It's a lot easier to hold altitude when you constantly turn autopilot on in the VFR pattern.
Longest flight was a 13.4 in southcom. gross.
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Bad Day Refueling
- Thread starter HAL Pilot
- Start date
It's a lot easier to hold altitude when you constantly turn autopilot on in the VFR pattern.
Longest flight was a 13.4 in southcom. gross.
HAL - full disclosure here, much like unintentional "Butt Dialing", accidently hitting the new emicons is not something that is difficult to do, just sayin'
Longest flight during my tour here was a 17.0. Those boys had to take 80k of gas from a tanker to pull that one off. My longest flight: 13.2. That's without shutting any motors down!
Sadly, it's really one of the only places we get to shine as pilots in this community. I make my copilots buy me a beer if they can't get all the gas in one contact. Luckily for them, we rarely get to drink and we don't AR that much.
12.4 or 12.6. I'd have to check. I think three of that was actual OnStaHow long? 13.5 on 15JUL03 out in C7F is my longest flight in my logbook, U11.5. 4.5 sleeping in the rackThink HAL said he flew a 13.6 or something flight.
Yeah, they're called wingtip pods. Much easier/less scary.
Was told tales of the speacial chalenge the EA-6Bs had with it. Something about the pilot adjusting his seat just right to see the slanted probe and get the "curl".
My first time tanking from a 135 in an A-7 was on a dark-ass night in the Indian Ocean. Approaching from below to plug in was like looking at something from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", with all the flashing lights and everything, and then when the hose flopped over and laid on the nose, where the pitot probes were located.......just a little disconcerting. Reason for the first time being at night described here.
The light pattern on the underside of the 135 is trippy for sure. I always thought it resembled the head of a preying mantis. We call the -10 the "mother ship " just cause the thing is soo fucking huge. Behind the 135 we have to be careful not too diviate too far from the centerline of the tanker because our wingspan is greater than his and we can get into his wingtip vorticies. With the -10 not only do we have a bigger envelope with the boom, it is soo much bigger than we are that it is very easy to stabilize and stay in contact and precontact.
The worst thing about the -135 lights IMHO is the fvcking giant spotlight they have on the lower left side of that beast. It's a great way to find them at night when the radar shits the bed but wow is it terrible trying to keep any semblance of night vision with that thing seared into your retinas in close.
So I laughed my ass off when a -135 boom operator tried to tell me how it hurts his night vision when Hornets tank off them at night because of our refueling probe light. He asked me if we can adjust it. "No" I said "but its not like you guys really need to see what's going on. 'Pre contact', 'cleared contact', then read the flow gauges is all you need to do. We take care of the rest. Anything unsafe the tanking pilot is going to notice well before you."
Other funny shit I have heard while tanking:
So I am in the basket on the -135 and another section of hornets is about 20nm away and getting initial comms with the tanker. They ask him if he is "nose cold switches safe."
"Uh, no. We are still joining and need the radar"
"Well sir, we need you guys to be nose cold 15 minutes prior to tanking." WTF? Is this take your daughter to work day (and let her talk on the radio)?
"No. no you don't. We are at FL240 joining from the south. We'll be nose cold after we join."
Silence
another day, guys first time on the tanker in the fleet:
"Send side numbers and BUNOs when ready"
lead sends side #
-2: "[callsign] 52, side number 05, BUNO 643589"
after the flight in the debrief:
"Hey man, what the hell was the BUNO number you gave? It should have started with 16 something"
"Oh, um, see I forgot to write it down and didn't know what to say, so I just rambled off some numbers."
"Its stamped on a placard in the cockpit. By the hook handle."
"...Oops...."
No idea if that Air Force squadron ever figured it out.
That's pretty funny. I assume the BuNo is for fuel chits, etc?
Yeah, we get their tail number too. Always a good feeling when you hear 58-XXXX. Awesome, this tanker is three years younger than my dad...