-
Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?
Go here:
Edit Account Details and Profile
Hot new helicopter/rotorcraft news
- Thread starter Randy Daytona
- Start date
The T-6 isn’t a hangar queen due to the design. It has its known issues, most of which have been hammered out over the 20 years it’s been flying in the states, but any aircraft will end up sitting if you don’t have enough parts or maintainers to take care of it.
We’re back to 2014 all over again. The navy’s flown these airplanes for a decade and still can’t figure out how to not stomp on our cranks when it comes to keeping them flying. Pretty much par for the course for this organization.
For example, we still run out of T-6 tires- when you mount them they have to cure overnight. Then the tire and wheel is ready to put on an airplane. So far there have been about four solutions to this problem- NAVAIR/Wright Patt looked at a longer life tire several years ago but it wouldn't fit in the gear wells, then a few years ago NAVAIR finished testing another long life tire that would work perfectly well but the final signoff is hung up somewhere in red tape/sand crab lala land, or we could just buy more wheels to have more ready to go tires on hand. The last one, several years ago, was to reduce the tire pressure from rock hard psi to still pretty hard psi. That seemed to improve the tire life from about a hundred landings to a hundred fifty or so (before all of the regular cords are used up and the red ones start showing).
That's kinda the story for a lot of the spare parts. Can't/won't/can't figure out how to/??? spend a bit of money to make the problems go away- or just spend money smarter. Everybody knows it and it's frustrating for everyone.
Ironically, this is something different than the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about.
It amazes me that we went to the moon and put nuclear reactors on submarines just a few decades ago.
By "we" I mean "does not include me anymore." I'm glad I'm retired.
So yeah, good luck with the TH-xx, something that is also near and dear to my heart. Y'all are gonna need it.
That's kinda the story for a lot of the spare parts. Can't/won't/can't figure out how to/??? spend a bit of money to make the problems go away- or just spend money smarter. Everybody knows it and it's frustrating for everyone.
Ironically, this is something different than the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about.
It amazes me that we went to the moon and put nuclear reactors on submarines just a few decades ago.
By "we" I mean "does not include me anymore." I'm glad I'm retired.
So yeah, good luck with the TH-xx, something that is also near and dear to my heart. Y'all are gonna need it.
Last edited:
If I mail you a self addressed stamped/postage paid envelope can you hook me up with a patch?
As long as you promise to wear it on your bag and not just put it on your bulletin board or something!
Will do!
So...one of the priorities in acquisition should probably be to get an aircraft that starts every time, without needing major overhauls or TLC.
My buddy Matt agrees with you - HAA pilot (H145) and active FAA DPE:
I don't know- we've got a few people on here who have done an IP tour at Vance (@jollygreen07 is one) and a lot who have gone through there as students. One of them would be a lot better to answer that kind of question.
I believe the USAF does a better job of informing its people about problems with the airplane. For example, when the T-6 ejection seats were found to be faulty in 2013, we didn't learn about the details via official channels or through the Navy chain of command; some Vance bubbas forwarded an official powerpoint, which they'd got from their leadership, to their Whiting and Corpus counterparts, JO-to-JO. That's how most T-6B instructors learned that one particular batch of CADs tested at a 6 out of 9 failure rate(!). Talk about being treated like mushrooms!
Granted, in the time since then, naval aviation leadership has done a lot to improve that communication. One improvement is monthly updates, with a fair amount of details, on what is being done with the known problems of each T/M/S fleet that the training command operates.
I know they didn't back in ~2012-13
Why should we give a shit about the desires of the commercial sector when training pilots to fly military aircraft for military purposes?
We shouldn’t care about their pilot shortage other than that part of the problem is that the Army is significantly behind in X generation and pilot production since they transitioned to a twin and the Navy might face the same problem if it elects to do the same.
But are they behind because of twin-engines or because of going with a -145? I'm not saying the -135 is THE way to go, by any means, but the -135 =/= -145, especially in maintenance, or more specifically near-to-mid life Mx. Yes, I get the long-term Mx is costly.
Honestly I didn't really know what that Twitter response even meant.