Do the HTs still do regular unaided training? When I went through 10 years ago it was only the last 10 hours of the HTs that was on goggles.
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NVGs at the boat?
- Thread starter herbarnold99
- Start date
Do the HTs still do regular unaided training? When I went through 10 years ago it was only the last 10 hours of the HTs that was on goggles.
I think it was part of SUPERHAWK which was eventually deemed to be good of an idea to continue.
They still have two night contact flights which are unaided and 6 goggle flights towards the end of the syllabus.
Peace to that!
Also all night IFR/VNAV training is unaided.
That sounds familiar. Then again, I was an O-4, so I was all about the pinky time when at the boat, so it was a wash.
NVDs are pretty standard around the HSC fleet. Most SOPs mandate you bring them anytime you're flying within one hour of sunset. The FRS has an unaided night FAM, but pretty much everything else at night is aided, which mirrors what you see in a fleet squadron. If anything, I've had to talk folks into flying unaided at times when it makes sense, just because they're so used to NVGs. So the pendulum swings both ways.
The product out of HTs or the FRSes could always be improved...at a cost. HTs, as a function of being a USN/USMC/USCG joint thing, has to cover a lot of bases, I get that.
The product out of HTs or the FRSes could always be improved...at a cost. HTs, as a function of being a USN/USMC/USCG joint thing, has to cover a lot of bases, I get that.
SGSI didn't work with NVGs (red/yellow/green glideslope, gotta turn it off so it doesn't ABC or "bloom" the goggles) and unaided it was always a nice visual aid on approach to a smallboy or an air-capable ship. The looking-through-toilet-paper-tubes while trying to hover was a pain but in the end it was just another skill to learn... and peeking underneath worked pretty well since the dustpan lights were still shining on the flight deck nonskid and hangar face. Been more than ten years for me so take it with a grain of salt.
The NVG kit in the 60B was, to put it kindly, asinine. Somehow the world's most powerful navy couldn't procure green lightbulbs in all the right sizes. So instead you turned off the instrument primary lighting (back lighting, not NVG compatible) and turned up the secondary lighting (peanut lights, green and NVG compatible). The radar altimeter was particularly difficult to read like this (pretty important in helicopter flying) and to make it and all of the instruments easier to read a lot of guys would turn on the Grimes lights (green NVG filter) up behind the seats and shine them down on all the gauges. The result was you could see two little green dots, bobbing along in the night sky, from miles away... not exactly stealthy. All because nobody bothered to buy green lightbulbs to properly backlight the instruments.
The NVG kit in the 60B was, to put it kindly, asinine. Somehow the world's most powerful navy couldn't procure green lightbulbs in all the right sizes. So instead you turned off the instrument primary lighting (back lighting, not NVG compatible) and turned up the secondary lighting (peanut lights, green and NVG compatible). The radar altimeter was particularly difficult to read like this (pretty important in helicopter flying) and to make it and all of the instruments easier to read a lot of guys would turn on the Grimes lights (green NVG filter) up behind the seats and shine them down on all the gauges. The result was you could see two little green dots, bobbing along in the night sky, from miles away... not exactly stealthy. All because nobody bothered to buy green lightbulbs to properly backlight the instruments.
Ah, the ol SGSI argument.
SGSI was designed to be a landing aid in lieu of seeing the boat. old HSL doctrine calls for the use of the SGSI. New NVDs allow for a visual approach but not the use of the SGSI. Therefore, we should doff our new fangled technology and use the old ways.
Or just turn off the SGSI. But that's just crazy talk.
SGSI was designed to be a landing aid in lieu of seeing the boat. old HSL doctrine calls for the use of the SGSI. New NVDs allow for a visual approach but not the use of the SGSI. Therefore, we should doff our new fangled technology and use the old ways.
Or just turn off the SGSI. But that's just crazy talk.
A good example of a simple fix that never happened.I remember the joy of flying an HH and not have to carry a bag of blue glass to the plane. The question is whether the squadrons asked for a solution via a narg type process or it was deemed acceptable to buy blue glass in lieu of light bulbs. I don't know the backstory.SGSI didn't work with NVGs (red/yellow/green glideslope, gotta turn it off so it doesn't ABC or "bloom" the goggles) and unaided it was always a nice visual aid on approach to a smallboy or an air-capable ship. The looking-through-toilet-paper-tubes while trying to hover was a pain but in the end it was just another skill to learn... and peeking underneath worked pretty well since the dustpan lights were still shining on the flight deck nonskid and hangar face. Been more than ten years for me so take it with a grain of salt.
The NVG kit in the 60B was, to put it kindly, asinine. Somehow the world's most powerful navy couldn't procure green lightbulbs in all the right sizes. So instead you turned off the instrument primary lighting (back lighting, not NVG compatible) and turned up the secondary lighting (peanut lights, green and NVG compatible). The radar altimeter was particularly difficult to read like this (pretty important in helicopter flying) and to make it and all of the instruments easier to read a lot of guys would turn on the Grimes lights (green NVG filter) up behind the seats and shine them down on all the gauges. The result was you could see two little green dots, bobbing along in the night sky, from miles away... not exactly stealthy. All because nobody bothered to buy green lightbulbs to properly backlight the instruments.
I think the moral to the story is to not fight a game changing technology. Find a way to use it without coming up with restrictive policies (e.g. Maintain unaided currency to be considered aided current, Takeoff/landing @ the boat unaided, vertrep'ing unaided, Haves-have-nots, etc.). We came up with these policies as if flying on NVGs was more dangerous than without and usually used a "on the off chance NVGs fail" without examining the probability of a failure or even 4 X sets failing simultaneously.
I would bet it took a decade to break us from this trend. The question today is what are we holding ourselves back with in helos that is the next game changer - hud? Tablets? Something else?
Not really sure what it is these days, but '04 time frame there was a flight or two un-aided the rest was NVG.
I've never flown the 60 at night without goggles
We had one of the last 60Fs at VX-1 and it had a 60H's NVD compatible cockpit in it. We eventually took it to ECG and the USCG turned it into a 60T.
I agree with what you wrote about embracing technology. This is all just another great example of how no one tries to make our own jobs harder than...us. Who needs an enemy to fight when we have our own bureacratic and institutional inertia?
Another part of the problem is ensuring that every platform is capable of supporting the same technology level. As late as 09 I remember fighting with ships about proper NVD lighting config (boat nav needs vs aircraft nvd needs) and ships not having enough NVDs or the appropriate training for LSEs. At the same time one of the largest hurdles to NVD vertrep was having USNS ship with NVD compatible lighting.