US Herk

I had an FE put \"EORPU\" on the TOLD card - when queried, he said, \"End of Runway - Pull Up!\"

Thankfully, the runway in question was long, sea level, & very cold because we were, well, way overweight!

I grew up in FL - I\'m collecting my snow days now!

...although I have to admit, I never considered length of driveway when looking at houses - shoveling snow sux!

ALL measuring devices are subject to some error - that\'s why they\'re calibrated. You can virtually eliminate errors in certain ranges, but rarely across all ranges - I\'m sure the accutachs are calibrated for 100% and are the most accurate there, but to say they\'re perfect seems, well, ludicrous.

FWIW, I\'ve worked in avionics & done both calibration & verification testing for precision measuring equipment...

No way I\'d live in the city.

WX is cold.

Been building a storage shed in the back yard - yesterday\'s hi was 14* - today is \'sposed to be mid-20s, but windy.

Next week is \'sposed to be near normal temps - low-mid 40s in the city (I\'m in the mountains)

No. I believe the relocation of the overseas units was killed by current SOCOM/CC - when he was vice, he didn\'t like the idea anyway (from what I hear).

If Cannon dies, it will be money driven...

TalonIIVito wrote:

My last bit of advice though - no matter what airframe you go to in AFSOC, if you\'ve got a substantial amount of time remaining in the AF you mine as well accept the fact that it\'s highly likely to \"smell\" Cannon in your career.

Don\'t bet the farm on that.

Latest word on the street is overseas units stay put. No pure fleet, no Cannon for T2, no nothing.

In fact, Cannon is in very real danger of being returned to BRAC due to lack of MILCON $ in short term (latest MILCON req\'ts are in the billions (as in multiple billions)). Wombat was supposed to go there & work out of contingency/temp hangars...until EPA found out & nixed that \"good idea\". The personnel ramp up required by BRAC & EIA cannot be met with predators & little planes alone.

Granted, most of this is rumint, but it\'s good rumint. I\'ll bet AFSOC fights to get wombat there somehow, but we\'ll see what their MX conops is...

The various units do various things to balance with aircraft availability, deployment requirements, & proficiency.

Current deployment commitment, while constant, is relatively light. You can expect to be deployed one four month period a year. You can also expect at least one month-long JCET. And you can expect two-four 1-2 week TDYs inbetween. This doesn\'t count pop-up stuff like NEO, Typhoon Relief, etc.

I knew I could count on you, Dan!

Sell him on shadows - at least they\'ll be flying over the next few years - out CWBs are toast & the gunships are leap-frogging us for new ones...

I don\'t know that there\'s any training avail left this fiscal year. Call MPC & talk to the SOF guy.

Well, you\'ve picked the right airplane - that\'s for sure!

If you want to be a pilot, you have to be commissioned. There are three routes to commissioning: US Air Force Academy (USAFA), Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), & Officer Training School (OTS).

The education you\'ll get at USAFA is unrivaled, but entrance can be challenging. A four year, full-time program of intense academic pursuits. If you meet admission requirements, you\'ll still need an appointment to attend. Start looking into this your junior year of high school & your grades better be very good.

ROTC is a 2yr or 4yr program done concurrently while you are attending a college with a program. Not all colleges have an ROTC program. Your choice of schools is pretty diverse though & odds are there\'s an ROTC program at the school you want to go to.

OTS is an application program for college graduates. Basically, it\'s a crash course on the military once you\'ve got your college degree. I believe it\'s still done at Maxwell AFB & is about 3 months long.

Once you have your commission, now you have to compete to be accepted as a pilot (actually, this will likely occur before you\'re actually commissioned). The demand for pilots ebbs & flows with many factors & some years, they need lots of pilots, so training slots are easy to come by. Other years, slots are much harder to come by. All of this is timing. You\'ll need to have high scores on the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test (AFOQT) & a strong recommendation from your leadership. So it pays to work hard & be a quality person while you\'re a cadet.

Assuming you get a pilot slot and after you graduate & get commissioned, you\'ll eventually go to Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) (the time between commissioning & UPT varies widely from immediately to up to a year later - all timing again). UPT used to be a 54-week program, but the length is actually longer now based on where you end up. You\'ll do the first six months or so in ground school & the T6 Texan II (by the time you get in, all T37s will be gone). Since you\'re vying for a spot in the venerable Hercules, and assuming you get your choice, you\'ll most likely do your secondary training at NAS Corpus Cristi in the T44 (although some folks have made the transition from the T1 Beechjet). This is another 5-6 months. After that, it\'s off to Little Rock for C-130 school - I\'m not sure how long the program is these days as it\'s been significantly modified from when I went through, but expect 4 months here. If you\'re really lucky & get to go to a special mission C-130, you can expect a trip to Kirtland or Hurlburt & an additional 4-6 months of training. Finally, once you get to your unit, there will be a few more months of unit-specific, local-area, mobility, etc. training. All told, you\'re looking at 1.5-3yrs of training before you\'re let loose as a co-pilot.

Good luck.

Get a lot of snow yesterday in ROW, Greg? We got about 4\" here in the ABQ mountains with some drifts over a foot...in fact, I\'m heading out now to shovel some of it!

EBH = Equivalent Baseline Hours. It is determined by a computer program where the FE inputs all the data (old 151s) online & each segment of the flight is assigned a severity factor to multiply. The \"average\" severity factor for Kirtland T2 is about 5, so over the course of a year, if we fly 1000 hours, it\'s like flying 5000 hours.

HerkPFE wrote:

If you want to read an interesting report, read the NTSB report on T-130 where the majority of the blame sits on Lockheed\'s shoulders for design flaws in their wing box.

I\'ve read the report & lots of other stuff about the early wings. I\'m not convinced it\'s a design flaw, rather, we\'re using the plane for something it wasn\'t designed for. You can call that a design flaw, and to some extent it\'s an accurate statement insofar as current usage certainly exceeds original design parameters, but I think it\'s the USAF\'s fault more than anything (not that I\'m a big fan of lockgreed).

Prior to 1966, Herks didn\'t do much, if any, low-level (other than paratrooper airdrops). MATS was trash haul & troop carrier only & airdrop was all flown Hi-Lo-Hi profile. The biggest structural thing they had to deal with was wake turbulence from formation flying - they flew fingertip Vics & Vics in trail & Vics in Vics.

In the mid-60s, Vietnam & the SA2/SA3 drove low-level tactics & the in-trail formation geometry (more wake turbulence than fingertip). This put added stress on the wings (low-level, primarily) that they hadn\'t envisioned when the aircraft was designed. By then, the wing design had already been updated once & the lessons learned in Viet Nam provided another redesign of the wing later in the \'70s as well. The H3/J-model wing is a different design again & draws on a lot they learned from the SOF CWB (which weighs 1400-1600lbs more than a standard CWB) - which has been very successful.

The fact remains that planes that reach their EBH marks & do get inspected are supporting the engineering assessments of EBH - in other words, the models are pretty close - and you\'d expect them to be with 55+ years to back it up.

Went back through that old thread - lots of neat info.

A big thing gleaned from that thread is Ops RPM gauge error can be +/- 2% & MX gauge error is +/- 1%. But that 1% is based on the Precision Tach - what\'s the allowable error on that thing? ;)

Yeah - the French don\'t like it when you stay below 10K through the Alps! They\'re worried you\'re going to hit something! I had to do that once - came back from Albania at 9K w/pressurization issues & very little LOX!

I\'ve actually done this! We landed on Pendine Sands and set up a FARP for a Chinook & Puma a few years back - pretty cool. I also know the 7th has landed a T2 on Penrith Sands about a year ago too. [img size=671]http://herkybirds.com/images/fbfiles/images/Pendine_Alarp.jpg

Ahh...very nice!

The flypast in front of the Falcons was a bit high & slow B)

By the way this weight is with very minimal -21. I left the dual rails on along with, Life Rafts, and other misc. Chart A items.

I\'ll say - they usually end up running between 95-98K empty by the time they\'re outfitted to fly...

One of the many rumors I have heard repeatedly was that you\'d transition to the reserves in your same MDS. In other words, if I transitioned to the reserves at Duke, I\'d fly MC-130H with the 15th. Someone from gunships would fly gunships, but still be in the reserves.

Basically, reserves would have no iron, only people, and the ops side would be scattered amongst the ops units at Hurlburt...

I don\'t know if it makes any sense or not, but it beats the alternative of them just being a pot of people to man BOS at forward deployed locations...

Remember, the reverse reserve associate deal with the 8th was really about keeping the 8th open - the CV22 should have arrived by 99/00 when the reserve deal came about. AFSOC isn\'t about to let the 2nd longest continuously active squadron in the USAF shut down...

There\'s LOADS of issues, Bob! A few of them even right-minded...mainly your cub scout comment is spot on though...

HeyChief wrote:

I\'d love to hear form a J guy, rumor is that that a J model is already programmed to get a new wing in FY 09 or 10 because of high EBH. Not sure if that J is RAF or USAF.

I\'m not a J-guy, nor do I play one on TV! :laugh: I find this nearly unbelievable for two main reasons: 1 - US J-models haven\'t been flying much until very recently, and little TAC at that. 2 - RAF J-models, until very, very recently, have been used nearly exclusively for airland (no low-level at all - hardly).

But you never know...

Does anyone know if RAF uses AIRCAT?? Does Marshalls run/use a similar program (of course, it would be spelled \'programme\' over there )? They must do something as I know they\'re replacing wings over there (XV179 had outer wings replaced in the year before it was shot down)...

From the article:

In an effort to avert having to shut down its Georgia production line in three years, Lockheed Martin is lobbying the Air Force to buy an additional 120 C-130J aircraft under an offered multi-year contract worth more than $6 billion.

And AFSOC swears they\'re buying KC-130J w/C-130J software = MC-130J!

There is no money. As T2 Guy said in another thread, \'They\'re hallucinating\'

So they put it in an emergency supplemental request. Nice try - we\'ll see what happens.

From the article:

Congress is currently considering a 2008 war supplemental request that includes funding for 15 C-130Js, seven KC-130J tankers and two MC-130J special-operations variants.

Those requests may run into resistance, as several members have criticized the inclusion of the aircraft in an emergency supplemental.

Dan Wilson wrote:

So does that meant that none of the P models have had any of these flight hour restrictions that the rest of AFSOC seems to be having?

True - no P-models I\'m aware of have any imminently impending hours limitations.

Dan Wilson wrote:

I thankfully bailed before this latest abortion occurred but I do know that all of the P models already have the SOF CWB. They started changing them out our fleet in conjunction with the SOFI mod back in the early 90\'s.

The T2 CWB was originally supposed to be purchased in conjunction with our pods. Of course, it got stripped out as a separate line item for funding issues.

I\'ll send you a PM.

TalonOneTF wrote:

I have to say here, that I really, really believe that there are many improvements designed into the new center wing box.

You are right. There have been a few production changes. The latest was in \'92 for the H3 - same wing as on the J-model.

TalonOneTF wrote:

However, even if the center wing box was a solid block of titanum (or even \"un-obtanium\"), C-130 missions and crews would find a way to impose fatigue into the structure---nothing is perfect

You are right again. Fatigue & stress are what causes metal (any metal) to fail. The SOF CWB is significantly stronger than the production CWB, but it weighs over 1000lbs more. The SOF CWB isn\'t indestructable though, it\'s extra strength just means it flies longer before replacement. You could probably build a CWB that would not be subject to stress or fatigue and outlive the rest of the plane, but it would likely be so heavy as to preclude actually putting anything in the back of the plane. Aircraft design is always a compromise...

TalonOneTF wrote:

As soon as the earlier signs of fatigue were showing up, a program could have been implemented to improve the design, and replace the defective center wing boxes as necessary.

I think the use of the word defective may not be accurate here. All airplanes have a planned life - I don\'t know what the C-130\'s original planned life is/was, but I\'ll bet we surpassed it a while ago with our E-models (which have all be re-winged at least once).

TalonOneTF wrote:

Instead, a program of deferred maintenance and band-aids has led to the current situation.

You are right again. I\'m sure most here can remember when we quit doing SOAP and decided to \"fly to failure\" on our engines. It\'s a cost-savings measure pure & simple.

TalonOneTF wrote:

How could a responsible Gov\'t depot maintenance organization let the stock level of replacement components dwindle down to nothing?

If you\'re referring to CWB here, they\'re made to order. They\'re too large & too expensive to have them sitting on the shelf. If you\'re referring to the many \"efficiency\" initiatives like Total Quality Management, Just In Time supply, & our latest LEAN programs, you\'re witnessing the application of commercial business models to the government. There are, of course, a few problems with this. Most commercial businesses are more efficient at the upper levels than the government & can actually make decisions relatively quickly, but more importantly, if they screw up, it only costs dollars - when the military screws up, it costs combat effectivenes, and sometimes lives.

TalonOneTF wrote:

Now that the monster has raised it\'s ugly head, cost is the actual driving factor in how soon more center wing boxes can be obtained. Suppliers/manufacturers will respond to accelerated programs, but the cost goes way up...a cost the Gov\'t doesn\'t want to pay.

Sooo, just say \"goodnight sweetheart\" to the older airframes. We can\'t have the logistics planners and chiefs with more egg on their faces than on their hats.

Hear, hear!

I hear they use the SAME FRIGGIN CWB on the J model.

I was surfing the AIRCAT website today & saw that all wings since \'92 H3 have very slight re-design based on SOF CWB - that includes J-model. Don\'t know what the EBH limit is on these...