Saturday, October 18, 2014

Wicked Awesome Aerial Stuff Part 2

Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada
Home of Red Flag

(USAF Photo in the Public Domain)
In my never ending quest to provide quality blog material, I will often stumble across some mighty fine videos, this one from Battlefield Sources. The video opens with AWACS, KC-135 tanker and B-1 bomber take offs, then I spied one of ORPO1's jets from the 416th Flight Test Squadron. It was all excited I was!

The video has a lot of flightline stuff and a lot of cockpit stuff. No cheesy music anywhere to be heard. Which is sometimes its own reward.

As it's Saturday and I slept in this morning, I'm a little late out of the gate. But The Missus Herself is in California and no one is supervising me, so this is what you get. Yup, pure sloth. When that happens, at Chez Sarge, we roll tape (so to speak...)

Enjoy - I promised you Air Force and now you get Air Force.

16 comments:

  1. Pretty nice, thanks Sarge. I am so old school I can't get used to the oxygen mask tube coming off at the side. It looks like the pilots have their faces on crooked. All those zippers had a lot of stuff hanging off of their wings. All the more to jettison when a bogey is sighted, I suppose. One old school pic added to the blog, check it out.

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    1. I can't begin to tell you how glad I am that you resurrected your blog. Three great posts in a row. (Check my sidebar near the top under "To Fly and To Fight...")

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  2. I hadn't noticed the oxygen tube thing before, I wonder why it's like that? Still haven't gotten used to seeing an Eagle with the two wing tanks. My first thought is where are they deploying to?

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    1. I had to look again for the oxygen tube. When did that start I wonder?

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    2. I got to thinking about it while out turning lumber into sawdust (it's not much of a hobby, but it gets my BP down into triple digits). I seem to recall occasionally when looking over my right shoulder, I'd get disconnected from the oxygen system. Wonder if that was changed to allow a little bit more freedom of motion.

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    3. Possibly. I went back and re-watched the Navy video I posted a couple of days ago, their oxygen hose is still on the centerline of the mask in one configuration, the hose is offset left in others.

      Perhaps it depends on which helmet/mask is in use?

      Hhmm...

      I'll have to ask The WSO and Big Time.

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  3. I believe the side mount is the m20 pos pressure under g rig. Has a separate exh outlet on the off side. Provides pp under hi g to help stave off gloc. Frogs had em first iirc.

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    1. Gee PA, you're not just a pretty face are ya?

      Good data!

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    2. Interesting to see the idea expressed as actual working equipment in the fleet and around the world. I worked on a NAMI G-LOC research project in the early 80's that determined the idea (pos pressure O2) had merit but was technically unfeasible in the tactical environment. I have a scar on my forehead which attests to the idiocy of strapping an O2 bottle to the SV-2. Apparently some smart folks got involved at some point.

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    3. Eventually the smart folks need to pitch in.

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  4. Nice vid. There's a LOT of Red Flag footage here, like 50 minutes of it. I posted the vid back in 2008 and said, in part, "So… it goes without sayin’, but there are more airframes in this video than you can shake a stick at… including tankers, helos (the Search and Rescue [SAR] sequence is great!), trash-haulers, AWACS, and brief cameos of our foreign allies participating in Red Flag. The usually unsung heroes… like the BB-Stackers (ordnance guys), crew chiefs, back-shop maintainers, and AWACS guys… get air-time in this film as well."

    I can think of worse ways to spend an hour.

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    1. I must needs be check that out. When I get that hour!

      (Sounds awesome though.)

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  5. I see the TAC weenie patch never dies--they just rename it, lol I;m old school like Dave. First the SQ patch on right breast, them Wing patch on right shoulder, etc. If at Wing, Wing Patch on right breast and numbered Air Force on right shoulder. TAC patches were only for TAC weenies. Now the Borg collective has dictated the damned patch be worn on EVERYONE's right front breast. Air "Combat" Command indeed..

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    1. One of the things I never did in the Air Force was wear a TAC patch.

      PACAF? Yes.

      SAC? Yes.

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  6. A company I worked for has on an operation (non aviation) about two miles from Nellis. I always enjoyed the noise. Hard to watch the fighters; small, and going like stink.

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    1. That's pretty cool. Yeah, when the fighters get to moving they're hard to see.

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