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Scott R Wilson

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Posts posted by Scott R Wilson

  1. My kit arrived Friday. Pro's; It's here. It's very nicely molded. It's in a HUGE box due to the length of the fuselage. Con's; NO INTERIOR, not even the flight deck. No provision to cut the fuselage down to an A model, I guess they are going to mold a whole new kit. One set of decals for C-141B (AF Serial No. 65-0257) "Spirit of the Inland Empire" is on display at the March Field Air Museum, March Air Reserve Base, in Riverside, California, However the box says it's at the National Museum of the USAF. Looking forward to a quick simple build.

    The real jet at March is almost certainly on loan from the NMUSAF, maybe the folks at Roden misunderstood that.

    Looks like the after-market folks have their work cut out for them, coming up with a cockpit and cargo box interior. I worked on C-141Bs at McChord AFB from 1986 through 1991. At the time I wasn't very interested in Starlifters having just come from working on the much more exciting F-4 Phantom from 1980-86. Now I wish I'd taken more photos of Starlifter details.

  2. Early 80's would have seen the AIM-7F (white body) while during Dessert Storm the F-4G's carried grey with black wings AIM-7M's.

    I was at Ramstein AB April 1983 through April 1986. We had AIM-7E-2 Sparrows painted white and AIM-7Fs painted gray. I'm sure Spangdahlem had similar.

  3. Hi,

    During early eighties, i'm not sure about the ALQ-131, i think for an ALQ-119 or ALQ-184.

    SPang

    Early 1980s USAFE Phantoms carried ALQ-131. I saw plenty of them on Ramstein and Spangdahlem jets.

    Scott Wilson

    526 AMU, 86 TFW

    Ramstein AB, W Germany 1983-1986

  4. Way back in the mid-80s I asked one of our F-4E pilots at Ramstein about the media hype versus reality of ACM with other airplanes. He told me the F-14 was actually rather easy to beat. He said one of the keys to dogfighting was being able to judge your opponent's energy state and adjust your tactics accordingly. With most other fighters it's fairly difficult to do, but when the Tomcat's wings started swinging out, you knew he was low on energy and was therefore more predictable and easier to kill.

  5. Yep. When you first hit "edit" it only gives you the option for the post text as I'm sure you know now. But once you do hit "edit," under the text box you will see three options, saying "Save Changes," "Use Full Editor" and "Cancel." Hit "Use Full Editor" and you'll have the option to edit the title as well.

    :cheers:/>

    Very good to know, thanks!

  6. Not quite.

    The Auxiliary Air Doors are controlled by landing gear handle position. Gear handle down = doors open (in air and on ground). Gear handle up = doors closed. The Auxiliary Air Doors can also open in flight if there is an overpressure of the engine compartment.

    Cheers,

    John

    John is correct, the landing gear handle controls the doors. I believe excessive pressure in the engine bays simply pushes the doors open inflight, I'm pretty sure there is no pressure sensor or somesuch that "tells" the hydraulics to open the doors.

    The aux air doors will also snap shut with the gear down if electrical power is interrupted. They close during engine shutdown when the generators drop offline. We then pried them back open after shutdown and installed downlocks for engine oil servicing and to install the centerline safety pin if anything was installed on the centerline.

    Spey powered Phantoms on the otherhand work differently, I've seen many photos of them inflight with gear up, flaps down and aux air doors open.

  7. Every one a gem! :thumbsup:/>

    I got a chuckle or ten out of those too. A friend, Stephan Miller, sent them to me. I don't know if he originated them or found them someplace. He's got a good enough sense of humor that I could easily believe he came up with some or even all.

  8. There may be no excuse for laziness, but I'm still looking.

    Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

    Television may insult your intelligence, but nothing rubs it in like a computer.

    I changed my password to "incorrect" so whenever I forget it the computer will say, "Your password is incorrect."

    My computer beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.

    I'm great at multi-tasking--I can waste time, be unproductive, and procrastinate all at once.

    I bought a vacuum cleaner six months ago and so far all it's been doing is gathering dust.

    Money is the root of all wealth.

    I'll bet you $4,567 you can't guess how much I owe my bookie.

    Doesn't expecting the unexpected mean that the unexpected is actually expected?

    Women spend more time wondering what men are thinking than men spend thinking.

    My wife got 8 out 10 on her driver's test--the other two guys managed to jump out of her way.

    Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.

    Women sometimes make fools of men, but most guys are the do-it-yourself type.

    I was going to give her a nasty look, but she already had one.

    Is it wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly?

    Give me ambiguity or give me something else.

    No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

    Take my advice — I'm not using it.

  9. I like the comment beside the video.

    "No music. No flashy effects. Just pure brrrt for your Hump Day motivation."

    I wish all videos were like this. To me there's not a lot more annoying than cool jet videos with music track added. I'd so much rather hear the original sounds.

  10. Smoking, really? was this sort of stuff more common or more of a rare/one off thing. I'd guess this may have been a more of a thing back when smoking was more common in society. O2 is not a good thing with a spark, a family friend of mine, mother was a smoker with emphysema who just could not quit. Once she burned her chin/mouth by having smoke with the O2 mask just off her face.

    At least one WSO in the 526 TFS at Ramstein in the mid1980s used the front of the rear cockpit sill as his ashtray on cross countries. I saw ashes there on at least a few of our Phantoms during my three years there.

  11. I never heard "spark chaser" much. There were tin benders, knuckle draggers and bubble chasers but the avionics shops were usually called "tweaks" or "tweets". I was radar, the real "tweaks", we called the electricians "one wires" and the com/nav guys "two wires" because that's all the circuit complexity they were capable of troubleshooting... B)/>/>

    I was comm-nav avionics. In the USAF back 30 years ago (can it really have been that long ago? Damn I'm getting old!) the term "spark chaser" most often referred to electricians but was sometimes used for anyone that worked on electrical equipment of any type. I have only heard "tweaker" used by Navy folks.

    The WCS (Weapons Control Systems) guys proudly called themselves "knuckle draggers" but I never understood why.

    I guess it was ignorance, but we called all weapons people BB Stackers. I frankly didn't know there was a separate career field for folks working on the gun and ammunition versus bomb assemblers and loaders.

    Some of the nicknames were pretty offensive. Specialists were often a bit prima donna-ish, and some of them called crew chiefs "nose pickers" or "booger hookers." I thought that was inappropriate, I rarely used the terms unless a crew chief had ticked me off in some way.

  12. I *believe* the term loadout comes from the -1 flight manual for the respective aircraft, showing what it can be safely loaded with. I loaded F-16Cs for 15 years, but hardly saw every conceivable configuration. The pilots/NFOs/WSOs would probably have a better feel for what is possible.

    A point of clarification -- to call an Air Force Loader (462/2W1) a BB stacker is an insult. We are load toads and muzzle f***ers, thank you very much. AMMO troops (461/2W0) are the BB stackers.

    Vern

    "If you ain't AMMO, you're waiting on them..."

    I stand corrected. I was a mere spark chaser, fwiw.

  13. The F-16 crash was blamed on an incorrect altimeter setting. The loop was started at too low an altitude.

    Actually he had the proper altimeter setting, just messed up by not properly doing the math converting msl to agl at Mountain Home for the proper altitude at which to begin his reversal. As I recall he said he started his reversal at the indicated msl altitude they had used at a much lower field elevation airport. There was some discussion about why for displays they don't just set their altimeters to show "zero" on the ground to eliminate this possibility at future airports with high field elevations.

  14. KTesh, interesting idea posting this. I hope you get some good response from any other BB Stackers who might be in this group.

    Just out of curiosity, back in the day did you ever hear or use the term "loadout"? Several of us ex-military folks on this group had never heard that term during our time in service. As I recall it was simply the "weapons load" which was "uploaded" onto the jet or "downloaded" back off.

  15. While you don't see the impact you do see the takeoff, climb, aileron rolls, reversal and descent. It seems strangely like the Thunderbird crash at Mountain Home AFB some years ago in which that pilot didn't climb high enough before his reversal and descent so he was unable to pull out (though he successfully ejected at the last possible second).

  16. Ha! I've forever wanted to comment on the term "loadout" I've never said anything cuz I hate know it all types. Anyway, in my experience as a USAF maintenance officer, most in the fighter community over the course of 30 years, I never heard the term "load out". We always said almost exclusively "configuration" or used an alpha numeric designation. This begs the question, where does this term come from? I think maybe RAF or Aussies. Any ideas while we're on the topic?

    I had never heard the term "loadout" before joining online modeler forums either. Same with "splitter plate" on F-4s, "slime lights" and a few other terms used by modelers but not by people actually involved with the real jets.

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