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CJ Martin

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Posts posted by CJ Martin

  1. 17 hours ago, 11bee said:

    CJ - I remember you, you were a legend in the flight sim world.    Made the best sims bar none.    Longbow2 was my favorite.    Sad day when Janes closed down.    

     

     

    Yikes! Well thanks for the kind words, hard to believe those glory days were 20ish years ago now. It was a cool gig, the money and benefits were great, but the hours and stress level sucked. The Jane's Combat Simulation brand was doomed as soon as Paul Grace retired - he set that deal up and was a constant champion for flight sims within corporate EA. That and the rise of shooters, games that were capable of generating huge initial sales with lower cost of goods (no big manuals, fancy key cards and other cool little babbles) for the same investment...it was a no brainer for EA to exit that niche when they did. We had a great crew in Baltimore and losing that was the worst part.

     

    And speaking of DCS, the Executive Producer Matt Wagner used to work for me - we hired him from a three letter government agency to be an associate designer after we shipped F-15. He built pretty much all the campaign missions in F/A-18 and did a host of other stuff. He's done well for himself since those days and we are still in touch.

  2. Most of the principles behind the original Warbirds left ICI, formed a new company and created Aces High. Same concept, WW2 online combat simulation. I can't speak to the latest version as I've been away from that scene for some time. Seems like AH is still kicking though.

     

    A long time ago I was very active in the WB community (and it's predecessor Confirmed Kill). Co-founded the Flying Pigs, good times.

  3. Seems like we did run over the same ground closer than I thought, my bad for assuming otherwise. A good friend of mine was a FRAMP instructor 86-89, but he was an AQ1 so you probably didn't know him. I rolled to Pax in June of 88 myself. Still here but working unmanned stuff (PMA-262).

     

    And I'll hold off on the BB stacker jokes. :tongue-in-cheek: (I was an AT)

  4. 5 hours ago, habu2 said:

    Life is too short to argue facts with fanboys who weren't even born when these decisions were being made.....

     

    I certainly hope you aren't aiming that comment my way. I spent a fair amount of my youth on the flight line maintaining Tomcats (and later Hornets). And GW brings up a number of excellent points. I don't think we are really saying anything too different, particularly when you consider the time perspective. I get the sense that he was in the Fleet sometime after I was. I was a Fleet tomcat maintainer in the mid-80's, this was the height of the Reagan buildup and we still had part shortages. Carriers out-chopping from the Med (I was East Coast Navy) would strip their jets (TCS cameras & power supplies, EW gear, etc) and send it over to the in-chopping carrier. We always had at least one rob bird from the moment we came aboard until the frantic rebuild before fly off. If the Tomcat community ever had a healthy supply posture, it was before my time. And let's be perfectly honest - the AWG-9 system had terrible reliability. Getting more than 20 hours out of a transmitter was highly unusual, and those were some big puppies to lug around the deck. The system was complex, had terrible BIT, and required a great deal of experience to maintain. Hence my long learning curve comment previously. Sure, it made me a better tech in the long run. But it took a while for me to get there, and not to brag, some guys never could get there. They could change a box ok, and maybe even get a CDI qual, but they never really grasped how the system worked, so they struggled to troubleshoot once the "usual suspects" had been swapped out. This was true across the shops - the flaps/slats/spoilers were notoriously finicky, the TF-30s issues are well known, hell even the one wires (Electricians) had to wrestle with a balky fuel quantity system. 

     

    I got to Pax in the late 80's, the Delta program was full steam ahead and the future seemed bright. This was back in the days before VX-23, I was assigned to the Strike Aircraft Test Directorate (SATD) a.k.a. Strike in the Avionics shop. We maintained all the Strike birds except the Harriers (Marines handled those). So I got to turn a wrench on Intruders, Prowlers and Hornets when I wasn't working Tomcats. I've seen some weird loadouts and otherwise unnatural acts performed in the name of flight test. Tomcats coming back with their TPS paint melted off, looking like elephant skin due to low level supersonic runs. I digress...

     

    The bottom fell out when the F-14D program got scaled way back. In 1991 I got out and took a civilian job supporting R&M, Hornets mostly though I did help out the Tomcat side as we were in the same branch. I saw the data rolling through as the Delta went to OPEVAL, failed it, and was eventually cancelled. Right around this time the whole A-12 thing cratered. Hornet 2000 was a concept that evolved into the Super Hornet. Tomcat 21 was also a concept at that time. Grumman was super arrogant and extremely dismissive of the (cheaper) Hornet 2000. Decisions were made way above my paygrade. But I saw the raw data, helped clean it up and make sense of it. Manpower was a huge cost even then, and the bottom line is that the Hornet was cheaper (much cheaper) than the Tomcat. Yes some of those Tomcats were getting up there in terms of flight hours. But the numbers weren't much better for the later B/D squadrons.

     

    I've been away from the tailhook side for the better part of the last ten years, so I'm not as up to speed on the current issues. I know aging aircraft is a thing. I was still supporting Hornets when the first A+ mods were coming out. I'm not trying to compare issues today or ever 10 years ago with what I saw 30 years ago on the flight line. (my God, I am getting old...) The Tomcat even in it's prime was much more difficult to keep in the air. I know well what it takes, our squadron set a record during the '86 cruise - 895 sorties without an abort. It took a lot of hard work, talented maintainers and a fair amount of luck to pull that off, and that was in the Tomcat glory days. The shallower learning curve on the Hornet side is/was a huge cost advantage (training, spares, manning). As the Hornets age out and they fly the wings off of them supporting global ops they are running into many of the issues the Tomcat community ran into. Budgets are tight, and quite honestly they are flying more and burning life off faster than we did in the 80's.

     

    Sorry, got on a roll. I'm proud of my Tomcat days, still wear a VF-33 ballcap (and have a Minky decal on my truck, lol). I have no great love of the Hornet. I understand the cold logic and sequence of events that led us to where we are today. Blaming a single person for the demise of the F-14 as some do ignores the reality of those times.

  5. On 7/31/2017 at 11:09 AM, GW8345 said:

    As for the maintenance record, don't believe everything you read/hear about it, I worked on the bird for 14 years, the maintenance record was overblown in order to justify the super Hornet.

     

    I worked on them too, both in the Fleet and at Pax. Post active duty, I worked for NAVAIR Reliability & Maintainability.

     

    The Tomcats dismal maintenance number were very real. I saw them, saw the raw data. NAMP/3M data was used. Towards the end, Tomcat MMH/FH was in the mid-40s, spiking higher at times. Legacy Hornets were upper teens, Supers low teens. Do the math.

     

    And I believed those numbers. As someone that also worked on Hornets, I was shocked how easy those plastic jets were to maintain. Need access to the radar package? Pull the whole damn thing out of the radome. LOL. Certainly the plastic jet was easier for an avionics tech to work on and troubleshoot. Didn't care for the whole prox box thing though. Shall we talk about engine swaps? Haha. While not completely fleet representative, a McAir crew did demonstrate a swap within 30 minutes! Let's talk about having an APU on board...no pushing A/C carts around, no crying for combat air on the ship just fire up the APU and run the radar (or whatever). Sure you could pull breakers on the Tomcat to get things to run, but push that trick a little too long and you'd burn up boxes. I saw the sun rise over the Oceana flight line more times than I'd like to admit chasing wiring issues.

     

    First love will always be the Tomcat, but I'm not blinded by that love. The Cat was a cast iron bad girl to work on. It did teach you to be a good tech, but the learning curve was steep.

  6. Yeah, looking at the pictures closer, I have no idea what those are. Never saw anything like that in the Fleet or when I was at Pax. Might be something after my time as I got out in '91.

     

    As far as what is hanging on station 1B in the first picture, that's this:

     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-152_AAAM

     

    China Lake bird, prototype missile shape. Probably just for fit check purposes but may have flown captive carry. That would have been a bit unusual as we usually did the captive carries and initial weapon separation work here at Pax, not at China Lake. The aircraft in the picture does not appear to be configured for weapon separation work as there are no photometric marks (those black/white circular symbols seen on some Pax jets) so I suspect this is just ground testing. 

  7. For the belly stations, the weapons rail is lowered down onto the missile and mechanically latched. Then the rail is cranked back up. The umbilical that connects the missile to the jet is engaged on the side of the rail, that's the only "retractable" part. There isn't any "cushion", not sure why you would think that.

     

    FWIW, it was possible to accidentally drop one on deck - happened here at Pax while I was on active duty. It was common back then to load the jets the night before (these were inert/blue tube missiles, not live rounds) and then prior to flight install the Cartridge Actuation Devices (CADs) which were used to blow the stores off in an emergency. Early that next morning an ordnanceman went out to the jet (SD 202 IIRC) to install the CADs. This guy was not a Fleet Tomcat ordie (strike one), went out there solo (strike two) and did not have/use the proper checklist (strike three). He put a speedhandle in the rail and though he was unlocking the rail so he could crank it down installed the CAD. Instead, he unlocked the weapon hooks. The missile released and nearly took off his feet. The radome shattered all over the flight line and the weapon split in two right where the fins connect. As you can imagine, a major shoot show commenced. I had performed and signed off the release and control checks the day before so our Ordie Chief came and grabbed me and together we went out to the jet. The Ordie Chief was a Tomcat guy and knew his stuff. As soon as we got out to the flight line we noticed that power was not applied to the jet, in fact the power cord wasn't even connected. That pretty much ruled out my systems or responsibility. Once the rest of the facts came to light, the ordie that dropped the missile ended up losing a stripe over it.

  8. I can't help you with the decals, but be aware the jet you want to model is a "D minus" test bird from the F-14D program. It's basically an Alpha air frame, TF-30's and all with Delta electronics and cockpit. I don't remember what seats it had in it now. Miles and miles of orange wire under those panels.

  9. Wow that is some serious erosion on that pizza box. I used to support that program at one time. We had similar erosion problems with the blade antenna array (a.k.a. "bird slicers") on the C/D, and IIRC that drove a coating change at the supplier. As a general rule, Fleet maintainers can't / are supposed to paint antennas as it messes them up. They do have erosion tape that can be used on blade antennas. It's a clear tape applied to the the leading edge only.

  10. A couple of thoughts - the later versions of the TF30 were actually pretty good, and in fact at altitude I understand it was actually better than the F110. Also the F110 was not without it's own problems. A/B burn through was a real thing, and crews were lost because of it.

     

    A good maintenance department could rack up impressive availability numbers given enough parts. However to do that the maintainers had to work like dogs. The learning curve was steep. Having worked on both, there is no doubt in my mind which bird was easier to work on. McAir got a lot right with the Hornet, while Grumman stubbornly hung on to everything that made the Tomcat hard to work in in the Tomcat21 proposals. The Delta was somewhat less maintainable than the older Tomcats, at least from an Avionics tech POV. Lack of an onboard APU really sucked. Trying to get cooling air on the flight deck was nearly impossible. Burning up boxes during troubleshooting was a real danger.

  11. As a former Tomcat maintainer, seeing a Tomcat with spread wings on deck means "something is broken" unless of course it is in tension on the cat or rolling down a runway.. Wing spread spots on the ship were a pain in the a$$ almost always requiring a respot, which means waiting around for hours until the deck crew finally moved the jet. Fortunately for me as an avionics guy I didn't have to maintain the wing sweep or flat/slat systems. On deck, our jets were kept in oversweep afloat or on the beach.

     

  12. On 1/6/2017 at 7:47 AM, norbert said:

    You can add additional tie-downs as i did on this early picture, before I received my order of chains

    Gloves are inside the pocket. I saw with surprise some pictures of these without gloves on hand.

     

    That looks damn good. I never had flight deck pants with huge pockets, I was an air wing (CVW-1/VF-33) roof rat in the pre-cami days. Before a boat det, we'd ride up to Langley AFB and pick up a crapload of the USAF green utility pants. They were dirt cheap and actually held up pretty well. Anything was better than dungarees!

  13. Back in the day, a line rat carrying only 4 chains would have been called another name for a cat. Not sure about these days. Hell it's been almost 30 damn years since I worked the roof. Love the chains. What the hell is in his pocket though? We couldn't do that, FOD hazard and the deck apes would go spastic if they saw that. The padeyes look great, just be sure to put a bunch of nasty gunk in them!

  14. That beaver tail really looks great. The only thing I would do is either hollow out or replace the fuel dump with tubing - it's pretty thin metal and they got banged up pretty good IRL. Also depending on the era you may want to paint the dump red or dark gray. Red for low vis and dark gray for TPS schemes.

  15. I don't think SD 220 or 221 ever went to the boat, but they may have done some carrier suitability work here at Pax or up in Lakehurst. Both jets spent the majority of their time up in Calverton NY at the Grumman facility. SD 202 did go to the boat more than once but only for a week or two at a time. Every time I got assigned to a boat det from Strike something would happen and the det would get called off, so I never went back to sea once I left VF-33. I got out after my enlistment was up and started working in my current field - Reliability & Maintainability. Get my 20 year pin next month, woopie!

  16. At least by the mid-80's most east coast squadrons had a mix of blocks. I can't speak to the west coast squadrons but I suspect it was the same. So yes, -102 had some older jets too, at one time I think one of their BuNo's was 159006 or 159007...all I remember for sure is that it was lower than our 207. In 33 we had a couple of block 75s, two block 110s and the rest were a mix in between. We got a third block 110 right before cruise (the ill-fated AB 213). After cruise we turned a couple of birds into NARF and got two brand spanking new Block 140s, new car smell and all. I probably have a complete list of our BuNos during that time in a box somewhere. I still have a couple of the Grumman BIT books, my old cranial and some flight deck jerseys. Funny how you hang onto stuff from another life.

  17. Just remember that Modex's change so you really need to know the date. We had at least two different jets wear 207 while I was there. I don't remember the BuNo of the first one but it was most likely Gull gray. It went to NARF shortly after I got there, and we got 159010 right before the '86 cruise. When jets went to NARF they didn't always return to the squadron they came from.

  18. We had two jets in VF-33 with the beaver tail when I was there 85-88, 159010 / AB 207 and 159015 / AB 206. They had different paint schemes - 206 was in the overall gloss gray, with full color markings including the solid black star and yellow lighting bolt on the tails. The older of the two, AB 207 had just been through NARF and came to us in the low vis TPS scheme. The tail markings were dark gray outline star & lightning bolt. We shot a Phoenix off 207 during my last missile shoot with -33, it was the oldest active east coast Fleet tomcat at that time. Note that on both birds the side dielectric panels had been removed.

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