Aviator Kind of Stuff

[SteveG75]

No way, Steverino .... that would have been "stupid" .... I did it in front of God and Country, the XO and CAG --- in fact the whole recovery deck while leading a flight into the break @ the ship @ warp overdrive ... i.e., ergo the phrase "the Fleet" .... and now I will pray for your NFO soul .....

Well, what's wrong with that. I thought 5 bills was the MINIMUM airspeed for breaks at the ship.

We did an CAX at 29 Stumps while I was in VA-95. Flew out of the expeditionary airfield inside the restricted area. No 250 KIAS <10k restriction there. :icon_smil Every break was at "warp overdrive".

 

[Pags]

Don't you mean CAPT Ferenbacher?

Farkin' crusty old dudes in the sim building... Glomb is the worst. Smells like old fried chicken, pretty sure he fell asleep during my sim.

One of the sim instructors at NASWF actually fell asleep on my buddy while he was in holding. I was walking by and saw this instructor with his feet up on the desk, headset off, sawing wood, while the plane on the computer drew little racetracks. Was joking about it later with my friend and he goes "he was my instructor!" he was about ready to leave from holding at his EFC and just treat it as a NORDO situation since the instructor hadn't said anything to him in about 20min.

 

[skidkid]

Don't you mean CAPT Ferenbacher?

Farkin' crusty old dudes in the sim building... Glomb is the worst. Smells like old fried chicken, pretty sure he fell asleep during my sim.

Dude, Youre nuts Glomb was great two aboves jsut for showing up. Archer was the worst what a dick that guy was. Fehrenbacher double sucks in the plane and the sim.

 

[Taildragger]

Here's a good "there I was" story... I was 15 years old and working on my initial solo for my private, with my dad as my instructor, flying our Cessna 170. My dad had me fly east of the airport to the practice area to work on turns about a point and S-turns over one of the local highways. The turns about a point went without a hitch, and so we turned back to the west to work on the S-turns. My dad had me enter the S-turn over the east-west highway, working from east to west, at 1200' MSL and 100 KIAS as the sun was setting. As you can imagine, on the northern and southern legs of the S-turns, you would have to turn into the sun, and it was completely blinding -- there was a 1-second period where you couldn't see anything in front of you... So I am on the northern leg of this S-turn. I cross over the highway, roll left to start my southern leg over the highway, and I'm blinded by the sun. When I roll out, I am right in the middle of a flock of about 20 buzzards, which start going ape sh*t and start fluttering all over the place. My first instinct was to dive, so I stomped left rudder and shoved the yoke forward, and the last bastard buzzard decides to dive in the same direction -- WHAM! Took him right on the leading edge of the left wing, right next to the landing light. We hit it so hard it threw us forward in our straps -- it left a 3 ft x 6 in deep dent in the leading edge. The Cessna immediately yawed hard to the left, and being a good student, I followed my student pilot bird-strike checklist:
1. Gawk at damage
2. Cuss excessively
3. Cuss some more
Luckily, my dad, a 20,000+ hr pilot, was flying right seat, and he told me to shut the hell up, took over the controls, and flew us back and landed the aircraft relatively uneventfully back at our home airport. Post-flight inspection of the wing showed a whole lot of blood and buzzard guts, a big dent, but luckily no spar damage. My dad had the wing sent off to get fixed, and I soloed on my 16th birthday.

 

[bch]

Dude, Youre nuts Glomb was great two aboves jsut for showing up. Archer was the worst what a dick that guy was. Fehrenbacher double sucks in the plane and the sim.

Totally agree on Glomb, I laughed my ass off most of the flight becuase of all the different voices he would do.

As far as Ferenbacher... studs only have to brave him in the sim now... no more flying for him!!!

 

[squeeze]

glomb rocked.. never had to deal with ferenbacher. payne was cool as long as you were on his good side and chatted him up. jeter and sloyer were by far the worst. bch probably has the best ferenbacher story though.

 

[SteveG75]

So, what happened to the "there I was" stories? A discussion of the pro's and con's of VT sim instructors are not what I was hoping for in this thread. :banghead_

 

[Pags]

These are the "so there I was stories" fom primary...nowhere near as exciting as the real thing, but it's all we got. I'd tell more of my stories, but me screwing up landings just isn't funny.

 

[wink]

here is your there I was

Flight of two Vikings flying from the ship to the Cubi. Stopped in Singapor for the night. Airport is joint use military. We taxi out and a Aussie Mirage two ship makes a really nice form takeoff. Not to be out done (had to show the Singapor AF cadets how sierra hotel the US Navy was) we "briefed" a real form take off on tactical. Note: Only roll and gos are apporved for the mighty War Hoover. I'm in -1 as we roll down the runway in our best Blue Angle section. Having spent the last 3 months blasting off the boat, we don't have any real apprecaiton for normal take off accleration. More than halfway down the runway -2 asked for mil power (?!#@?). Power levers are at the firewall. It looks like we are not going to get off and we have -2 right on our wing. Abort is not a pretty option. On the roll, the #1 generator drops off the line. We stager into the air at the fence on the edge of stall, -2 shoots by us like he is in AB. We are hanging on the blades barely climbing. We reset the gen and it drops again, everything else looks ok. By then -2 has come around our port side and tells us our #1 engine is on fire. We have no indications, but we are still not climbing. We start to dump fuel at about 500 feet and start a turn to downwind. -2 continues to call for us to shut it down. When on downwind and climbing a bit better we shut it down. Never had a fire indication. All utility hydraulics are on the shut down engine so we use the emergency gear drop. The nose gear is not down when we turn final, hook down (can't bring the hook back up). After convincing ourselves we are going to smash the nose on an arrestment, the nose gear drops down at about 200 feet. We trap normally. Can't raise the hook, no nose wheel steering or brakes. We are stuck on the military runway. We get Singapor AF cadets to come out and they lift up the hoolk and we tie it up. Then we all push this 40K aircraft off the runway, but not before the Aussie Mirages return and not being able to land bingo to Malaysia. The man fro State arrives from the embassy. He informs the ship of our problem. Ship alters PIM greatly to get a Helo into us with maintainers and tow equipment. Helo crew violates Singapor national airspace without going thorugh their ADIZ type procedures. We get another night in Singapor in a fabulous Sheraton suite paid for by the man from State. The man from State also pays thousands of dollars to Singapor farmer for his JP5 drenched crops. Maintenance guys can't find anything wrong with our engine. After we balk at taking it several hundred miles over the ocean, they take us aside and quitely inform us of their diagnosis. Seems one of us, not really sure who (crew of 4) left a couple cowl latches unlatched on the #1 engine when he did the walk around. Turns out, on the S-3, the cowl is so stiff you could get just one latch close and the others would latch flush without grabing the opposite side and it would still pull up tight with no gaps. It would look completely normal. When the high bypass TF-34 engine went to mil power it blew the cowling open from the front making like a giant clam shell thrust reverser. The fire seen by -2 was fire from the burner can being diverted to the outside of the motor due to the disrupted airflow. There was no problem with the engine from the beginning and it wasn't broke even after it was so abused. All the way to Cubi we were trying to figure if we would lose our wings, have to repay the man from State or be court martialed. Back on the ship a few days later, our CO sat us down, almost as an afterthought, and asked, "Did the senior chief tell ya what happend back in Singapor?" We sheepishly said "Yes sir", and he replied, "Then I guess I don't have to worry about it happening again". That was it!!
Seems like when you least expect it, and hardly deserve it, the Navy treats you right.

BTW. After that a note was added to the S-3 NATOPS warning of the possibility of not getting the cowl completly latched.

 

[Schnugg]

Saw an S-3 in burner on the cat once.
The # 2 engine had a catastrophic failure and it looked like a mini afterburner going strong until they got supended.
r/
G

 

[wink]

The TF-34 is a good little motor. That is the first catastrophic failure I have heard of.
Would have been real cool to see it launch that way.

 

[SteveG75]

A-6E Tailpipe failure at high power on Cat 3. Aircraft was a total loss.

 

[KBayDog]

Barnard,

Not to start a pissing contest, but the threads you have started haven't been 100% educational or aviation-related, either:

http://www.airwarriors.com/forum/search.php?searchid=380644

As Brett would say, "Just keeping it real."

 

[wink]

Alright, so lets do something about lame threads right here. How about another good "there I was" story with a happy ending. A little hangar flying is educational. Enough with the carpping about other threads. You have a good one here.

 

[Brett327]

So, what happened to the "there I was" stories? A discussion of the pro's and con's of VT sim instructors are not what I was hoping for in this thread. :banghead_

Meat, I KNOW you have a few more scintilating sea stories to tell (or re-tell as the case may be).

I'll start one for ya, good buddy: "There I was at Whidbey, lying pleasantly in my bed, when suddenly and without warning, I heard the sound of an errant Prowler overhead. I looked at my watch, furled my brow, and picked up the phone to call the NAS OOD..."

Brett