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jimsmith130

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Everything posted by jimsmith130

  1. If you get a chance, read the first couple chapters of Peter's book. It is included in his website under the "SHOP-ON-LINE" link and then "Wanna read a good book?" link. Sounds like standard Herk operations, even though he is flying on a UN mission. Way too many of the stories sound all too familiar.
  2. From a White House briefing on Haiti. Col Elton was tasked with setting up and running the airport. COLONEL ELTON: "I'm Colonel Buck Elton from Florida. On Wednesday, we were alerted to deploy a force down here, and arrived with the first three aircraft approximately at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, with a mission to open up the airfield and provide security, assist with medivac and rescue efforts, and establish command and control. When we arrived there was no electricity, no communication and no support. Within 28 minutes of landing our first aircraft we had special tactics combat control teams controlling the airspace around the airfield and sequencing in the arriving aircraft that night. Since then, we've controlled approximately 600 takeoffs and landings from this 10,000-foot strip that normally operates three aircraft out of it on a daily basis. The tower and the terminal has been condemned due to damage, so all of our operations are done in the grass between the runway and the ramp. It's done via radio control from our controllers that are in contact with the Haitian approach control that does not have an operational radar or any navigational aids to assist the arrival of the aircraft, and with a communications link that we have back to the Haitian flight operations coordination center back at Tendell (phonetic) Air Force Base in Florida. And what we do is create slot times for a flow control to stagger the arriving aircraft so that we can time their arrival with the departure of another aircraft, so that we can maximize the number of relief supplies and personnel that are arriving on the aircraft, keep them on the ground for the minimum amount of time, and then depart them. Our intent is to, as soon as one aircraft departs we have another one arrive. But the way this airport is configured, there's a single taxiway in the middle of the aircraft [sic] that goes from the runway to the ramp, so every time we want to taxi an aircraft out, we have to get on the active runway, taxi back, and then depart them. So everything takes a little bit longer. Due to the devastation at the airport and around the city, the material handling equipment when we first arrived was insufficient to be able to offload the massive amount of cargo that was coming in, and much of it was offloaded by hand. On Thursday, we had -- the contingency response group from the Air Force arrived and bring in some more material and handling equipment. And they took responsibility for marshalling the cargo and the passengers as they came off of the airplane. We continue to coordinate closely with the Haitian airfield manager and the approach control, and assist them as they coordinate with the flight operations coordination center, to prioritize and sequence the aircraft so that we have maximum input into this airfield and we don't have any empty space on the ramp. Unfortunately, we have delays with aircraft breaking, or with material handling equipment breaking, or improperly configured cargo that we have to offload by hand. And while we plan for it to take two or three hours to be on the ground, sometimes it takes as much as seven or eight hours. So when we have aircraft on the ground taking up space, it's not possible to bring in another aircraft. So we end up having a stack of aircraft out that the Haitian approach control is holding until we have space on the airfield to come in. The airfield has not been closed since we started operation, it has just been full. And as soon as we get one aircraft out we get a similar sized aircraft in. Currently, we're operating with a working maximum aircraft on the ground of one wide-body and five narrow-body aircraft. And the one wide-body is planned for two hours on the ground, and the five narrow-bodies are planned for one hour on the ground. We also have room for three smaller aircraft, and then we fit in as much as we can other aircraft that arrive that we have space for. Any aircraft that can taxi into the grass and get off the ramp that the big aircraft need to be on, we use that option. We have a little bit of overflow that we use on a real-time manner so that if we do have someone delay we can fill that spot as necessary. And although we had probably -- I think it was 50 diverts, some of them diverted, got fuel and came back; some of them had to divert back to their point of origin -- we've only had a couple within the last couple days, because the flow control and the slot time has worked. What we've set up here would be similar to running a major airport that has only a certain amount of terminals and a certain amount of capacity to move the cargo through, except doing it without any communication, electricity, or computers. So we've done everything via radio. And after we established communications we were able to get some hard phone lines. We ran 650 feet of phone lines spliced together from our operation center on the ramp up to where the Haitian approach control is, so that we can get immediate access. For three days we were using Foxmite (phonetic) radio to relay that information. So communication was challenging. We also deployed our force down here with security forces, about 25 security forces to help secure the airfield, as well as robust medical teams to prepare casualties for evacuation, and para-rescue teams to go assist the civilian rescue teams, and enough communications and support to be able to sustain operations."
  3. Although not my first, one of my early TDYs was to Barbados supporting the Grenada invasion. By the time we got there, almost all the hostilities were over. We flew shuttles back and forth between Barbados & Grenada for about two weeks flying every second or third day. Our hotel (really more like a nice condominum) was right on the beach. Spent many days in the water drinking Banks beers. War's Hell, but someone had to do it.
  4. This is my first post, but I have been pretty much reading everything written in the Forum from day 1 and I figured it was time to jump into the discussions. My perspective comes from flying Herks for most of my AF career, being in the AF requirements business for 5 years, and now being in industry for almost 9 years. Industry is doing a lot of work on the next generation airlifter and making improvements to what they have now (C-130J, C-17) to make them even more capable. You would be amazed at some of the ideas Lockheed and Boeing have. The problem is it's too expensive in most cases to take their ideas to the next level (i.e. working prototype) and they're certainly not going there unless there is some hope their idea(s) might get funded some day. A major problem is industry sees doing busines with the government as a huge risk. Look at the government's track record over the last 20 years. Terminating the B-2 at 21 aircraft (about 120 were planned), terminating the F-22 at less than 200 aircraft when over 600 were planned, cancelling CSAR-X, threatening to cancel C-130 AMP, and then all the source selection fiascos (KC-X, CSAR-X, & now the Army M-ATV). C-17 production is continuing only because Congress forcing the AF to take them. Even the J was not wanted by the AF initially. It was pretty much forced on them by Congress, albeit with no funding for logistics and training for the first few years. So industry ends up being very cautious about how they spend their own IR&D. To Lockheed's credit, they developed the J pretty much with their own money without a lot of help on the requirements side from the AF. There were plenty of issues, but after 10+ years of operating the aircraft, I think the AF is very happy with it. Lockheed is also happy they made the decision to offer only the J, although I know they were wondering at one point whether they made the right decision. It took awhile, but the J is starting to gain a lot of traction in the international market and AFSOC/ACC should be getting their MC/HC-Js in the next couple of years. Lockheed will significantly increase their production over the next couple of years. My 2 cents worth (for now). I'll try not to wait so long for the next post. Jim
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