Lining up a new front end...how would you do it?
- Thread starter PotvinGuy
- Start date
fluidfloyd
Active Member
Well if you feel like your about to check out order big and use plastic!
Many times in service and as a civilian. 10 years at the Airborne Test Board as a civilian, if it was to be dropped from any aircraft for testing purposes, I had something to do with it, everything from new parachutes to hummers, motor graders,tanks and everything in between .you would be surprised at what is buried on the drop zones.
Worst aircraft was the Osprey, tight inside and the recovery system was a manual boat winch! There is over a mile of shafts inside that thing, all hydraulics, and no one had the sense to put an hydraulic winch in them!
Quit jumping when I had knee replaced.
When I was at Collins Radio, we worked on the c130's that carried VLF transmitters to comm with submerged subs. Huge reel of antenna wire, miles of it, and we'd drop the cargo deck and unreel the antenna in flight. Lots of power, I think maybe 200 kw, and very low data rate. Fun times.
Hope you always had your safety harness on and latched!! Falling off the ramp was hard to recover from!!!
I stayed way back from the edge! We got to work on lots of neat aircraft at Collins. Air Force One would come in for maintenance. It was like a movie; a solid ring of armed Marines around it, and you didn't approach if you valued your life. Had to pass thru several security checks and locked doors to get in hangar, and got mil-spec pat down in and out. All test equipment and new parts went thru another entrance for govt inspection: you went in with empty pockets. Collins was a big maker of avionics, and the company airplanes, a pair of twin turboprops that flew daily from Dallas to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, were test beds for new stuff. I would sit on the jump seat in the cockpit and watch the pilots fool with gear they had just got. "What happens if I push this button?" and the airplane makes a sharp roll, and the execs in the back are spilling their drinks and cussing. And they paid me to have all that fun.
old round fart
Well-Known Member
You haven't lived until you buzz a heard of camels in a C-130!
fluidfloyd
Active Member
They built the first three Osprey's in Fort Worth. My shop and house is just south in the test flight pattern. That thing was really loud with the props/blades/ turning things whatever they are in the vertical or forward position. You could hear it coming a mile away. Sure couldn't sneak up on anyone which I thought was the idea. Being all hydraulic it must be deafening from the passenger compartment just as a CH-47 Chinook is. Great concept for covering some distance then hovering to snatch someone out of a bad situation but hard to defend it's self. I doubt it would have ever survived helicopter assaults like those executed in Vietnam. I see where there is already a four bladed engine version on the drawing board. As the Army has never signed on to that concept says a lot about inserting troupes while under a lot of fire. Besides, Real Helicopters have Skids!
George
fluidfloyd
Active Member
fluidfloyd
Active Member
Wasn't that out east of Dallas at E systems? A former Huey pilot I flew with in the day was CEO of a contractor company that did all the maintenance on Air Force One and the backups a few years ago. He told me he sat in Hilliary's seat and thought about leaving her a present but then rethought the idea! He had much more restrain then me.
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