Dan Wilson

Jordan? Man, 1859 was a sweet plane to fly, its only real problem was it was continually down for long periods. It was et up with corrosion big time. 1799 on the other hand (if I am thinking of the right plane) was a real pig, the electrical was one huge gremlin.

Thank you very much for posting that link, that man really was a saint for all he did for the troops. First time I met him I was shocked how tall he really was, he was a big man in many ways.

That was pretty impressive, but you think they would pull the C/B on the bitching betty to do stuff outside of the operating parameters. One statement that would have given me a seat cushion pucker factor of at least 8 was when he said "I think I'll make it". That usually never came out good when I was flying.

Pretty good, I like em. I am not sure what Red is holding there, it almost looks like some of the 20mm (cannon) rifles out there now, if so, better her shoot it than me LOL http://www.anzioironworks.com/MAG-FED-20MM-RIFLE.htm

The thread hijack talking about zero flap takeoffs got me to thinking this would make a good thread. What is the most Embarrassing/Stupid/I should be dead/just plain boneheaded thing you have done in your career with the Herk? I would have to say my most "oh shit" moment was back in 86, I was in the 7th ACCS and we had just finished our ORI (or whatever TAC called them) and we were taking the TAC IG team back to Langley. Well once we landed at Langley we called tower for a progressive to parking, the response was "Mopup 71, uh we dont see you, as a matter of fact your not on our airdrome". Talk about the cold flush dropping from your head to your gut, the next question we had to ask was "Langley Ground, uh where are we then" he responded "were checking". As it turned out we had actually landed at Navy Norfolk, so now the Navy guys (who were also in the midst of an operational inspection) had to turn up the lights so this mystery bird could take off (wondered why all those helo's were taxiing around blacked out and taxiway lights off). It was a real asstear from beginning to end once we finally landed at Langley, lets say the powers to be were not very happy

Oh Graf, what a lovely strip. 3000X60 with huge trees on departure (thanks to the damn greenies). Standard TO brief was "if we lose an engine on TO we will try to put it back down to meet the trees on the ground instead of in the air". When you did the data, there was NO three engine operations of any kind out of Graf. From what I hear, when the 37th moved over to TAC er I mean ACC they had a royal cow and stopped work at Graf, at least for a time. We did have a crew that took out the trees on takeoff (just after I DEROS'ed); they had some kind of power problem (didn't lose an engine, just a power problem) and drug the gear through the trees, I think it was something as simple as loss of a utility pump. Worst part of Graf was I remember doing 63 touch and go's one sunny day - gak

I only did the flaps up takeoff once, we did a stop and go and the righthand gear actuator decided to take em up - barkeep, lets have a redface all around

I will say that when your doing LAPES everything moves really really fast. My first extraction run I was still on the pre-extraction checklist when we were climbing out, it took a couple runs to get the checklist timing down. We had a crew that did a LAPES run in Aviano, they did an EP on the extraction, and they ran a racetrack to do the actual extraction. Kenny Albino was the pilot, and poor Andy Ross was the FE. They forgot a small thing on the second extraction, it became apparent when Kenny called for wheel height, and the response was "belly height". They kinda forgot to put the gear down on the second run, Andy had been upgraded to IFE that morning and downgraded that afternoon!! There were some photos of the bird screaming down the EZ about two foot up and gear up, it looked damn sweet Unfortunately that jerk boudreaux confiscated all the pics he found out about, but I heard Kenny still had one he kept in his wallet Best LAPES OOPS that happened while I was there in the 37th was Duke Bender, his crew was doing a triple heavy (36K triple married pallet) at Geibelstat and had an actual negative transfer on the actual run, so when they started the EP clean up and climbout the got a "load clear" from the back!!!! When it finally let loose it went out and landed in a Georg Von Opel car dealership. The Germans were kinda pissed (but I am sure they were very very well paid by the USAF)

Man I can relate to that! 49 chronological age with a body that's 145 years in mileage age - hell I dont even eat breakfast, who can be hungry after taking 16 pills when you get up (and almost that many before I go to sleep). I firmly blame a co-worker for this, he put the curse on me!! He told me "your living like you think your going to die by the time your 40, just watch, your going to live to be 90 with a worn out body" Damned if he wasn't right at least so far, I beat my father, he croaked at 42 from a massive coronary, now I just have to beat my g-father who cacked at 53 from the same thing. (already had 2 heart attacks so I at least have that 60% death rate behind me LOL)

I loved that shirt, it was a wool blend and really looked sharp (unlike the crap they have now). They phased it out sometime in the later 80's I remember wearing khakis, only they had spec 4 stripes on them :)

As for a very large number of pax, during the first gulf war we would take Army troops in the aircraft, six abreast and the column would march to 245 and stop on the ramp. There was so many that they had to sit down in formation, there was no room for individual movement of any kind for these kids. Packed in like sardines for sure, I have often wondered just how many we had on board, more than allowable that is for sure. This was during the shuttles moving the legs from Fahd to Rafah.

Muff The jump currency bird is always from Hurlburt/Eglin, you can tell cause they all look like they have some lumpy disease LOL Spent my share of days there getting the staff weinies thier jump hours, too bad they wouldnt let us RON to do it - Mons Venus and Oddesy 2000 :)

Actually, if I remember right, it was verboten to load through the paratroop doors (pax that is) since there weren't any of the troop door ladders available. The only Herks I remember ever seeing the paratroop door ladders still existing on were the ABCCC since the butt enders surely couldn't be required to climb into the plane - how uncouth LOL

Here is the byline I have for that picture: A young Marine private waits on the beach during the Marine landing, Da Nang, Vietnam, August 3, 1965. (U.S. Marine Corps.)

Wheres the photo? On the High Def side of your question, you would be very very surprised at how high a resolution photo they used, and not just for surveillance but just for historical documentation as well as the good ol media release. Here's one from WWII for an example, at this point I have really cut the resolution down just to keep it to an acceptable sized photo (I cant see your photo but I can bet it probably has a resolution close to this one):

At first I thought this was a joke, but I guess its the real thing. Finally a company helping us to prepare for the upcoming zombie Apocalypse!! Hornady ZombieMax Ammunition http://www.hornady.com/ammunition/zombiemax

Tell y'all what, give it to me and I will promise to preseve its history, I'm pretty sure I can fit it and a few others on my acre here in town. It would be really nice too, I could do engine runs with the tail of the bird pointing at the little turnip heads house behind me LOL

Yeah, whatschurpoint? Thems all good wurds, I hearsem at the horstpitul all the tim

Thats one of the pictures I had hanging on my office wall when commie liberals, er I mean social actions came in and promptly made fudge in their little leftist pantys. Boss wanted to blow them off but I told him, "go ahead and write me an LOR, that will cover your butt and I dont give a squat since I retire in a week, (really retire, not terminal leave). The little leftist commies really hated that and told me that was an improper attitude, asked them "what do you think you can do? Make me retire?" Heres another one that they ripped off the wall, very very offended!! Here's what today's Air Force is like, kinda glad I retired.

Guess its better than being shredded but not by much:(

Looks like lots of fun

C-51, C-118 or DC4; whatever it is, the damn thing did a loop!!! That was one great video, thanks.

Yep, I meant Grissom, not Griffis. I always get those screwed up! As for the ID card thing for retirees, I still cant find anything that says I have to get a new one before this one expires. Maybe I'm just not searching in the right places. The thing that makes me laugh and scratch my bald head is the front of my card says "indefinite" but there is an expiration date on the back, eek - I told the wife that was so she can plan on when she's going to get that big lump of life insurance money

There will always be differences between the braking action on the four tires, depending on brake condition, brake temps, if the pilot had more pressure on the left pedal than on the right and several other variables. Almost everything has a tolerance range which will allow things to operate just a bit differently than the others; as you know, during an aborted takeoff the whole crew is pretty busy and that little pull to the left, that resulted in damage to the tire, could easily go unnoticed. That is why the pilot should have used his symmetrical good engines to assist in stopping instead of just braking action alone, its very easy to underestimate the amount of energy that gets transferred to the brakes in an emergency stop. When I first started flying back in 85 we had this silly ass four page chart in the performance manual you had to run for brake temps, I would like to say the kinetic energy was always in the hundreds of thousand or millions of pounds transferred to the brakes (thank god they got rid of that chart pretty damn quickly); so it doesn't take a whole bunch to thrash out a tire.

62-1863 is 62-1863 so yes that is the bird that was being talked about, it has been demoded from EC to E model back when they sh*tcanned the ABCCC mission.