many hours, nope it just won't happen but 1 or 2 times and then this will be reviewed and changed in no time!:mad: "32 F or below, snow and ice" hell this is all the time in the winter, unless your in desert, Hawaii, Caribbean, etc. In my day if we had to do a run above "ground idle" we would shoot de-icing fluid in front of/under the MLG tires to get rid of snow and ice. Just my 2 cents worth, another great "knee jerk reaction"!!!!!!! 73, Rex

Some TLC always helped out! I always presented the aircraft in clean condition, mission ready, configured properly, i.e. flight deck cleaned up, windows all cleaned, seatbelts crossed and harnesses up over the headrests, galley cleaned, nav's table cleared off, cargo compartment in proper configuration and troop seats down had all the seatbelts crossed. Aircraft forms cleaned up and ER signed off if possible. Meet the FE and LM as they came onboard, and then later meet the pilot, co-pilot and nav when they showed up. Usually had SCNS up and INU's aligned, with proper co-ordinates for the parking spot already input. With downtime usually after ISO inspection/awaiting parts would work on touch up paint in flt deck/cargo compt, or replace flt deck flooring, CC anti-skid, etc. Usually about every30 days would strip and wax flight deck floor, pressure wash cargo compartment floor, including hand scrubbing the D-rings cups. Always had plenty of cups, coffee, creamer, paper towels, TP, paper plates, dining packets, garbage bags, toilet deodorizer on hand. I also worked/played well with the specialists, warm aircraft, panels removed, workstands available, extra hand when needed, etc and it payed off for me as I usually got the better specialists, ie when they reviewed writeups on all the aircraft the next morning when they saw my tail number they were first out the door to go work on it. I always believed that if you presented a nice clean aircraft to the flight crew it would payoff in the end, no nit-picking writeups, no whining.;( Just my 2 cents worth that worked for me in my 21 years of crewing. 73, Rex

Looks like a Yokota bird, and by the nice clean paint job I would have to say that it probably just came out of depot, with new paint. Too bad in your 2nd photo you couldn't have got a closer pic of the small circle at the base of the horizontal stab, that indicates the last paint job. Great pics, thanks for sharing. 73, Rex

Would like to hear from other members on their dealings with the AF Suggestion Program. In my 21 year career I submitted 2 suggestions, both very, very simple suggestions for the herk, both were disapproved, years later I found that my suggestions were now on other aircraft in other units. First one was on installing 1/4" x1/4" hardware cloth and a hose clamp over the exhaust port of the AWADS cooling fan on the aft side of FS 245 right side. (see thread "sleeping on a herk" post #32) Disapproved , said that the cooling fan exhaust could be rotated 90 degrees, discharging the exhaust into the bulkhead instead of straight down. I submitted this at Rhein-Main. 2 1/2 years later I PSC'd to Pope, about 1/3 of the herks at Pope had the AWADS system installed on them. The first AWADS bird I got on I went to the aft side of 245 to check out the cooling fan, and guess what was on the exhaust port, yep you guessed it, hardware cloth and a hose clamp, still pointed straight down. Second suggestion was on the SCNS (self contained navigation system) "protective covers" for the pilots and co-pilots IDCU's. My "B" model (59-1531)was the prototype for SCNS, once I got it back home from the mod facility at Rickenbacker, decided that the 2 IDCU's needed some protective covers while the aircraft was on the ground, during maintenance, protect the co-pilots IDCU which is located right under the swing window and everybody thats had anything to do with a herk knows that the c/p's swing window leaks when it rains. Fabricated 2 covers out of sheet metal that covered the IDCU's, glued some fabric inside to protect the IDCU display, painted them, stenciled them with tail number and pilot/co-pilots position. QA liked the idea, DCM liked the idea, other maintenance folks liked them, submitted a suggestion. Anyone that has done a suggestion knows that you have to be very thorough, detailed, include part number/nsn, drawings, cost of material, number of manhours, pictures, etc. This suggestion went all the way to MAC Headquarters at Scott, took a long time to get an answer. Finally got a response, "Disapproved" reason didn't want to introduce more "foriegn objects" (FO) into the flight deck environment if they weren't properly stored, we stored them in galley drawer during flight. Years later after the fleet of herks were modified with SCNS I started seeing other herks from other units with same sheet metal covers or covers made out of fabric with foam inside for protection. Never followed up on these 2 suggestions, and needless to say I never submitted another suggestion! 73, Rex

I always took along a hammock you could always find a place to hang it. One tdy that I will always remember was a week long tdy from Rhein-Main to Incirlik, Turkey. We had a total of 4 birds there, my bird was always the first one to take-off each morning, early morning (dark) back in the days of MAC, (Midnight Air Command) After a week of flying during the day and fixing, rigging, fueling at night I was pretty worn out. When it was time to head back to Rhein-Main, right after take-off, I climbed into the upper bunk and was out probably by the time we leveled off. About an hour later I awoke, rolled over to see what was going in in the flt deck and only saw the co-pilot flying the aircraft, the pilot, flight engineer and nav chairs were all empty. My first thought was that we were going down (ditching) and the crew didn't want to wake me up (not enough parachutes) I jumped out of the upper bunk, down the flight deck ladder in one leap and around 245 to find the the pilot, FE, nav and LM working on a young airman that had stuck his finger in the AWADS cooling fan that was located on the back of FS 245 right over the first troop seat on the right side of the cargo compartment. They got the bleeding stopped, got him calmed down, and then they had to work on getting clearance back into Athens, this took alot of effort since we we coming from Turkey and wanting to land in Greece. As everyone knows Turkey & Greece don't get along real well, something about a Trojan Horse (No not the virus). We finally got diplomatic clearance and landed off loaded the airman, fueled up and headed back to R/M. Just one of the stories that I remember well. 73, Rex

FWIW The C-130 "B" models had aux tanks, but no external (pylon) tanks. Rex

64-14863 was not in the 6594th Test Group while I was there, 81-83. As memory serves it was 854, 857, and 858. 73, Rex

Just caught an excellent country music video on GAC called "Angel Flight" by Radney Foster. It shows how we bring back our fallen military members! Also excellent video of Herks from Texas ANG. Check it out here: 73, Rex

901st TAG / 302nd AW (AFRES) from Peterson AFB, CO. will be holding a 25 year Reunion in Colorado Springs/USAFA on September 18, 19 & 20, 2009. I went to one 2 years ago and it was a great time to see old friends and military colleagues. This was held at the Air Force Academy and was greatly attended and was well put together by a large committee of old members of the unit. Lots of old photos and stories about the unit from day 1. And always time for a "Their I Was" stories. If you need info about this please PM me, I'll get you the info quickly as the RSVP deadline is 10 Sept 09. Hope to see you there! Rex

Sorry for the wrong tail number, for some reason 1537 stuck in my mind probably because we had a "B" model at Peterson that was 1537. As you indicated by expanding the picture 1536 is the correct tail number. So noted. 73, Rex

This is indeed one of the Wyoming ANG birds tail # 1537. I talked with the FE and Crew Chief last year during their open house at Cheyenne. They tested this acft at Edwards for several months. They indicated that it was quieter, had more power and was easier to maintain, replace components ie. individual blades could be changed out instead of the whole prop assy. Also the electronic valve housing was alot better than the old mechanical valve housing that has been around forever. The picture does not show it very well but the dome and spinner are very, very large, larger than the old ones. Only drawback to this 8 bladed prop is the cost! Not sure how much but the Crew Chief said considerably higher than the old 4 bladed props. 73, Rex

When I was stationed at Hickam w/ 6594th Test Grp back in '81-83 our 3 HC-130P models always had both benson tanks installed, our main mission of course was to keep our 6 H-53's flying and topped off. Back then the USCG out of Barbers point was still flying HC-130B's with a limited fuel capacity. On numerous occasions our "P" models would go out on long range SAR missions for the USCG, and on several missions towing along 1 or 2 of our H-53's. On one mission we sent out 1 tanker and 2 H-53's to get a crewmen off a ship, the patient had one of is arms slammed in one of the watertight doors and needed immediate evacuation back to Honolulu, the tanker and helo's were gone for over 10 hours and the finally made it back with the patient, and on less than "minimum fuel" this was one of the longest over water rescues w/ 2 H-53's sucking up the fuel at the time. The tanks were actually easy to remove with the ODS and cargo straps, of course it was inconvenient whenever you had MLG shoe adjustments to do. It also seemed like on Fridays, the Flt Engineer or Scanner always smelled fuel fumes coming from the benson tanks, Aloha Friday- one more day on the beach- you betcha, LOL. Rex

When I was at Rhein-Main 79-81, it was repaired enough to get back to Rhein-Main and then to PDM. The Right MLG and fairing were repaired along with the wing. The SPR panel was torn out in the mishap and was not replaced until PDM, I know that for a fact as I was one of several that got to do the "over the wing" refuel, maxed out all tanks for the flight to PDM. This was in the latter part of summer of 1980. I don't think I have any pictures of this acft, but I will look in the old slides box. Rex

I was stationed at Rhein-Main AB from 1979 to 1981 worked on flightline. Whats your question about that timeframe? Rex

cfisher what you were witnessing was a "compressor wash" this is the fairly quick and simple approach, by using fire trucks or a jet of water sprayed down the engine intakes. It was to clean the compressor of dirt, grime, oil, etc from the compressor blades, quick/simple not real effective. The preferred way is to inject a soap and water solution at the compressor bleed valves, then followed up by 2 rinse of clean water, disconnect everything and then do an engine run. As soon as engine is on speed, you close the bleed air valve on the engine as not to contaminate the air conditioning packs, after 20 to 30 minutes of running engines and using the wing anti-ice/empennage anti-ice systems, to draw bleed air off the engines, you would sample the air coming from the air conditioning packs to see how it smelled. If the smell was OK then you could shutdown, if it still smelled like soap then you went to cycling the ainti-ice systems on and off again, until the air conditioning packs no longer smelled like soap. Occassionally the "socks" in the air conditioning packs would have to be changed out to get rid of the soap smell. Hope this helps out. Rex.