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The Great, Constantly Changing Picture Gallery, Troisième partie: la vengeance!
- Thread starter SynixMan
- Start date
Sigh. Seeing either of those two aircraft always make me frustrated. I really wish certain individuals hadn't pissed them away so they got taken away.
Raisin Refuelling Track over central Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm. The Strike Packages from the Red Sea formed up there on the 2-3 KC-135 tankers with plenty of give. We would send a KA-6D ahead of the normal launch to top off and provide an additional hose to tank from thereby doubling speed of topping off the Strike Packages. Tomcats shared their tanker with Prowlers and Corsairs and Intruders split the tankers that were stepped down below us.
Post mission, we would hit them again and take whatever we needed/wanted. We also had a KC -135 stationed over the Red Sea carriers 24/7 to provide fuel for CAP stations. Never had such plentiful gas in the air before or afterwards.
Story?
I'm not talking about the SFWS birds. I'm talking specifically about the blue one(s) you posted a picture of. 160945 and 160949. They were a good deal wasted on those that didn't know what they had.
Short version, the VS guys handed them off to HSL and were used as Opfor for LSF training. But there was only one guy in HSL land that was qualified to fly it until two just-out-of-VT-land guys showed up, both Stan IPs and one the assistant model manager (and the other who just needed a quick flight with the TW5 model manager to make him an ANI). Cost-wise, they were a fantastic resource and good-deal-wise, they were awesome to have, but there weren't enough people to fly them and the two VT guys also had DH jobs and had to deploy. Fast-forward a year and they went away. There's debate about why, but when you don't fly your allocation, it's hard to justify allocating them to someone that doesn't use them.
And even when they were going away, I managed to setup a way that the two of us could fly them both out to San Diego for drop-off, and even that got killed by an individual (a JO, no less!!!) who had no imagination or any real understanding of things T-34C.
Yes, I'm still bitter, as is the other guy.
What a loss. Not just the man himself and what he didn't get to write, but that so much of what he did write has gone "poof" from the Internet when the hosting was cut off. The Wayback Machine seems to only have so much.
I will say reading the NTSB report made me think a lot differently about my personal Fallon ORM calculus re: diverts. Gave it more thought after than just "oh, Reno's right there; bingo is 3.0. Press!"
You may be interested in the spin off site: https://thelexicans.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/index-the-best-of-neptunus-lex/#more-17838
You are a bad influence, HeyJoe. I have things I should be doing rather than going through shoe boxes of old pics and slides. Had to include this one from 1975. Third time I'd gone to Oshkosh....this time with our wives/girlfriends. The three of us had been roommates in college and gone through the aviation program at U. of Illinois and had worked for Rudy Frasca. We brought our significant others to experience aviation at its finest. Camped under the wings of a flying club 182 and a Piper Warrior we'd flown in. After 45 minutes of looking at planes the first day, the girls had seen enough and were ready to sit under a shade tree. We told them we'd only just begun. Guy on the right has since retired after a career with Ozark-TWA-American. Guy in the middle retired after a corporate career and being the Chief Pilot for Marathon Oil Corp. I retired from the Navy and SWA. Pic was taken looking into the spinner of an immaculate Spartan Executive.
Days like this one were dank and gloomy below but I always loved punching through the overcast knowing it would be glorious above it. Wish I could stay airborne indefinitely on days like that but it was Slider time so hooks down and head for mother (JFK) for sliders, fries and some Dog....in the “dirty shirt”.
Yep. I’m aware.