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Black Betty

I stumbled across this picture of my 1960 BE-65 Queen Air that someone took as I was leaving Oshkosh last year.  I was pretty excited to find this because It’s the only photo I have of Black Betty in flight and seeing that I’m the only one who flies her this is the first time I’ve gotten to  see what she looks like in the air!  I think I’m in love all over again.

N800EQ, 1960 Beech U-8F C/N 60-05390, Airventure 2012

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Your Weekly Lex, For Strength

 

A bad weather day

 

By lex, on June 9th, 2004
Sometimes the mission doesn’t make much sense.
Sometimes you do it anyway.
Everyone has a store of sea stories that makes him looks like a hero.
This is not one of those.
Fighter aviation is mercillessly unforgiving of weakness of any sort, personal, professional, or character. The pressure to compete and succeed is remarkable – sometimes it can be fatal.
I loved it. […]
This story reminds me of how WAY too many ferry flights ended.  When your flight is up to ten hours long and the weather forecast was already a few hours old when you took off the conditions you could expect when you finally got to your destination were frequently surprising, and never in a good way.
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Let The Games Begin

Well it’s that time of year again.  Time for a few brave skydivers to see if they’ve got what it takes to throw innocent young students out of perfectly good airplanes, let them go and see if they can catch them again when things go wonky.  Yes it’s time for our annual Accelerated Freefall Instructors course.  Despite my right hip giving me problems, don’t ask, I’ve stupidly bravely volunteered my expert services to act as the worst out of control student the candidates have ever seen.  I might bitch about being subjected to repeated freefall collisions, low pulls and morons tracking away with my pilot chute, TWICE!  but I keep doing it because I love it and because it’s important to keep renewing my pool of instructors.  I also love it because it’s a hell of a lot of fun.  Not only do I mess with the candidates in the air I get to do my best to trip them up on the ground.  To do that I take on different persona’s that each have their own individual set of problems that the candidate has to overcome and still be an effective instructor, my favorite is Billy Balls.  Billy Balls is a 70’s era ex-porn star turned film maker who just can’t seem to pay attention to what he’s supposed be concentrating on when women are around.  He’s constantly hitting on the women and trying to get them to star in his next movie.  In the plane when the candidates are trying to get him to go over what he’s supposed to do on the next skydive he instead will turn around and caress the thigh of the jumper behind him and ask them “Do you want to be a star?”  Good fun.  At the door I do things like wave to the camera or other jumpers, adjust my goggles or try and ask a question while hanging halfway out of the plane, them of course I just let go and curl up in a ball trying to flip over on the exit.  If the candidates can somehow manage to get me stable they’re supposed to let me go at which time I flip over on my back and begin spinning uncontrollably.  The candidate’s job is to catch me, flip me over and pull my simulated ripcord before passing through the 3500 foot hard deck.  It does make for some interesting jumps, stay tuned.

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Your Weekly Lex, For Strength

Trusting the LSO

 

By lex, on July 8th, 2004
Real short sea story.
1987, first deployment, North Arabian Sea. I’m a raw nugget (new guy), flying maybe my fourth or fifth fleet night flight. An air intercept control mission – fleet air defense.
We’re miles from nowhere, no diverts are available. When the shooter pulls the trigger on the catapult, you’re either landing on the ship or in the water. Those are the only options available. And it’s darker than a hat full of a**holes.
Twenty or thirty minutes into the flight, I notice that the jet needs progressively more and more lateral trim to fight a tendency of the left wing to drop – there’s a “coolie hat” on the control stick which relieves control forces in flight. Now, the FA-18 automatically trims to 1g flight in pitch with the flaps in “auto,” in other words, during normal flight. Re-trimming is required in the landing configuration, but rarely when cruising around with the flaps up. A little bit of lateral trim if the aircraft is carrying an asymmetric external load. Perhaps a twitch of longitudinal (rudder) trim from time to time.
But she keeps wanting to wing drop to the left, and I keep trimming it out. Which is strange, because I’m symmetrically loaded. Eventually a light bulb goes off in the brain housing unit, and I check the external fuel quantities. At sea, the FA-18 normally carries two external fuel tanks, each carrying a little over 2000 pounds (nearly seven hundred gallons) of fuel. They normally transfer to the fuselage tanks as those empty. One of my two external tanks was empty. The other was still full. A transfer failure. Two thousand pounds of gas seven feet displaced from the longitudinal axis of the jet. Fourteen thousand foot-pounds of lateral asymmetry.
The FA-18 doesn’t carry a lot of gas, for a fighter. At sea, you’re always watching the fuel gauges, making sure that your usage rates will not deplete your available fuel faster than the recovery time permits. Because in cyclic operations, you can’t come back and land just any old time. You come back and land on schedule. If you’re early, you’ll find the deck clobbered with the next launch – the landing area will not be open – and nothing can be done. And you have to bring enough gas home to allow yourself a few attempts at the deck, in case you bolter or are waved off – either for technique (translation: You suck) or a foul deck (translation: The guy in front of you got stuck in the wires – he sucks).
So it was a little disconcerting to realize that I had 2000 pounds less gas available than I would otherwise have been entitled to.

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Traveling

After a really disappointing Memorial Day weekend, lots of rain and low clouds, Super Girl and I am off to Canada to wrap up the filming of Dangerous  Flights season two.  It should be a nice few days of hanging out with some of the best pilots in the world and my daughter, take that how you like, but my time is limited so I’ll try and get a post or two off if I can but don’t hold your breath.
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Your Weekly Lex, For Strength

Viper FCF

By lex, on August 29th, 2004
After major maintenance, an aircraft has to be flown by a specially designated check pilot on a PMCF – a post-maintenance check flight, before it’s released for general use. These are also known as FCF’s, or “functional check flights.” The designation is eagerly sought out by pilots, and sparingly bestowed. Being certified an FCF pilot carries with it a mark of professional trust, and added responsiblity. Too many pilots designated a check pilot in a squadron dilutes the opportunity for the select few to stay proficient in the different check procedures.
The decision on whether or not to release a jet for general use is a serious one, demanding thorough knowledge of the aircraft and its systems, and an ability to react quickly and properly to anything that may go wrong – always an elevated risk on a plane that’s had a major re-work done.
They’re also a lot of fun.

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Get Some

 

In the spring of 1944, Bill Overstreet of the famous 357th FG was hot on the tail of a German ME109G. The pilot of the 109 flew right over Paris where German anti-aircraft artillery was heavy, probably in hopes they would solve his problem by eliminating Bill and his P51C named the “Berlin Express”. Bill persisted through intense flak closing the gap with the enemy fighter. Already hit in the engine, as a last resort the ME109 pilot aimed his aircraft toward the imposing Eiffel Tower and in a breathtaking maneuver flew right under it. Even this was not enough to shake Bill as he followed right behind scoring several more hits in the process. The German ME109 crashed moments later and Bill escaped the heavy flak around Paris by flying low and full throttle over the river.