Another T-45 Goshawk day

For the gaggles during the Vietnam era, we were 1 mile in trail and stacked 500ft high. Not uncommon for a 5 ship with 4-6 'chicks' on each tanker.

Being a good platform was always more important. Still number 4 or 5 trying to keep that 1NM and line is not easy. Do you even do 3-5 ship cells anymore?

In the Navy there is no currency requirement for anything formation wise. If you need to do a section go rather than a radar trail, you just do it. If someone is nordo on a PAR with weather at mins, you do a section landing.

AMG,

Once you get to the fleet, you will do nothing buy fly as dash 2, so get used to sucking LAU. Lemoore won't be as bad as the east coast, but many of the flights off the boat det are at night, and being the new guy, you will be getting plenty of experience flying form at night in the clouds, all while flying off the boat. It will eventually seem very normal to you as wierd as that sounds. Get that NVG qual as quick as you can, it will make life much easier. It does gets better once you get that section lead qual. It is not uncommon for a new guy to not have a day trap for 30 or more days at a time while on cruise flying across the beach.

When I was a COD guy flying night from the boat, I was lucky in that we had to carry cargo to the boat during the day so I was able to keep some semblence of sanity. I still flew almost every night, either in the right seat or in the left to stay night current. I know the E-2 bubba's went weeks without day traps. I don't think they flew night form though. We were never allowed to fly form IMC or night in the COD. I flew IMC form one time in the COD as two sections on a fly-off. It was maybe 10-15 minutes worth on our fly-off, we wanted to stay together for the eventual homecoming fly-off. Us COD guys were not exactly formation flying masters lol. Again, no night forms allowed though yet I'm about to teach night form in Kingsville. It's all good until the dark, no horizong, full of clouds night. At least it's over south Texas.

I am not sure I would want to fly form in IMC or at night in a COD either. Did your CAG hate your squadron or something? I don't think any C-2s are flying at night at the boat right now. Have fun leading studs at night, at least I had goggles when the other guys didn't, helps with self preservation.

Long story....back in the mid 90's, the three COD squadrons (VRC-30/40/50) were supposedly a mess. They were made up of pilots from various communities. They also didn't have a warfare designator and thus any Navy pilot who selected COD's and stayed COD's were generally destined to remain an O-3 and find themselves out of a job at the end of 10 years. So somebody up high (O-6 and above realm) got the idea to turn COD's into a more disciplined, refined community with aviators that could land on the boat at night, fly form, do SEAL para-drops (though that was happening anyway as I understand it), etc.

In comes CDR Baron Asher...a fixer and thus an . He was the XO of VRC-50 when they de-commed. He then became the XO/CO of VRC-30 and led the way for COD's flying from the boat at night and staying onboard during deployment. The idea was simple enough, save money, have COD's available day/night for any sort of logistics or specops mission, change the warfare designator, etc. BTW, the standard budget for a COD det for 6 months is around $1 million dollars. The budget for a COD det staying on the boat for 6 months was $50,000, quite a bit of savings. So for my first two deployments, I was on the boat 9 of 12 months. Though by the second deployment, we had stopped flying night at the boat.

In the end, the constant night flying wore our planes down...remember, only 39 C-2A(R)'s were built and the round the clock flying (night FCLP/CQ) was increasing the number of landings. Matter of fact, we flew at least one to the bone yard while I was at VRC-30. At the time, COD's were not being SLEP'd so when the new front office took over after CDR Asher, they proposed to stop flying night at the boat, which was readily agreed upon. Now, only VRC-30 and its DET-5 in Japan did the night thing, VRC-40 kept business as usual. However, once we stopped flying night and staying on the boat, DET-5's CAG like the night option and kept it going until 2003 or so. We stopped flying night in 2000. As an FRS IP, I still had to go to the boat at night with nuggets and a few CAT II types. I've got about 150 night traps, left and right seat.

Thing is about staying on the boat, we rarely, if ever, did any night logistics on deployment. As I recall, 90% of our night flying was an airborne respot, rarely any logistics and by the letter of the law, we could not fly pax at night unless it was SEALs. We never did para-drops with the SEALs while on deployment either...well, except a few drops in Kuwait when the ship was in port. So the ship was in port and we flew, great. We did plenty out of San Diego but it was just practice. VRC-40 did more para-drops than 30 ever did, at least that's my understanding. That went away too as somehow, the higher ups decided that it put too much stress on the aircraft....maybe the ramp but that was never an issue. That was a call made by someone (Admiral Zortman) who never looked into the effects of paradrops (which in the end, there really isn't any according to Pax River), just made a blind decision to stop things. As COD drivers, we enjoyed flying them, we dropped from 500' to over 10,000' and the SEALs like our platform.

The best thing to come out of it was COD drivers can now go CODs, stay with the community and march right on up to O-6 if they get a command, or O-5 if not. A lot of work but us VRC-30 folks in the mid 90's to make it so. I for one always though night flying around the boat made you a better aviator, though as unpleasent as it was in the COD. VAW-120 just had the first COD only guy to be its skipper and I'm sure DWOO is probably trying for a CAG billet. He also has 300 hours in the Tomcat as he was CAG-5 paddles as well as AIRPAC paddles. DWOO is not the norm for a COD guy by any means. As far as I'm concerned though, being a COD skipper is like being the smartest kid with Down Syndrome, it's just not that big a deal.

Yeah, I can imagine goggles will be nice.....still a little bit down the road for me in A/G. Looking forward to my first night tacform....that should be entertaining

Sweet shots

Have to do a couple a year for a training bean. Operationally I've done them as well, but not in a long time.

NVGs aren't as cool as they sound. After a couple 4-hour nighttime vuls in OEF, you'll be ready to hang 'em up for good.

Great shots. Looks like a fun jet to ride around in. I don't know why I say that, but it just looks right.

OK, all you military guys...what's that jagged wire on the canopy? Det cord incase you have to punch out, a heating element, or is it classified and you'd have to kill me if you tell me?

It is the mild detonating chord (MDC), shatters the canopy for ejection, emergency egress on the ground or smoke/fumes elimination.

Right on. How does the canopy stay clear in cruise then?

Sorry I'm so curious, but I find this stuff interesting.

Oh, does the RAT shake the plane like a dog crapping razor blades when it's deployed?

Not sure what you mean by your first question. I have yet to have the RAT deploy in flight but our wing a few weeks ago had his deploy, no difference in flight characteristics.

I didn't know if the canopy glass is heated or whatever to keep it from frosting over at altitude, or ice up should you encounter those conditions.

I had the RAT pop on me a few of times.......once during ACM, once during a low level pop-attack, and once just climbing away on take-off. Never noiticed a difference at all in the controls, just the annoying deedle deedle of the master caution

Nope, not heated.

I never saw frost on the canopy regardless of weather, BUT, the big thing we had to deal with was hot humid summertime flights in the south with the A/C cranked all the way up. You come in from high altitude at the end of the flight, hit the break, and if you are doing T&G's, when you would firewall the throttle on go around, you would get sprayed in the face with little ice pellets and water and the canopy would start to fog up.....I can remember a few times when the front of the canopy and the HUD fogged up so bad that I could barely see out....so normally we would turn the ECS down to something only moderately cool to prevent this

A common occurrence when the T-38 is zipping along in the Flight Levels on a student X-C.

Even though there's a note in the -1 about pre-heating the canopy prior to the descent, it's about the most predictable common student error. I guess when Stan is completely task saturated in his WHOLDS check, he tends to forget little "nice to have" stuff like a clear canopy!

Beautiful pictures Bunk, I started my aviation in Brazilian Air Force, miss my training time