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Flysafe

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  1. How about a 14 foot Palm tree from Homestead to Pope. a general at Pope was retiring at Southern Pines and built a house with a glassed in area for the tree.
  2. Bennie was also the 4419 Test Squadron Commander at Pope in the late 1960's. Developed and tested 1528 LAPES - AWADS - dash 4A dual rails - Talar 4 - NAVIGS - high altitude CDS - CDS buffer board and a lot of other things that were tried for air drop.
  3. Received this from a friend that was there. Interested if anyone else that attended had the same opinion. "The anticipation exceeded the event. They weren't interested in anything other than the here and now. It was a plastic, politically correct, self laudatory celebration of the current regime and the current Abilene community. You would have thought there might have been some interest in attendees that brought the first C-130's there in 1961. There were three there. Forget it! There were four former wing commanders there, Who cares? It was the only AF function I have ever attended which had corporate sponsors. They had an award for the pilot with the most flying hours in the C-130, a local LC who had 5900 hours. Several of us there had nearly 2000 more and the hosts knew it. There are hundreds of enlisted types who have more time. But it would have spoiled a "gimmick" presentation, so forget it. We should have expected it, as there certainly was no effort on the part of the hosts to find any of us. We practically invited ourselves. Lesson learned."
  4. Back in the Evereaux days the co-pilot carried a classified list of call signs and they changed regularly. (I don't remember if it was every 3 or 5 days). You could not identify an aircraft type by the call sign as all of them changed except MATS.
  5. Buddy starts were common in 65. We ran out of starters due to many starts in hot conditions. Flew several missions with no starter on # 1 engine. Buddy start to start the day and refueled with # 1 running. They would not approve three engine T.O.'s or windmill taxi starts.
  6. Flysafe

    TALAR

    TALAR (Tactical Air Landing Approach Radar) was tested in the late 1960's by the 4419 Test Squadron at Pope. It was installed for the test into C-7, C-123, and the C-130E belonging to the Test Sqd. It worked great during the tests giving the crews an ILS anywhere in the world with very little set up time. The ground transmitter was the size of a large suitcase mounted on a tripod. The AF had a lot of money at the time and procurred a bunch of airplane sets before the testing was complete. As I said, the ILS signal produced was very usable in all weather. The problems: It was difficult for the CCT to get the transmitter exactly on the runway heading as only 1 degree made a big difference and all they had was eyeball and hand held compasses. The aircrews during the test found it very hard to find the course. On a normal ILS, the crew uses an outer marker (used to be NDB) or radar vectors from a radar site. (approach control). The TALAR was designed to be used in remote areas where no radar was available. The signal had to be found somewhere around 10 miles on final for normal use and all the C-130 had for navigation was doppler that wasn't that accurate. The final test report stated the system was excellent once the airplane was on course, but its use was questionable due the difficulty in finding the final approach course. By that time many airplanes had been modified, but the transmitter buy was stopped. It was used a few limited times by C-130's with advanced navigational capabilities on special missions.
  7. As a co-pilot in 1965 at CCK, I was an expert on the slip stick. SSgt Michael Rice was our crew's loadmaster and he supervised the loading and while doing that, he gave me weights (sometimes estimated) and locations and I did the Form F although he signed it. During the CCK 13 months, we always filled out the Form F and had a copy on the airplane and somewhere at the departure base. The Flight MECANIC and navigator helped push cargo when in the "sticks". Our Flight Mechanic had 3 years as a crew chief, had a tool box and could fix almost anything. We got the performance data from tab data and didn't waste time knick picking in the dash one.
  8. I agree with Sam that the use of Party Suits came later. We didn\'t have them at Kung Kwan AB (CCK) in 65-66. I got my first one when I went to Gunships at Ubon.
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