Ghetto Prowler thread (moved)

[Brett327]

VT-6 VT-9 VAQ-129
Winged Jan 25, 2005
Ready to depart for Cherry Pit, NC
75 hours in type, 4 field arrestments before I had 10 hours in type lol

Deke

I'm dying to hear this story.

Brett

 

[Deke999999]

Second flight driving old girl and we get a weight on wheels switch failure. Take the short field precautionary style. Get out man up a new jet, go over Smith to "adjust" gross weight to do the same pattern hop. Finish up over Smith and go to configure for the ACLS to 13, stab fails to shift and the flaps wont come down, but the slats are out. Interesting configuration senario for the guy with 3 hours in type. Few flights later have a main mount that won't lock up, precationary trap with associated hyd leak found on shutdown. Next flight have a main mount that comes partially down during maneuvering. I also took one for raising the gear handle and nothing happening, not even a transition light. One other but I forget why, not a huge deal but it fell under precationary. NATOPS is well used in daily ops for a Prowler crew.

Deke

 

[HeyJoe]

Second flight driving old girl and we get a weight on wheels switch failure. Take the short field precautionary style. Get out man up a new jet, go over Smith to "adjust" gross weight to do the same pattern hop. Finish up over Smith and go to configure for the ACLS to 13, stab fails to shift and the flaps wont come down, but the slats are out. Interesting configuration senario for the guy with 3 hours in type. Few flights later have a main mount that won't lock up, precationary trap with associated hyd leak found on shutdown. Next flight have a main mount that comes partially down during maneuvering. I also took one for raising the gear handle and nothing happening, not even a transition light. One other but I forget why, not a huge deal but it fell under precationary. NATOPS is well used in daily ops for a Prowler crew.

Deke

Sounds like the makings of a good story for Approach magazine!

 

[Brett327]

Second flight driving old girl and we get a weight on wheels switch failure. Take the short field precautionary style. Get out man up a new jet, go over Smith to "adjust" gross weight to do the same pattern hop. Finish up over Smith and go to configure for the ACLS to 13, stab fails to shift and the flaps wont come down, but the slats are out. Interesting configuration senario for the guy with 3 hours in type. Few flights later have a main mount that won't lock up, precationary trap with associated hyd leak found on shutdown. Next flight have a main mount that comes partially down during maneuvering. I also took one for raising the gear handle and nothing happening, not even a transition light. One other but I forget why, not a huge deal but it fell under precationary. NATOPS is well used in daily ops for a Prowler crew.

Deke

I know 129's jets are AFU, but that is ridiculous. That's like a whole tour's worth of configuration malfunctions squeezed into a few days. How did you resolve your slats out/stab fails to shift configuration? Were you able to clean up for a no flaps/no slats landing?

Brett

 

[Fly Navy]

Good lord. Have you ever had a normal flight?

 

[SteveG75]

I know 129's jets are AFU, but that is ridiculous. That's like a whole tour's worth of configuration malfunctions squeezed into a few days. How did you resolve your slats out/stab fails to shift configuration? Were you able to clean up for a no flaps/no slats landing?

Brett

Well Brett, at least he didn't have antifreeze in the oil. Remember that RAG snafu?

 

[Lawman]

Well at least any NFO you fly with will be sure you know your stuff when it comes to emergency procedures. Thumbs up for "rolling with it." But yeah, hope you get some normal once in a while.

 

[Brett327]

Well Brett, at least he didn't have antifreeze in the oil. Remember that RAG snafu?

I sure do. Didn't some new guy lineshack guy service the PON-6 with the wrong thing? If memory serves, they caught it before any aircraft got serviced. That could have gone bad really fast. Assuming(big assumption, but hey...) a regular top-off would effectively ruin the engine's entire oil supply and result in engine failures inflight, an enterprising PC could service 4-5 jets with said PON-6. Assuming both engines were serviced, that could have taken out a sh!tload of Prowlers in one fell swoop.

Brett

 

[Lawman]

I sure do. Didn't some new guy lineshack guy service the PON-6 with the wrong thing? If memory serves, they caught it before any aircraft got serviced. That could have gone bad really fast. Assuming(big assumption, but hey...) a regular top-off would effectively ruin the engine's entire oil supply and result in engine failures inflight, an enterprising PC could service 4-5 jets with said PON-6. Assuming both engines were serviced, that could have taken out a sh!tload of Prowlers in one fell swoop.

Brett

As soon as I read that, this went shooting through my mind.

BUSISNESS WOMAN
Are there a lot of these kinds of
accidents?

JACK
Oh, you wouldn't believe.

 

[HH-60H]

I sure do. Didn't some new guy lineshack guy service the PON-6 with the wrong thing? If memory serves, they caught it before any aircraft got serviced. That could have gone bad really fast. Assuming(big assumption, but hey...) a regular top-off would effectively ruin the engine's entire oil supply and result in engine failures inflight, an enterprising PC could service 4-5 jets with said PON-6. Assuming both engines were serviced, that could have taken out a sh!tload of Prowlers in one fell swoop.

Brett

When I was at the RAG, back when it was having lots of problems, the line shack serviced the PON-6 wrong twice within a few months. They swapped engine oil and xmsn oil. They had to recall and down all helos.

 

[Deke999999]

Didnt catch the thread shift. Yeah, for a while I was the Joke around the squadron. Nobody wanted to fly with me and the maintenance guys would razz me too. On the stab failing to shift we kept it above 200 and were deciding on wether to do a slats out no flap landing or try and bring the slats back in. While we were talking about it the stab shifted and the flaps went down to 30. We decided to not man up in a third jet that day. If there was an approach article anywhere in there that would be the lesson. Oh yeah, to add to the fun of my early Prowler flights, a bank of fog rolls into Whidbey on my first flight, first landing at 300-1/2. The IP about shit a brick riding shotgun. Probably the worst place for a pilot to have to see all that. Also takes me to the ECMO post...only one trap was with an ECMO and he was worried about me being spooled up about the trap. I looked at him and said "Its all good, already done three" then he said "Oh, well just make sure they pin the gear then" and that was that.

 

[Paddles]

4 traps in 10 hours, that sounds about right. Welcome to the Prowler.

 

[airwinger]

Gotta love Deke, he's stolen all the gremlins for the rest of us. I'll (knocking on wood) be wrapping up my tour at cherry point and my best story will be "remember the time I had to use the relief tube, wasn't that exciting!!"