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Old R.O. Picture of the Day for 26 June 2008 Speaking of Fallon... here's how the field looked from the South Initial in 1983. VF-301 F-4S section at the Fallon Initial for RWY 31. Summer 1983 CVWR-30 Fallon Det. Note the single runway....

Actually, the 1/2 wings were for Free Balloons only. The real LTA (Blimps, etc.) had the regular Naval Aviator wings. Here's what Naval History says about the 1/2 wings: Although the exact date for approval of this insignia is unclear, a description of the device first appeared in the...

Ok... how's this? Santa Ana conditions in San Diego (winds from the east means a VITKO departure from RWY 6). VF-301 F-14As, July 1987

I saw him live at a little club in San Diego called "Funky Quarters" in 1972, just as he was emerging as the George Carlin that we all knew and not the "Al Sleet, the Hippy Dippy Weatherman" persona that he had before. He WILL be missed, big time.

VF-21 and VF-154 both had USAF exchange pilots for the 1974 Ranger cruise. I seem to remember that VF-213 had an Royal Navy pilot for a cruise or so in the same timeframe. I think he showed up at the Tailhook Reunion a few years ago. Also, the West Coast F-4 RAG (VF-121) had a USAF pilot...

Old R.O. Picture of the Day for 18 June 2008 VF-21 F-4J overhead USS Ranger (CVA-61) in the South China Sea off Subic, Summer 1974. Crew: CDR Doug Clower/LTJG Pete Couey

Old R.O. Picture of the Day for 17 June 2008 VF-301 F-4N on a Julian departure out of NAS Miramar with six sand-filled Mk 82 500-lb. inert bombs. The mission -- unleash blue death on the denizens of the Chocolate Mountain impact area east of the Salton Sea in South Eastern California. Circa...

Ready when you folks are... There's always space available for AW buds. --- Your friendly "The Hook" staffer

VF-301 F-14A at the initial for the break at NAS Miramar, circa 1986

Old R.O. Picture of the Day for 15 June 2008 Pair of VF-301 F-4S Phantom IIs in the original paint jobs before the Heater-Ferris camo "makeover." These aircraft were part of the first batch of Navy F-4S aircraft delivered (the Marines got the first F-4S Phantoms off the North Island mod...

Same cruise and same air boss as my above post. Boss was known for his quick, acerbic wit. Day, Case 1 recovery. All the aircraft are safely on board... but where's the Hummer??? Time passes... Finally, the E-2 pops up over the horizon. "Casper 012, three miles for the break." Boss...

We’re on the last line period of cruise and operating in the South China Sea west of Subic. Fixed-wing flight ops are secured, but helo ops are going on because we’re off-loading via VertRep most of our bombs and missiles to an ammunition ship that had come alongside. I’m standing the integrity...

Old R.O.'s Dad's Picture of the Day for 12 June 2008 Not one that I took, but my late Dad did on his 1979 Tiger Cruise. My brother was an AT1 in VAQ-131 for the cruise and talked Dad into flying over to Spain and catching USS America back to ConUS. As the Tigers were being welcomed on board...

As I recall, it just turned out to be a derivation of his last name... Nothing really special or anything... although he did temporarily use "Rugdance" after a talk with the admiral after he busted the buffer around Hinan Island in the Tonkin Gulf, and they were about to scramble MiGs after...

The usual ready room crowd is gathered in the usual BS session. Nugget Pilot says... "I need a new callsign.... I know! I think Snakeye would be cool! Old Hand says... "That's a great callsign! You know.... retarded bomb.... retarded pilot! Nugget.... "I need a new callsign...."

Old R.O. Picture(s) of the Day for late 11 June 2008 For those of you who have operated out of MCAS/NAS Miramar (NKX), you're probably familiar with the SEAWOLF departure to Warning area W-291 over the Pacific Ocean. The departure is used when runway 24 is in effect, usually about 98 percent of...

Third-hand story about a Naval Aviator seeing the Doc after an inport visit to Subic/Olongapo. NA: "Doc, got a minute... I've got a problem with my foot." Doc: "What's the problem?" NA: I've got this crank that keeps dripping on it."

Old R.O. Picture of the Day for 11 June 2008 USS Ranger 1973. A-7s are from VA-113 Stingers and VA-25 Fist of the Fleet. VF-154 F-4J crewed by LTJG Jim "Ox" Van Hoften, one of VF-154's LSOs and later picked up for the astronaut program and flew on STS-41 in 1984 and STS-51 in 1985. The...

#1-- A4s had the initial right answer as to how I knew ... I've taken all the "Old R.O. Pictures of the Day" #2 -- see the F-4 Wingtip Recognition 101 primer below. First... The F-4S wingtip and what's different from other Navy F-4s (F4H-1, F-4A, F-4B, F-4J, F-4N [and the NAVY F-4G... but...

What you may not understand, is that whoever sends the stuff in, gets it published. If you don't send it in, guess what.... nothing gets published. Get on you community to be send in more stuff, and more stuff will be published. Simple, no?

F-4S

Old R.O. Picture of the Day for 10 June 2008 VF-154 F-14A over San Diego. 1984.

Old R.O. Picture of the Day for 9 June 2008 Sunset AIC hop in Whiskey 291 off the coast from San Diego, circa 1986, VF-301 F-14A

Old R.O. Picture of the day for 8 June 2008 VF-21 F-4J traps on board USS Ranger (CVA-61) in the South China Sea, Summer 1974

Old R.O. Picture of the day for 6 June 2008 CAPT Chris "Boomer" Wilson, ComCVWR-30, pilots VF-301's F-14A ND100 over the salt flats south of NAS Fallon during the air wing's August 1985 det.

It's the last four digits of the aircraft's Bureau Number (BuNo) In this case it was 158365

Old R.O. Picture of the day for 5 June 2008 Scarborough Shoal, off the coast of Luzon, R.P. VF-21 F-4J, Summer 1974, flying from USS Ranger (CVA-61) Note the TERS on wing stations 2 and 8 for some air-to-mud work during cruise.

Old R.O. Picture of the day for 4 June 2008 VF-21 CAG Bird (NE 200) over the Carson Sink near NAS Fallon, September 1975. This aircraft was the next to last Phantom bought by the Navy (BuNo 158378) Note the orange flight suits... Pilot/RIO: LTJG Ron Grubb/LTJG Bill Martin

Aviation Technical Writer Flight Test Engineer Magazine Editor .... for a few jobs

This is starting to mirror the "Cross Country Nametag" thread http://www.airwarriors.com/forum/showthread.php?t=140811

Old R.O.'s Picture of the Day for 3 Jun 08 1978. Overhead NAWC China Lake. VF-301 and VF-302 each sent four F-4N Phantoms to the China Lake range to oppose an alfa strike from CVW-15, who was operating from USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) off the West Coast in work-ups for cruise. The "Whale" is a...

.... Wait... This isn't about a political party???.... reading the title I thought... well..... Never mind

Okay... just one more for today... Miramar Tower, Inferno 103 at Atlas, two for the break....

Just for A4s VF-126 Bandits TA-4J and A-4F lead a VF-301 F-4S over San Diego (Mission bay in the background). circa 1982.

We were talking of the subset of NFO that was RIO or B/N ... not NFO's in general... such as EA-6Bs and P-3s Plus there were the odd SRU units that used NFOs (S-3, F-14, etc...) before those RAGs went away.

VF-21 F-4J NAS Miramar 1974 There are no USN personnel in this photo. The pilot was CAPT Don Mueller, USAF, our token Air Force exchange pilot and in the back seat was one Nigel "Sharkey" Ward, RN (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'Sharkey'_Ward) Sharkey had flown one of two RN Phantoms from...

There have been no RIO jobs since 1999 when VF-201 became VFA-201 and gave up their F-14A Tomcats for the single-seat F/A-18A. (The West Coast F-14s went away in 1994 with the disestablishment of VF-301, VF-302 and CVWR-30) There have been no B/N jobs since 1994 with the disestablishement of...

Chairman JCS says to stay out of politics... or at least in public statements: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/us/politics/26military.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

The "S" had slatted wings (the so-called "soft wing"). They took 265 "J"s and upgraded the AWG-10 radar to sorta-digital (AN/AWG-10B), scabbed on formation lights, put a strap under the wing to effectively "zero-time" the wing, put new outer wing panels (with moveable slats), re-did the inner...

More '80s Phantoms. VF-301 F-4S in the Heater-Ferris paint scheme. c. 1982

Here's more from the Navy CHINFO website: http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=37366 The important quote from the article is: "In July, the French air group is scheduled to conduct flight operations during a joint task force exercise with USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) and...

Three favorite Uecker quotes: "Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues. But to be able to trick people year in and year out the way I did, I think that was a much greater feat." and "In 1962 I was named Minor League Player of the Year. It was my second season in the Bigs."...

VF-301 F-4N NAS Miramar late 1970s

Second-hand info, but close to home... My brother was flight deck chief for VA-72 in the mid-80s and my current boss was CO of VA-192 in the early '80s... neither has any stories about the aircraft "falling apart" or anything like that. It did have its problems, but none to the scale you suggest.

There's a great article in the Winter '91 issue of The Hook magazine about the test flying of the Vought V-173, the testbed for the proposed F5U (which was built, but never flown). Vought's best experimental test pilot, Boone Guyton, flew the first flight on 23 November 1942. To say it was...

We had Viggies on both cruises I made. I asked one of the RANs about the lack of visibility. They had the two windows (up very high... had to almost do a chin-up to see out of them), they had the TV camera in the nose and there was some sort of window where he could look straight down (water...

Update Good update on the fire with pics and news that she's inbound to San Diego for repairs. On edit: The San Diego port call was a scheduled stop before heading west to replace Kitty Hawk. http://www.news.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=37377

That would probably have been A2F-2Q :D:D:D (Professional history nerd... I do it so you don't have to)

The Nimrod (descendent of the Comet) is in trouble again, according to this article in the New York Times: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/britains-nimrod-unsafe-at-any-altitude/

"...over the Coral Sea"... Not really. The Navy aircraft are VF-51 and VF-111 F-4Bs (and one A-7E from VA-22) attached to CVW-15 on USS Coral Sea's (CVA-43) 1971/'72 WestPac cruise. The flight is being led by two LORAN-equipped USAF F-4Ds and the flight is probably "down South" or over the Ho...