Retired Talon F/E

I think your crew chief is a wannabe or smoking something.  I did a HALO from 32K over Spain in a Talon back in the 80's and let me tell you it was no pic nic.  I calculated and we took off with 26k on fuel and I can tell it was the worst flight I was ever on.  2 no-drops with all the prebreathing and the old helmets it was miserable.  At that altitude you had to get clearance from the Doc. and he with a med tech had to be on board.   61k, now that's a joke.

The video has been around for a few years on the Stray Goose site.  Except for 547, 558, 563 and 564 I flew on all the others.  I can look back and say it was the highlight of my military career.  The acft. had so many upgrades it was a shame to boneyard them.  Technology killed them, a long story.

There was talk of replacing the three bladed props back in the 60's but nothing was donre about it until after Jul 1975 when they killed a crew from the 63 TAS on 57-0454 in Michigan when a prop failed. Then almost all the remaining USAF A's got 4 bladed props

Bob

When I was at Lockbourne in '69 there was two A models with 4 bladed props. I was told they were there for testing.

I don't know if this changed or not but years ago we used to have problems now and then with the C-12 compasses. The issue then was the access panel for the flux valve. Then the panel required brass screws screws instead of steel. Sometimes they would get a brass screw get stripped and mistakenly replaced with steel. But, then again that was a long time ago.

Some time ago there was a discussion in this forum concerning the ABCCC birds in Vietnam. Even though I actually assisted in loading the module, both at CCK and at Danang I was told that I was mistaken, that the modules were loaded and hooked up in the States. Just the other day I stumbled upon some old pictures, and low and behold, there is a pic of the ABCCC mod being loaded. And it ain't at Hickam or anywhere else in the U.S. If I'm not mistaken, it's at Danang. I'll see if I can upload the pic to this post. If not it can be viewed in "My Gallery".

When I was at CCK I worked in the reventments performing phase inspections on the ABCCC's in 68/69. They came from Vietnam or Thighland, I forget which and they never had the capsule in them when we got them.

Does it only do this in the flight range of power, or all the time? In Mech Gov or Normal Gov? Synchrophasing on or off? When RPM goes up, then down, what do the other indicators do? The same direction, or opposite?

The best possibility is both Tach Gen spline holes are worn excessively. At worst, your reduction gearbox tach generator drive gears might be worn out. Both Tach Gen pads are geared into the same idler gear, so possibly the idler gear bearings are wearing out, or even the Hydraulic Pump gear bearings too, as it drives the idler gear. If you have a vibration signature program, I suggest doing a vibration signature readout of the gearbox to check the bearings for wear.

Another possibility might be wiring near the Reduction Gearbox causing intermittent contact as the engine torques within the QEC at power. I would also swap RPM indicators with another engine, because swapping indicators doesn't cost anything.

With this little info. there a host of possible things that could be the problem. First putting a tach on the speed sensing control only gives you engine rpm, not prop. It sounds like the engine is doing what it is supposed to do , run at 100%. As stated above is the flux in mech and normal gov. or both. have you changed the valve housing. If it is a true 5% flux you are going to hear it. I think if it is an indicating system you should see it just dropping the throttle over the gate, not just at power. Too many loose ends here.

tinyclark

new to replying do you still have your book if so may I buy it from you.

I'm working on list of BLACKBIRDS from the early days

thanks in advance

If you want to know all there is to know about Talon 1's go to straygoose.org. There is a very well done video by Ron Rowe on the life and history of Blackbirds.

Not sure how to take this post. Seems that flight crews had a penchant for disappearing leaving the chief there to care for the aircraft. In this case the chief does what's expected of him, no one from the flight crew bothers to pre flight the plane, (except the LM, who did his job) when the NLG pin is discovered still installed it's the chiefs fault. In the mean time the proper pin is simply thrown away. I wonder who should have had words (a lot of them) with whom. Also, I wonder what happened to the "remove before flight" banner? If it were hanging on the pin it should have been seen long before engine start. If the banner wasn't there, that's the only mistake the CC made.

First, If you had read my comments you would have seen that the crew chiefs had ELECTED to stay with the acft. not left behind!

Second, on ops. stops the crew was told if there was ANYTHING done on the acft.

When I was ststioned at Clark AB, PI, on my very first trip in country, we made a few stops before arriving at Tan Son Nhut. On our first stop, after shutting down the engines and being the consencious 2-striper that I was, I put in the NLG down lock. This was back when that down lock was a big triangle-shaped wedge. The FE would stow it on the floor behind the AC's seat. While taxiing out, the FE was moving his foot around looking for the down lock. He then asked the AC stop the airplane and had me go out and remove it. After returning to the cockpit, he said something like, "Son, you'll never do that again, will you?" Could've been a really deserved ass-chewing, but he was nice about it.

Don R.

When I was going through BFE at Little Rock the F/E instructor taught me that the only thing you hang your helmit bag on the back of the co-pilots seat with is the nose gear pin. That way you will never forget it.

Fast forward a few years and on a short trip to Pope to do troop drops we took a couple of crew chiefs. The acft. had a temp. nose gear pin. We shut down to wait for the first couple of sticks to show up for the drops and of course they were late so we went to the snack bar to grab some chow. The chiefs elected to stay with the acft. One of them went to Popes bench and got the correct pin and installed it. Only they didnot tell me. We get back to the acft. and I See that my bag is still hanging from the back of the co-pilots seat. I had a good LM who after all engines were started checked for the nose pin prior closing the crew door. Well he stood in front of the acft. and asked me if I needed this (the nlg pin). I said I have the NLG pin right next to me and to throw that one in the trash can. After landing the chief and me had words, alot of them.

It may be due to brush type generators. Years ago we had brush type generator and the brushes had to be inspected/replaced on specific intervals, similar to an ATM generator. When brush type generator were installed we were limited to 0.625 load while on the ground.

Vic

You don't have to repeat yourself Vic, we read you the first time;)

Ok, Good luck finding an answer that explains the Caution ...

These items sometimes don't catch up with the times. These are VERY slow to catch up with the mods or upgrades with the acft. When I was in the school house many times we challenged them and NOBODY knew why or how they were there.

I am really to old to comment on this but i was on 64 E's for three years ACC CC over 2 years and I just can't think of this kind of one of the problems was with the fuel shut off are oil don't know but we would reach in side and push what we call the primer and she would fire up. Wish I could remember better!

That primer was to get oil to the pressure switch. If the switch didn't read 2-3 psi it would not allow fuel for starting.

One thing I will add; Did you trace the fuel from the manifold to the armpit valve. This is probably before your time but in the 80's we had a big problem with fuel tank foam breakdown. We would get fuel pressure low lights because foam clogging fuel heater strainers at high power settings. Depot was supposed to have solved this years ago but they are only human they may have missed something. They can miss items to. Think not, how about #1 fuel tank on 64-0551.

auto feather, auto power reductions, auto power applications (just firewall the POWER LEVER) NO FE.... What's not to like :-l

Pilots probably love it. No more F/E yelling at him. ;)

Now you have me confused; first you say that the boost pump is on to start the GTC then you say after you start it you turn the pump on to feed the GTC. By the way the crossfeed valves are 28V DC, they don't require the inverter to be powered. Inverters convert DC to AC through a small generator. Get in the books!

This is a P.S. to my previous entry. I didn't make anything of where you are from, that's your excuse. I wasn't speaking from a high horse it was 23 years of active duty working and flying herks followed by 22 years of teaching Mission qual. course, Annual acft. systems refresher course, annual Simulator refresher and mixed in the last 22 years was 15 years of teaching initial engine run course. I don't know all there is to know about B,E, and early H's but I have my share of knowledge.

The one thing that amazed me most was when teaching the engine run course how much missinformation, incorrect operation and urban legend on the operation of the herk. It all comes down to passed on bad info. that after a while becomes gospel and standard procedure with no explanation of how or why. Just that, "that is what we were told or shown how to do"

No, you are wrong, we never use ground support, you should know this if you've been an FE, when you start in the morning or on a turn around, were you shut everything down, once you've done your bleed check, you get the ATM online to get the No 2 boost pump going before the manifold runs dry or select the inverter so that your x-feed valve open on No 2 so that the GTC fuel pump would get fuel from the tank. With a cracking press from the FCU of 61psi you want to tell me that the fuel pump is u/s, or have you got fuel tank pumps that we do not have, come on. Just because we're from Africa you think we can't operate a Herc, I'm sure we can teach you a thing or two, get of your high horse, we're here to help each other, isn't that what this forum is all about.

Now you have me confused; first you say that the boost pump is on to start the GTC then you say after you start it you turn the pump on to feed the GTC. By the way the crossfeed valves are 28V DC, they don't require the inverter to be powered. Inverters convert DC to AC through a small generator. Get in the books!

Change the GTC to an APU and you won't have this problem. Just a little story to illustrate my point, the GTC on 9812 refused to run without a boost pump since the 90's. The story I got was they were so tired of the problem getting written up that they added it to the PDM contract to investigate the issue. They did a flow test from the fuel source to the GTC and couldn't find the problem, even changing the fuel line itself all the way down to the GTC, and it still didn't fix the boost pump issue. They ended up just leaving the write-up in the info page of the forms. More recently, the leadership got tired of seeing it there, so they created a tiger team to fix the problem, reaccomplishing a lot of the work that has been done over the years, with no result. I personally changed 4 GTCs in that plane for various reasons, and we still could not find one that would run without a boost pump.

The maintenance tech data states that you may need a boost pump to run the GTC, but for some reason, it never made it into the flight manual, even though the mountain of evidence shows the system design is inadequate to run without a boost pump. Air crew can press the issue all they want, but the end result will be unsavory maintainers just pulling the filter out to make them happy. If you truly want it fixed, change over to an APU and be done with it. Otherwise, just use the boost pump, and count your blessings when you can actually do a self-contained start.

Sometimes, we have luck changing the filter, strainer screen, atomizer, and fuel cluster to fix this problem, but I don't think anyone will be able to get 100% of GTCs to run without a boost pump.

Please write Lockheed Martin and tell them you have rewritten the definition of the C-130. It is no longer a self contained acft. That or all the ones I flew on had a problem because ours didn't require require a boost pump to start a GTC! I guess it always had to carry a power cart with it whenever it left home station. It'll never make it to the -1, that will limit it's capability.

As far as an APU, that would solve the problem but very costly. In the 80's our chief of DOV pressed for all the T-1's get APU's. You know what killed it $$$$$ a million a pop. That was 80's money.

Or buy J's.

To have a boost-pump on with the GTC running is standard operating procedure, usually No 2 pump on with its X-feed valve open to the manifold. Not one of our AC's GTC's will keep running without the boost pump on or the X-feed valve closed. With Eng start at hot and high conditions when we have to switch off the ATM, the X-feed valves are open and with the inverter on which keep all fuel valves open.

This would be a maint. response when they can't figure out what the problem is. I guess your planes never make a self contained start. Because if there is no external AC power to run the pump then you can't start your GTC, according to to your statement. Of course the x-feed valve has to be open to get fuel from the tank.

How's this for thought; Gary Kings death is the 5th C-130 F/E that I know of who died prematurely (50's) of some form of cancer not related to smoking.

I seem to remember that when I attended the Rolls Royce school years ago that they said Rolls produced and sold a kit to convert -7's to -15's. They tried selling them to the USAF but they turned them down. I guess it made too much sense to standardize to only -15's.

Updated list;

STAR; Surface To Air Recovery (Fulton)

I assume that they are not finished with it yet. It still has the arrival paint scheme on it. The one at Hurby is painted what it never had shiny black and green and most of the ecm antennas were replaced with out dated external equipment. But it always did have a mixture of old and up to date equipment.

I have to correct you on something you said. It was a ceremony by the Air Force Reserve. There wasn't one word from the Active Air Force of a job well done or the presence of AFSOC leadership. It was well done though. The 711th treated and used the acft. well over the years. Having been associated with them in the school house for the entire time they had the Talons I can say there're a damn fine group of people. Good luck with the Truck.