GVS

Whats the story behind the elongated dent in the fuselage to LM wheel well fairing?

I agree with you Spectre623 and about all I can say is this reg. ain't gonna last long.

In the recip days I can see the concern about walking in the prop arc., etc. (hot mags, p-leads, etc). But with the Herc, without bleed air on the plane, I just don't see how the prop would rotate. I don't know but are there any turboprops out there with electric starters?

I'm pretty sure the Russian AN12 has electric starters.Was watching one start in New Delhi and never heard a GTC.All 4 engines were very slow to come up to speed.

Hard for me to believe anyone with acft.maintenance experience could sign off on this.

And that too.

CHLOROBROMETHANE: an excelant fire fighting agent,a hell of a good solvent and about 3 good whiffs will knock you out. Emptyed a few A20 bottles to clean up an oil or hyd. fluid mess.

Halon was still being used into the mid to late '90's.Don't know about after that.I retired in '95

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Thaks, Bob. Now that's an FE panel!!! I just spent 90 minutes of my Saturday morning roaming around that cockpit. One thing that confused me was that all the engine instruments and controls were numbered from right to left.

We had an FE at Dyess years ago that used to be a B-36 FE at Biggs AFB in El Paso, TX. Some old Dyess guys may remember him -- Noley Rumble.

Don R.

F/E controls numbered rt. to lft. Pilots numbered lft. to rt.HMMM. Took me awhile to find the jet throttles.

Strange this would come up. Was just thinking of him this morning.Lets hope all is OK with him.

A gutsy mission for sure but typical of the military.

SEFEGeorge is right.Sometimes we're just smart enough to sct stupid.

In the gallery lockheed S/N 4879,4879b and c. Can anyone tell me where these photos were taken?

Reminds me of an incident that took place where I worked. An A6 was IFRing from a NA6A with a buddy store.At the conclusion of the fueling the A6 went to break off but the hose basket wouldn't release from the probe.They flew around like this for several minutes.The tanker was towing the receiver around the sky but no joy.Finaly on a pre arranged verbal signal the tanker guillotined the hose,the receiver pitched up hard and the hose went down below but jamed hard between the right inlet splitter and the foreward fuselage doing a fair amount of damage. Both aircraft landed safely. The hose was a write off.

So I was looking at some gallery photos a few days ago and came across some that had a wiper on the center W/S. What is the nature of the mission that required a third wiper?

They've got some lookers over there and they are all smart.

I'm not arguing what the book says - all the books I've ever seen all say the same thing....What I will say is that I've not seen ANY system take longer than 10-20% RPM before indicating SOMETHING....

SO - there are book limits (indication by on speed, full system pressure by on speed+30 seconds), and there are practical limits....just pay attention and know what's "normal" and what's not....

Most H2 and newer planes won't see full system pressure until 20-30 seconds after low-speed or on-speed. Something odd about their buffers or whatever....most E models and early H-models will show full system pressure far earlier....the books remain the same.

Hyd. pr. on "A" models started to come up when RPM ind. read about 3% and was at full system pr. by 20%. Of all the acft. I've run hyd. pr. was usually the first ind. to rise after RPM. ind.

Excellant post USHERK.That IS the way it is.After nearly34 years in aircraft maintance,both A.F. and industry,I've found that atleast 95% of the time ops. and maint. work well together.There are times when they don't and sometimes personalty or attitude will play a part. I've said it before: if not for both maint. and ops. we'd all be gun toteing infantry.

Seems to me I remember that when you pushed the start button in, it had to pop out in so many seconds? CRS I guess. I never heard the likes of switches! What have they done to our Herks?

Other than the starter duty cycle limit,the button pop out was to take place at a stated % RPM depending on which starter was installed.Some were 53% but most were 64%.This was on the "A" models. There was a small reverseable placcard just below the starter button with 64% on one side and 53% othe other.On an engine start the pilot,C/C or eng. man would,just before pressing the starter button say "turning #(say eng.) at plarccarded RPM.

If the button didn't pop by that RPM or just above it the button was to be pulled.

The reason I asked is because it was quite cold here that day and I was thinking I'd hate to be stuck in Rhine Main,Kef., or any one of many cold weather places that all of us have been and sweating an engine start.I only used preheat once and that was at Evreux.It never got really cold there but was damp. I was on nights and left over from day shift was a no start/no rotation write up. A starter had been ordered but no trouble shooting had been done.Flt.chief sent another guy and me out to have a look.Rolled a stand out, Opened the cowl and got ready to try a start.GTC runing,ATM runing,start button pushed------and no air at the starter! Can feel the duct going to the starter control valve flex just a bit. Must be the valve,lets put one O/O,no wait ,maybe it's frozen-lets try some preheat-geez no we'll be in big trouble if we do that-lets do it anyway and not tell anybody-OK.

It took longer to unguard the switches than it did to

hit preheat for 10 sec.and get a sucessful start.A couple more starts(observing the duty cycle of course),sign off, button up and done.Kept that fix under our hats for a long time. There was nothing but horror storys told about useing nacell preheat and maint.was not to touch those switches!

Chris,

Did you ever install a tire in SEA that just cut your hands to shreds? The treads were full of small wires that were like little razor blades. I seem to remember I was told that they were to be used on ice or snow. Just what we needed to safely taxi onto the ramp at Saigon!!

Don R.

You didn't have to be in SEA to get those tires.I left a lot of skin and a little blood in the MWW's of herks in Europe. I was told that they are pretty effective on slick ramps , T/ways and R/ways.There was some nose tires equipt with wires too.

I thought it was a good thing .... so I'm for keeping it

keep it

Just wondering : is the nacell preheat system still being installed and if so are the switches still guarded/breakers pulled?

For more on the ABCCC mission google Robert L Mosley.He has a site and has wrtten an article on his year as A/C flying ABCCC from Udorn.

I knew him at Evreux ,flew several test hops as well as high speed taxi checks with him.An excellent pilot.

All good articles on his site describeing his career.

I could be wrong but at one time the flight manual said that you had to be on O2 anytime the cabin altitude exceeded 10,000ft.

Thats the way I remember it as well. In addition to that some A/C's had the crew go on O2 for a few minutes prior to a night takeoff.

One thing I've always been curious about but never asked. On the H models why is the left side skin above the wheel well not painted? Is is because of a heat problem with the APUs and using a different type of metal there?

You ain't the only guy who's wondered about this. Me being an A model troop and you haveing lots more experience in the 130 world, I don't feel so bad about not knowing the answer to this.