EDWMatt

Cool beans! I'll be in touch, but I'm sometimes a little slow getting my act together. I'm supposed to be retired, but it seems I'm busier than ever. Cool story on the Hueys. We had 3 "Firebirds", 70-16295, 296 and 331. 295 and 296 retained the light water kits and booms until the late '80' or early '90's and carried "Crash Rescue" markings on the doors. We very 'occasionally' did suppression training at the Edwards fire pit (maybe once every couple years). My first ever Army Huey flight was in 295. I don't ever remember the kit being installed in 331 while I was there. I us

I'll defer to you, Bryan, as you've obviously done the research. I was just speaking from lore and the official ATCOM history documents. I'll have some LOH pics up before TOO long. I MAY also have some LOH flight test reports, but am not positive about that. Would love to chat with you sometime about my time at AEFA/AQTD

Dutch, I've got some LOH stuff coming soon. Just have to clean up the scans a bit. I've been really busy lately, had to travel out of the country for a bit, and I'm trying to get a first flight off on an aircraft. Soon, though!

The AF was involved in the YHC-1 procurement. Up until 1960, the Air Force procured and tested all aircraft for the Army. The Army wanted more control over the process and AVSCOM was established. That is how my unit, AEFA, came to be established at Edwards. It was formed by former Air Force flight test personnel. The Technical Director for Army Aviation was a former Air Force flight test engineer from Edwards that had been involved in testing Army aircraft. Dutch, have the CH-46C pics coming. And some Chinook stuff, too

Stay tuned. Got some cool stuff coming. My friend came across some really cool old Army Edwards stuff at a garage sale. I'm in the process of scanning it. LOH, early Cobras, short-body Huey's, ACH-47A, CH-46C and more!

Wow, excellent info! Thanks for this, BW

I don't remember any external stores on the early aircraft. The first Stinger installation I'm aware of was on the OH-58D(I). They weren't podded, but had a specialized mount (don't know the weapons system number off the top of my head). I don't think the Prime Chance aircraft had them. The Stinger installation is included in the "Thugs" version of the MRC kit, but not the "Black Death" boxing.

Yeah, that looks pretty close, LD. Would make a cool model.

Ah, thanks for the clarification! That timeline now makes perfect sense! My (future) boss was the FTE on the '58D PAE. The timeline for 68-16870 fits the JOH-58C A&FC. That photo looks like Arlington, however. It's not Edwards The "ADEA Scout II" configuration is, I believe the "OH-58X Surrogate" I tested. The program was terminated when we were part-way through the A&FC, so the mission equipment was removed and we continued to test the SFENA SCAS as part of the legacy OH-58 loss of tail rotor effectiveness (LTE) investigation. 16349 had the SFENA SCAS and the 206-L1 tail ro

Are you sure it was in '84? Maybe that was the Qual Eval for the Limited Airworthiness release for ADEA Scout II? I show the 2-position gear PAE in 1980 and LCH A&FC and M197 gun as 1981, so the LCH config was around prior to '84. 16285 sounds familiar, I think it might be the airframe used for the A&FC, but don't have that report handy at the moment to check.

We referred to those as JOH-58C's or MPLH's in flight test. I think they were also JOH-58C's in the operational fleet, although I've also heard them referred to as "OH-8's" (which was also used for Little Birds). The Army had all sorts of weird 'unofficial' internal designations that were applied to various airframes at different times, which can be confusing. The MPLH's were none to popular with the operational guys, I think there's some comments about them earlier in the thread or in the AH-6 picture thread. The MPLH's had armament provisions along with the air transport mods There w

Yup, LD, pretty sure it was Ship 5 we had at AEFA when I started there. Looked just like the picture, though don't remember whether it still had the "5" on the tail at the time. I plan to build that bird with the 1/48th Italeri kit. The pic you have of Ship 2 looks like the color's have shifted towards the blue. The orange should be "Flight Test Orange" (International Orange, FS 12197), while I think the chromate should be yellower and brighter. Take a look at the 'harlequin' OH-58D(I) I posted early in the thread to see what Bell chromate looked like. It's that ugly neon yellow-gree

I'm pretty sure we had one of those 'early birds' at AEFA when I started, LD. Had the 'flight test orange' cowlings like your first photo of Ship 3. I think it might have been Ship 5. Don't remember if it had the updated engine cowling by then or not, but it still had the clear windows in the rear doors. My buddy Bill was the FTE on that bird - I'll ask him what he remembers. Not sure if I have any pics of it or not. I'll search around.

I'm still looking to see if I have those tapes, Loran. I have a whole box of video tapes I saved from the Army, so might be something in there. I'm not the most organized person, and I have 3 houses at the moment, so figuring out where things are can be challenging. The hub-mounted camera, I think, may have been the first time a video camera had been mounted on the rotor system of a helicopter (there had been film cameras in the past). As Loran mentions, I had a monitor and a VCR at the flight test engineer's station in the helicopter where I could see and record the image real-

Sent you an email, Rob

I have one if you're still looking

Cool beans, LD. Will have some detailed info on 318 up soon. We used to apply all sorts of temporary unauthorized markings (like the "AIrwolf" title) to the aircraft during icing season. That year, we put 'shark mouth' markings (like the Flying Tigers) to the nacelles of the U-21 cloud sampling aircraft with vinyl contact paper. And, to "honor" the first female test pilot to fly behind the HISS, we also applied some other, extremely "non PC", markings to the U-21. Could never get away with that today. Different times... No, that's not an Argentine Air Force rounde

Okay, here's a couple pics for Loran, (and the rest of you guys) Here's the team photo of 318. Loran's the guy in the middle with the red scarf. Also in the picture is our co-pilot, Captain "LAX Jack" Kimberly (Jack got his nickname from a noise complaint we got shooting an instrument approach into LAX in another Huey. We made and presented Jack with a "Noise Reduction Unit", which was just a metal utility box with a 9V battery, an amber 'push to test' cockpit indicator light and a toggle switch that turned on the light!), crew chief Kelly Kehalani, instrumentation

Don Stafford. Unfortunately, I seem to remember Don passed away some time ago from cancer. He had been a photographer with Pan Am World Services at the Nevada Test Site, taking pictures in the caverns created by the underground nuclear tests. He said they always had to be checked for radiation after the photo sessions and he said a couple times they took his clothes and burned them! One of his fellow photogs lost all his body hair. He said they wouldn't provide the results of their radiations screenings, and they had to sue to get them Great guy. Sure, I remember Bob Will

LD, there are definitely OH-6 pics, including what I think may be YOH-6 (there are YOH-5 pics). There are pics of the M134 minigun installation and the OH-6 we crashed doing height-velocity testing. There's a bunch of interesting stuff, OH-13's, OH-23's, early UH-1D's, Charlie-model gunships, ACH-47 and more. I'm still sorting and it's going to take me a while to get them scanned. I'll know better exactly what I have once I get some of them scanned.

Awesome Loran! Once I've figured out how to post pics again, I've got a couple "blasts from the past" for ya. Watch this space. Yes, I'm still kicking around, Loach Driver. I kind of got fed up with all the sniping on the model boards (not this thread-everybody's been great) and dropped off for quite a while. You all may be in for a treat One of my old FTE buddies found a bunch of old slides at a garage sale here in the Antelope Valley and bought them. When we started looking through them, we were astonished. There are a BUNCH of old ASTA/AEFA photos from the '60's and '

OMG Loran! There's a name I haven't heard in a long time? How are you doing? Do you know who I am? I'm Matt G., your flight test engineer on '318! As Tank noted, I haven't been on this board in about 10 years, but happened to stumble on here tonight looking for something and thought I'd see if this thread was still going. I really don't do the model boards too much anymore. Remember when we did the paper at SETP and AHS on '318? After you left AEFA, I ended up being the Project Officer on '318 for a few years. I have a bunch of video tapes I saved from AE

Very nice, Dimitri. Will need to get one. When will you have some available (it shows 'out of stock' on your site)? Have you considered a set of corrected engine nacelles, since Kinetic totally buggered the nacelles in the kit? You did such a nice job on the nacelles in the Collect AIre kit.

Went for a flight in 'the movie Memphis Belle' last weekend. It's currently being operated by the Liberty Foundation, and they make it very clear that it is the movie airplane, not the real Belle. The confusion (which I believe was intentional) goes back to when MARC (Tallachet's outfit) still had the airplane. They repainted the nose art from the movie version to something closely resembling the wartime art, until they were told to stop by AFM. The airplane now carries the movie nose art again (with the cursive, vs. block lettering)

First of all, neat build! Couple suggestions on the window glue problem. One is watch crystal cement. This is a viscous, clear cement that dries pretty strong and will not fog transparent parts. Comes in a tube with a needle applicator and you can remove it before it dries completely with alcohol. I use this almost exclusively now. Can get it from Micro Mark and sometimes at craft retailers like Michael's, where it's sold in the beading section as 'bead glue'. Other recommendation is Super Gold superglue. This is a non-fogging gel superglue. Pretty expensive, though (like $11 for a me