Latest / So There I Was / Logbook Entry: Almost Died Today Episode 82

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Logbook Entry: Almost Died Today Episode 82 · So There I Was

• 0:00
  Quiet numbskulls, I'm broadcasting. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
• 0:05
  So there I was, this is episode 82.
• 0:09
  Logbook entry almost died today.
• 0:13
  Captain's log 2023. Yes.
• 0:17
  Oh man, that was a good one. Well, first of all, happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
• 0:22
  If you're out there listening to us today, as this show hits the streets,
• 0:26
  we hope that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
• 0:29
  Hopefully with family and loved ones, if you find yourself on the road,
• 0:32
  particularly as a pilot, hopefully with a good crew and good friends.
• 0:35
  Enjoy some time today to reflect on all the good things that you're thankful for in life.
• 0:39
  I can tell you, I think I speak for FIG when I say we are thankful for you.
• 0:44
  You make this show so much fun for us to do. So thank you everybody.
• 0:48
  I couldn't have said it any better myself, brother. Thank you.
• 0:52
  So FIG, we got a new division lead this week. We do.
• 0:55
  El Peloto. and let me read what he wrote to us. Hi, Repeat and Fig.
• 1:01
  I am loving the shows you guys are churning out.
• 1:05
  Your shows take me back to the days when I flew with a number of ex-RAF Harrier guys,
• 1:10
  whom also had a plethora of awesome stories to regale me with as we ran the
• 1:16
  bucket and spade brigade to and from their holidays between the UK and the sunny beaches of Europe.
• 1:22
  As someone who is six foot five, I could never fit in a jet unless it had freight in the back.
• 1:31
  I accepted my fate that I was not going to fly anything that would make me go
• 1:34
  ballistic, ever, so I might as well fly with an espresso in hand,
• 1:39
  hence why I now fly self-loading.
• 1:43
  Freight as a skipper with said espresso in hand on the four-engine double-decked.
• 1:49
  Flying cruise liner that is the A380.
• 1:52
  It could be worse. Check six. El Piloto. Nice. Yeah. Well, let's hope he never
• 1:57
  goes ballistic in the A380, but.
• 1:59
  Right. So six five, we can't help ourselves. There's strecken.
• 2:04
  That's your new call sign strecken. Call sign strecken, which is German for? Stretch.
• 2:09
  He's German for stretch. Yeah. Thank you, stretch. Thank you for the, for the support.
• 2:15
  Indeed. Thank you so much for the support. Been in touch with him.
• 2:18
  I'm going to hand carry his bar glasses to his base.
• 2:22
  Sponsor this week is Robins Birdbrain Designs, Custom Slate Coasters.
• 2:26
  It's gift giving time of year folks. Get your orders in by December 15th with
• 2:30
  Robinsbirdbraindesigns.com.
• 2:32
  Custom Slate Coasters. However you like them. She'll work with you to get what you want.
• 2:37
  A hobby, a squadron, an organization. Get it done.
• 2:41
  What do you think, Fig? What else should someone do if they want to help us out here?
• 2:46
  Don't want to throw money at us. Well, they should rate us. They should give us a five-star rating.
• 2:51
  Not one. You know who you are, too. Yeah, we know who you are, you no-good bastard.
• 2:59
  Hey, if you don't want to give us a five-star review, send us an email.
• 3:03
  Tell us what we need to improve on, because we are trainable. That's right.
• 3:09
  That's right. Hey, you know what? You drop one star on us, we just know what kind of person you are.
• 3:14
  That's all we're saying. Who drops one star and doesn't even give a comment? What a douche.
• 3:19
  Hey, share the show. Share the show with your friends. Share.
• 3:23
  Absolutely. And Fig, speaking of Patreon pilots, we got another one this week,
• 3:29
  Gail Heckerson, call sign KJ.
• 3:32
  I met KJ in the lobby of the Hilton in Cambridge, England. I was checking in,
• 3:37
  he was checking out, he's about to take a C-130 all the way over to Asia.
• 3:41
  Oh man. I think they're about to land. I met him in September.
• 3:45
  I think they're about to land any day now. That's about right. Dang.
• 3:49
  Right? So yeah, met him, gave him my card. and the subscription QR code for the show.
• 3:58
  So he writes in, says, hey guys, love the show. Met repeat in Cambridge when
• 4:03
  we were traveling through and he was the one that told me about it.
• 4:05
  I'm happy to donate the show because I love hearing all the stories from aviators past and present.
• 4:10
  I chose tanker aircraft commander status because I currently am.
• 4:15
  Active duty Marine tanker aircraft commander. Seemed too fitting.
• 4:19
  Much appreciated, gents. Keep the laughs coming.
• 4:22
  And he asked if we could give a shout out to his stepfather,
• 4:26
  Tim, who's an electrician in Fraser, Colorado.
• 4:29
  And he unfortunately took a spill on his mountain bike and led him to have some
• 4:33
  surgery, so he's still on the mend.
• 4:35
  And to that we say, Tim, we know suffering from an injury is no fun at all,
• 4:40
  especially when it keeps you sidelined. We wish you a speedy recovery.
• 4:43
  Speedy recovery, my friend. Thank you. Absolutely. Absolutely.
• 4:46
  So get back on your mountain bike soon and hope you get a chance to enjoy a
• 4:49
  little bit of Thanksgiving dinner with family in the meantime. So, thank you very much.
• 4:54
  We got another one we have to acknowledge and this is going to sound weird if
• 4:58
  you're listening to the show regularly because...
• 5:01
  Next week's show is with Chucker and we talk about Chucker being a triple Tanker
• 5:08
  aircraft commander and after we finished recording last night that show It popped on us.
• 5:16
  We now have a quadruple tanker aircraft commander in Chuck I drew so I drew Wow.
• 5:22
  I mean, that's just oh that is so far. First of all, it's humbling number one
• 5:27
  and I don't even know what to say. Thank you.
• 5:32
  And that doesn't even do it. It's just inadequate. So we'll talk more about
• 5:37
  that and we'll talk with Chucker, like I say, on next week's show,
• 5:39
  that's a fun show, but that's next week, so we'll leave it hanging there for now.
• 5:44
  I think we get on to talk a little bit about Chris, our air cav pilot from the 1980s.
• 5:50
  Yeah. This is a fun interview.
• 5:52
  Yeah. And the theme reared its ugly head again, Fig.
• 5:56
  Are you talking about with the wildlife, with the cattle?
• 6:00
  Moose, a bear, and Buffalo, oh my. Oh my gosh, I know, I don't want to spoil
• 6:06
  it, but there's a story that I, I mean, we both had to get clarity on because.
• 6:13
  Oh, we had to stop, go, wait a minute, you did what?
• 6:15
  Oh yeah, yeah, well, you did what? Yeah.
• 6:18
  Then he talks about, you know, just a, it was a grizzly bear, wasn't it? Yeah.
• 6:22
  Grizzly bear trying to swat a Huey out of the sky. Which made me think King
• 6:26
  Kong on the Empire State Building.
• 6:29
  I mean, that's what I envisioned when he was telling that story.
• 6:32
  He had great stories. He flew Air Cav.
• 6:35
  And he was up in Alaska, way north Alaska. Freezing his body parts off.
• 6:41
  Yeah, they were there for the big Russian invasion. That never came, thank the Lord.
• 6:47
  However, the flying was incredible. The conditions were absolutely insane.
• 6:51
  Treacherous. Especially in the wintertime, right?
• 6:57
  When somebody said, he said the crew chief had to take the batteries out and
• 7:01
  sleep with them at night so they could put them in and they would work it. I mean, I don't know.
• 7:05
  You know, they couldn't leave them in the helicopters because it was too cold.
• 7:08
  No, they'd freeze and then they wouldn't start. Freaking cold, right.
• 7:10
  So they had to, so you had to sleep with your batteries, but make sure you weren't
• 7:13
  sleeping with food, I'm certain, lest the wildlife wander in and say hello.
• 7:17
  I don't, you know. I know.
• 7:19
  What, I mean, the time went really fast, like it always does with very interesting
• 7:23
  people. and when we're done, you're always asking for more.
• 7:28
  This was a fun episode. So I think we've got no choice but to get out of the
• 7:32
  way. It's army training, sir!
• 7:34
  Don't sit on the damn collective. Don't do it. At night, in the world's smallest
• 7:39
  cockpit, on the tanker, through the weather.
• 7:45
  Oh, and to the tanker crew who did that, thanks a lot, we really appreciated that.
• 7:47
  Music.
• 8:09
  So there I was in a cloud of snow, looking through a green NVG toilet paper
• 8:14
  tube, rolling a little to the left thinking, what you gonna do now, captain?
• 8:19
  Oh, shit! A little scary.
• 8:24
  That is how all great aviation stories begin, which is so there I was. Welcome.
• 8:30
  This is Fig, coming to you from Denver, Colorado. And where is my co-horse tonight?
• 8:36
  I'm home for one more night, then I've got to go to work. Repeat here in Lee, New Hampshire.
• 8:41
  And we have with us tonight an aircraft pilot from the 1980s era,
• 8:46
  back when they were throwing money at the Pentagon like it grew on trees.
• 8:50
  It was a good time to be on active duty.
• 8:52
  Indeed. So welcome, Chris, one of our listeners, one of our Patreons.
• 8:57
  We much appreciate it and look forward to chatting with you about all kinds
• 9:01
  of things, rolling over in the snow and life encounters and everything.
• 9:06
  But thanks for the invite. Yeah. Glad to have you. First of all, we're glad you're here.
• 9:11
  Yeah. What inspired you to crawl into one of those whirling death traps in the first place.
• 9:15
  So when did when did you decide you wanted to fly and how'd you get there?
• 9:20
  I always kind of had an aviation background. My dad was a 40 year engineer at
• 9:24
  Boeing Airplane Company out in Seattle.
• 9:27
  I heard of it. Yeah, they still make airplanes, don't they? Yeah,
• 9:31
  he designed the metal structure for the landing gear of the 747.
• 9:35
  And I remember as a special deal for him, we got to go to the control tower
• 9:40
  when it did its first landing at Boeing Field. back in 1969.
• 9:45
  Got to see that whole thing, which obviously if you're going to like aviation,
• 9:49
  that's going to be a top of the list deal to keep you interested.
• 9:53
  Had a neighbor whose dad had an airplane, had an old V-tail Bonanza that we used to go out in.
• 9:59
  And so the itch to fly was always kind of there.
• 10:02
  I don't think it finally solidified until I was at West Point and started looking
• 10:07
  at different branches and.
• 10:10
  Why go infantry or something else where you got to carry your 110 pound rucksack
• 10:15
  on your back versus in the back of your knees. Right? Put it under your seat.
• 10:20
  Good stuff. Yeah. So it was a little bit of a long journey.
• 10:28
  I got into West Point, I guess, from my body instead of my brains.
• 10:32
  I was a gymnast and my skills on gymnastics events were much higher than my
• 10:39
  SAT scores, but it was enough to get me in, but I didn't quite graduate high
• 10:44
  enough in the class to get aviation straight out of the academy.
• 10:48
  And it was just becoming a branch in the army or the aviation back then.
• 10:53
  So I started infantry, did that
• 10:56
  for, I guess, two years, was a training officer at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
• 11:00
  So I got to be with the drill sergeants all day, which was an absolute blast.
• 11:04
  Those guys are the best guys ever. Aren't they comedians? They're comedians. Yeah.
• 11:10
  It was just an awesome experience. And finally, finally got orders for flight
• 11:16
  school and changing branches from infantry to aviation all in the same day.
• 11:20
  And that was back in, I started in May of, May of 1984 at Fort Rucker.
• 11:27
  Nice. Very cool. So how'd you wind up selecting West Point?
• 11:34
  I mean, And did you know you wanted to fly then?
• 11:37
  I thought, I thought I wanted to fly and had some background knowledge,
• 11:41
  how am I going to get there?
• 11:43
  I didn't have anybody in my family that was in the military.
• 11:48
  And I think other than a great, great, great grandfather who fought in the civil
• 11:52
  war, but, but that was it still got his discharge paperwork,
• 11:58
  some brass cab belt buckle, which is kind of cool.
• 12:01
  Wow. But that was it. And so I started actually getting recruited by both the
• 12:06
  Naval Academy and West Point for gymnastics.
• 12:09
  And that was the predominant deciding factor. They flew me out.
• 12:12
  West Point flew me out on a recruiting trip for a weekend.
• 12:16
  By the end of the weekend, I was on the airplane flying home.
• 12:19
  I'm going, if I can get in, that's where I'm going.
• 12:21
  Army all the way, baby. Yeah. What? So Annapolis lost out because they,
• 12:26
  what, they dropped the ball in the recruiting effort?
• 12:28
  Yeah, the coach was a little different. And he'd have his recruiting phone calls
• 12:34
  and they all kind of started with, hey, is it raining out there?
• 12:37
  Because I lived in Seattle and I was like, well, that's kind of annoying, you know?
• 12:43
  And he didn't fly me out to Annapolis for a weekend, like the West Point.
• 12:47
  Okay, that's bullshit. That is bullshit. But I want to know.
• 12:51
  It wasn't raining. I want to know when it was raining.
• 12:55
  How many, so you were there four years at West Point, is that right? Yeah.
• 13:00
  So what was the score, Army, Navy, was it, how many win losses was while you
• 13:05
  were there? In football?
• 13:07
  Yes. In football? No, football. Football it It was three and a half.
• 13:11
  We tied three to three my senior year, which we considered a win.
• 13:16
  What about in gymnastics? In gymnastics, we were three and one.
• 13:21
  We had an eight-year straight streak, and we lost it and gave it up my senior
• 13:24
  year, which was kind of a bad memory, but that's the way it goes.
• 13:29
  It was good while it lasted. Good luck. We're all counting on you.
• 13:32
  No pressure. No pressure at all.
• 13:35
  Four and oh would have been good. Three and one, eight back.
• 13:37
  Would have been good. There you go. Right. So what was your main event in gymnastics?
• 13:41
  Did all six events. My best event was vaulting and high bar were the two best events.
• 13:47
  Holy shit. Oh, man.
• 13:49
  This is, you know, this is a first. This is a first. We've had army helicopter
• 13:54
  aviators on here before.
• 13:56
  I think you're the first West Pointer. Is that right? Repeat first West Pointer.
• 14:01
  Yeah, for some reason, I think we had one other, but I don't recall who it was. Well, okay.
• 14:09
  It might not be the first West Pointer, but you are definitely the first gymnast. Yes.
• 14:15
  Collegiate gymnast, very first. Yeah, so we actually had a group of about six
• 14:20
  of us that were all on the team over the four years I was there that were all
• 14:24
  at Fort Rucker at the same time,
• 14:25
  either as a student or as an IP, and we used to get together in the O club or
• 14:31
  we'd get together at the O club pool on Saturdays and kind of do crazy stuff
• 14:35
  off the diving boards that used to get us free drinks where people dare us to do different things.
• 14:41
  Oh, did you do like the triple Indy or whatever from- Yeah, somebody'd get up
• 14:46
  and they'd do a single flip and the next guy up had to do something a little better.
• 14:49
  So you had to add a flip or a twist or something.
• 14:52
  And by the time you were the fifth guy up, you were in trouble.
• 14:54
  It was going to hurt when you landed most likely.
• 14:58
  And it was, it was a good time because there was plenty of beer flowing at the
• 15:01
  Oak Club back in those days. Right. As it should be in military flight school, right?
• 15:06
  Yes. Hey, I got a real quick admin note here.
• 15:09
  Big, Big Beaver 69 says, as a matter of fact, Chris is our first West Point graduate.
• 15:18
  And that's from Styx, so he has an eidetic memory.
• 15:22
  So yeah, he is our first West Point graduate, and he is an acrobat as opposed to an aerobat. Yes.
• 15:32
  Yeah. Upside down in a helicopter is not a good place to be most of the time.
• 15:38
  Yeah. Let's talk about that. So you're Fort Rucker, what kind of helicopters
• 15:48
  did you train in Fort Rucker back in the 80s?
• 15:51
  There were several. primary was an old TH-55, which was a Hughes-269 piston.
• 15:57
  Driven two seater. So you do about 60 hours in that for primary.
• 16:04
  And then you did a transition course into the UH-1 Huey.
• 16:08
  And that was about 24 hours. And after that we did instrument training in the Huey.
• 16:14
  First part of that was basic instruments in the simulator.
• 16:17
  And then you'd go out in the aircraft to finish that up.
• 16:21
  And then Then you broke off either into a, they called a lift track or a scout track.
• 16:25
  So the lift track was learning how to carry troops around in a Huey or maybe
• 16:29
  transition to a Blackhawk after you graduated.
• 16:32
  And then a scout track was in OH-58s, which I went to and you'd learn all the
• 16:38
  different air cavalry type tactics and skills and things like that.
• 16:42
  So he did a, he did a quick transition course in the OH-58 and then you'd go
• 16:47
  out and learn all the tactics and then finish off with night vision goggles at the very end.
• 16:52
  Okay, so in in 1984 was night-vision goggles was at the leading edge of night-vision goggle technology,
• 16:58
  It was pretty close it the very first ones were they had full full-face goggles,
• 17:03
  to where you couldn't really look out underneath them Which caused a lot of
• 17:07
  vertigo problems and things. Yeah.
• 17:09
  Oh, yeah back then the NVGs had a visual acuity of 2050,
• 17:14
  Was like looking through a green toilet paper tube And depth perception was
• 17:19
  accurate between 50 feet and 500 feet, which doesn't do you a heck of a lot
• 17:24
  of good when you're trying to learn how to hover.
• 17:26
  You know, they say, okay, pick it up to three feet. Okay, I got it at three
• 17:29
  feet. And they go, really? I'm turning the landing light.
• 17:31
  Look down at the bottom. And you'd be up at 10 or 15 feet.
• 17:36
  Okay. Okay. And then so let me back up. They were not good, but it was better than nothing.
• 17:41
  Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Absolutely better than nothing. But let me,
• 17:44
  uh, let me back up a little bit and ask you a quick question about the TH55.
• 17:49
  You said it had a radial engine in it and I don't know what are the,
• 17:52
  this, or no, you said it had a piston engine in it. I'm assuming it was a radial engine. Yes.
• 17:57
  Okay. Was that horizontally mounted or vertically or how did that work?
• 18:03
  It was horizontal and the drive shaft came out the back and there were,
• 18:06
  I think, three different, uh, belts that drove the different gears that went
• 18:11
  up into the transmission for the, for the rotor system. Okay.
• 18:18
  This sounds horrible. Or I can remember back, that was a long time ago,
• 18:21
  but I'm picturing it in my mind, cause that was part of the pre-flight.
• 18:24
  You had to, you had to check all
• 18:25
  those rubber bands to make sure that they weren't frayed or coming off.
• 18:29
  Right. Cause if any one of those rubber bands snapped during flight,
• 18:32
  it sounds like you were done.
• 18:34
  Don't you doing an auto rotation? Yeah. Yeah. Oh boy.
• 18:39
  We've, we've heard about these auto rotations. Which were kind of fun.
• 18:42
  If they were controlled, it was a lot of fun.
• 18:47
  Yeah.
• 18:49
  Oh boy, is this great.
• 18:55
  So, okay. So how long did it take to get your head around hovering and auto
• 18:59
  rotation and all that kind of stuff? We hear different amounts of time.
• 19:02
  Apparently one of our guests, Lawman, who just hopped in a helicopter and did
• 19:07
  it when they said do it, but you know, he flew Blue Angels.
• 19:09
  So Lawman's not your average. He is not your average pilot. No.
• 19:15
  His bar is up here. We all operate down here, so. Yeah.
• 19:21
  The hardest part was learning how to hover, and at the time,
• 19:25
  we had one instructor pilot to two students, and you'd have one student go out
• 19:28
  with the IP, and you'd fly out
• 19:30
  to a stage field somewhere, and the other student would take a bus out.
• 19:34
  You'd fly for two hours, and then the guy who took the bus would switch out and fly.
• 19:38
  But the guys that were on the bus, you'd go out to the stage field,
• 19:41
  and you'd watch the hover field, which is where they were teaching people how
• 19:45
  to, how to hover, you know, flying, doing approaches, turns, straight and level.
• 19:52
  That's pretty easy. But trying to get a, trying to get the hang of hovering was, was a bit rough.
• 19:57
  And depending on how sadistic your instructor pilot was, was adding to the comedy
• 20:05
  of what would happen while you were watching out at the stage field to your
• 20:08
  buddies trying to learn how to hover.
• 20:10
  Right. And you'd see, you'd see somebody kind of flat, straight,
• 20:14
  and then all of a sudden, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa.
• 20:16
  And then boom, come back to level, which you knew the IP was grabbing the control.
• 20:21
  Again, I was lucky. I had, I had a great instructor and I'd say,
• 20:24
  put your feet on the pedals.
• 20:26
  Keep us, keep us pointed straight down the stage field, down the, down the line.
• 20:30
  And once you got a hold of that, he'd give you the collective,
• 20:33
  say, keep us at three feet.
• 20:36
  Once you got the hang of that, then he'd say, okay, grab the cyclic, keep us over this spot.
• 20:41
  And then he'd make, he'd manage all the other controls. Then he'd give you a sets at two at a time.
• 20:45
  And when you got those straight, then he gave you all three and it was boom.
• 20:50
  So I think the syllabus called for, you were supposed to, you're supposed to
• 20:54
  do a solo, I think by the 12th hour, if I'm not mistaken.
• 21:00
  So the instructor would get out and you'd go around three times and come back
• 21:04
  and land, pick him up if everything went okay.
• 21:06
  And then, then off you'd go to the next set of silos.
• 21:09
  Nice. Okay. And then, uh, but obviously you had to hover by the time you soloed.
• 21:14
  Absolutely. Yeah. You had to, you had to pick it up off the,
• 21:17
  uh, off the runway where they, where they parked and started to hover and ask
• 21:22
  radio, radio control tower for permission to take off and you're hovering that
• 21:27
  whole time and then off you go.
• 21:29
  Yeah. And so did it just click for you or did it?
• 21:33
  Did it come slowly or, I mean, it sounds like this guy had a great technique
• 21:37
  to teach you. Yeah, it was pretty quick for me.
• 21:40
  I did pretty well all the way through. I was at or near the top of the class
• 21:44
  pretty much all the way through and I think a lot of that came natural maybe
• 21:48
  from some of the coordination from gymnastics, who knows what,
• 21:51
  but it was also, I had some great IPs.
• 21:54
  I did not have a bad IP all the way through.
• 21:57
  You'd get guys that were yellers and screamers And I had guys that were just
• 22:01
  wanted to teach you how to fly the best you could fly.
• 22:04
  And it really lucked out that way, especially from the very beginning.
• 22:08
  You know, the guy said, you make sure and go home and study your butt off on
• 22:11
  all the emergency procedures and limitations. You come back in and you have
• 22:15
  those set the next day and life is going to be good for you.
• 22:18
  And then you go out to the hover pad where, you know, Fort Rucker,
• 22:21
  Alabama, when it was 100 degrees during the middle of the summer.
• 22:25
  And you'd get in that big greenhouse just saying, you know, stop the preflight
• 22:29
  checks. Just let us get this big fan going and cool this thing down. Right.
• 22:35
  It was an adventure. Okay. I got, I got a question for you, Chris.
• 22:38
  Instructor pilots at Fort Rucker, predominantly warrant officers or were they
• 22:44
  commissioned or, you know, were they regular officers or mixed bag? What would say you?
• 22:51
  It depends on the segment of training. So the, uh, first, first segment on the
• 22:56
  TH-55s was all contracted out to civilians.
• 23:00
  So I looked out, had a, had a great civilian guy. He was actually a retired
• 23:03
  O-6 that, that taught me how to fly.
• 23:07
  And then on the Huey transition, all those were military and most of those were warrant officers.
• 23:13
  I think I had a, I had a CW-3 for my Huey transition and then instruments,
• 23:19
  you flip back again to civilian.
• 23:22
  And then we went into, when you split off, when I went to OH-58s from then on
• 23:27
  through the end of flight school, I was, I was all military and had a W-3.
• 23:33
  And then I think in NVGs, I had a captain who was the, he was the commander
• 23:38
  of the training squadron or the training group that we had.
• 23:41
  So, but that was all military at the end. So it was kind of a split back and
• 23:45
  forth between civilian and military.
• 23:47
  Oh, that's cool. I really had no idea. In about 1984, I was getting really rushed
• 23:53
  hard by an army recruiter because I already was in college and I had a private pilot's license.
• 24:01
  He was like, you need to be a warrant officer. We're going to send you to Fort Rucker tomorrow.
• 24:06
  We could have ended up there about the same time, but I was just always curious about that.
• 24:12
  Yeah, no, that sounds awesome and then so what a couple other questions about flight school couldn't,
• 24:19
  Stick said hey ask about pulling the collective and drooping NR,
• 24:22
  which is I'm assuming your main rotor rotation speed,
• 24:26
  And I don't know what I'm supposed to ask about that except I imagine you pull
• 24:29
  the collective too hard You're changing your blade angle and and screwing your
• 24:33
  NR up and you're gonna come out of the sky, right?
• 24:37
  Yeah, most of that was, if you lost RPM, it was either pulled the collective
• 24:42
  too hard or too much and it would drain energy off of the engine.
• 24:46
  Or it could have been an autorotation where they put the engine to idle and
• 24:51
  you'd end up coming down with just all the air coming up through the fan.
• 24:55
  And if you pulled too much collective, you'd lose that inertia on the rotor
• 25:01
  speed of the rotor blades.
• 25:03
  And it comes down. So there were a couple of different ways there there were
• 25:06
  other ones if especially on the th-55,
• 25:08
  in primary You had a separate throttle that was hooked to the collective once
• 25:13
  you got to the Huey and the oh h58 The rpm was all managed Inside the system
• 25:19
  so you didn't have to worry about it But on the th-55 you,
• 25:22
  also had to manage the the throttle So if you didn't have enough rpm pulled
• 25:27
  in and you started pulling Collective in a droop and you wouldn't have enough
• 25:30
  and and you kind of banged down a little harder than you were supposed to.
• 25:37
  It's like letting your getting behind the park or on your angle of attack.
• 25:40
  It sounds like, you know, a lot of stuff going on there.
• 25:44
  A lot of moving parts, man. I
• 25:46
  don't know how you guys learned to spin all those plates at the same time.
• 25:50
  So you know, we, we, as Chris, we normally ask, oh, so in flight school,
• 25:54
  did you ever have your hand on the ejection seat handle? But so that really didn't count.
• 25:58
  So in flight school, did you ever, uh, did you ever let go of the collector?
• 26:02
  I mean, did you ever have to no shit auto-rotate because something happened or did you?
• 26:09
  I know helicopter guys don't really call them crashes, they just call them unscheduled landings. Yeah.
• 26:14
  Did you have anything like that? I never had an engine failure,
• 26:18
  but I did have an interesting event, which was one of those logbook entries of almost died today.
• 26:25
  Nice. Those are always good. They said before, you'd have an instructor and
• 26:29
  you'd have two student pilots.
• 26:31
  And when we went through the Huey transition course, it was a 24-hour segment, it.
• 26:37
  And you'd go fly two hours and you'd be in the right seat, instructor pilot
• 26:42
  would be in the left seat.
• 26:44
  And whoever the student pilot was, be back in the jump seat and off you'd go.
• 26:47
  So anyway, my stick buddy through the Huey transition course,
• 26:51
  which was 24 hours at a time, was Lieutenant Labidi Tarek from Tunisian Air Force.
• 26:59
  He was part of the Allied Exchange Program, where foreign countries that didn't
• 27:04
  have large enough training programs to train their own pilots would send them over to the U.S.
• 27:09
  And pay us millions of dollars to let them go through training.
• 27:13
  No, no, no, no, no, I don't think you got paid millions of dollars to go through training with them.
• 27:18
  I could be wrong. I did not. Uncle Sam did.
• 27:21
  That's right. Paid Uncle Sam millions of dollars.
• 27:24
  Yes, but made me pay for it with sweat and I thought I was going to die about
• 27:29
  every day when he was at the control.
• 27:31
  It was by far the worst pilot I've ever flown with in my life.
• 27:35
  And part of the syllabus, so it was 24 hours total.
• 27:40
  And by the 18th hour, you were supposed to do it. They called a supervised solo.
• 27:44
  So the instructor pilot would get out, the guy in the jump seat,
• 27:48
  who is the other student, would get up into the co-pilot seat,
• 27:52
  and you'd go and you'd do three traffic patterns around the stage field.
• 27:55
  The stage field had like five mini runways, and they had a control tower where
• 28:01
  they were training students that were going to be controllers in the army.
• 28:04
  So we were all running and trying to kill each other.
• 28:07
  So you've got air traffic controllers, students, and pilot students?
• 28:12
  Yeah, all together in the same airspace. Hold on, here it comes.
• 28:16
  Hey Fig, what could possibly go wrong? No, I was thinking the exact same thing.
• 28:21
  Is this the Allah will save us? Yes, yes. Oh, okay, okay.
• 28:26
  Okay, please continue. Yeah. So I think I did, I did my supervised solo about
• 28:32
  hour 14 or so. I did my three traffic patterns. Everything's good.
• 28:36
  So we got to the, like the 17th, 18th, two hours training block.
• 28:42
  And I'm thinking, man, Labide's got to do this supervised solo today,
• 28:46
  or he's, he's going to get set back a class.
• 28:49
  And, uh, which nobody wanted to do. And right at the end of the,
• 28:53
  the two hours, instructor pilot said, all right, Lieutenant Tarek,
• 28:57
  it's time for your supervised solo.
• 28:58
  Go ahead and park over here on the hover pad and put it at flight idle. So he did that.
• 29:04
  And instructor pilot said, all right, let's remember the rules here.
• 29:07
  You do three traffic patterns, either a normal approach or steep approach.
• 29:11
  Lieutenant Adams, you're only allowed to grab the controls in the case of an emergency.
• 29:15
  And everybody understand the rules. And I guess, So I get out the back left
• 29:22
  of the aircraft and instructor pilot's crawling out the left seat.
• 29:26
  He unplugs his mic cord. And as soon as he does that, he grabs the side of my
• 29:30
  helmet, pulls it out, yells up into my headset, underneath my headset so I can
• 29:35
  hear him saying, don't be afraid to grab the controls if you feel uncomfortable.
• 29:41
  And I'm like, wait, wait, you just told me not to grab that controls.
• 29:44
  I got like a total of 70 hours of flight time now, right?
• 29:47
  So like, oh, my God. And here this guy is, he scares the crap out of me every flight period.
• 29:52
  I'm going to die.
• 29:55
  So off we go. And the first traffic pattern, it wasn't pretty, but it wasn't scary.
• 30:00
  You know, he was a little high, a little, little low, a little fast, a little slow.
• 30:04
  Because he had these big, bulging eyes and he'd just be bouncing like this and
• 30:07
  didn't have a cross scan at all. And he'd just be like this.
• 30:11
  And so we did the first one. Oh, my God. Thank God. One down, two to go. Second one.
• 30:17
  We go downwind and we're turning, we're turning base.
• 30:21
  And I still remember the tail number of this aircraft because it goes,
• 30:24
  oh, it's six, seven November, right? Base normal approach.
• 30:28
  Roger, six, seven November. Cleared approach and lane three.
• 30:32
  Roger, approach and lane three. So he turns. We're on it. We're on lane three.
• 30:37
  And I think he got approach end and departure and screwed up maybe with his
• 30:41
  English or whatever But there were there were two other Hueys that had already
• 30:45
  landed and were hover taxiing down to the other end so they could go again So
• 30:49
  I think he was thinking of maybe flying over the top of them,
• 30:51
  which wouldn't have been a good thing other either,
• 30:54
  so I said,
• 30:56
  The beauty are getting a little steep for a normal approach.
• 31:01
  He goes, what do you mean? And I said you got a land right there.
• 31:05
  Okay, I do steep approach So we start dropping he bottoms out the collective
• 31:11
  we start dropping like a bag of bricks and I might boy we're either banging
• 31:15
  it on the Concrete or we're torching the engine at the bottom neither one of
• 31:19
  which I want on Chris's records,
• 31:22
  So I thought about it a second.
• 31:24
  I said well, he told me I could grab the control So I I grabbed the controls
• 31:28
  tower lane three go around six seven November Roger all all other traffic,
• 31:34
  please hold and meanwhile Lieutenant Tarek's fight me on the controls,
• 31:38
  Only grab controls in case of an emergency and I said We're gonna crash at the
• 31:43
  bottom here. We're dropping like a bag of bricks.
• 31:46
  Let go of the controls now and he said it's okay I know we'll save this and
• 31:52
  I said no Stairs and mine's telling me to take the controls let.
• 32:01
  So I went around, did the traffic pattern, came around, landed,
• 32:05
  went over to the hover pad, swapped out with the IP.
• 32:09
  We went back to the main airfield because it was at the end of the training
• 32:12
  period, shut the aircraft down and IP said, all right, Lieutenant Tarek,
• 32:17
  why don't you take the survival vest back to base ops and Lieutenant Adams and
• 32:22
  I will do the post-flight inspection.
• 32:24
  So as soon as he was out of earshot, he says, what happened?
• 32:27
  And it's like, told him the story and he's, he's laughing his balls off and
• 32:30
  just say, I told you to be okay. And I'm like, man, why'd you do that?
• 32:35
  He goes, cause I know how to handle it.
• 32:37
  No, I wasn't, but I signed up for, I want like 200 hours before I play IP.
• 32:42
  Yeah. You don't put a student pilot with 70 hours total time. I just don't get it.
• 32:48
  I get that you need two crew members in a helicopter, but to put two students
• 32:52
  together and counting on one to save the other.
• 32:56
  Especially one that wasn't really competent.
• 32:59
  Yeah. Well, see, Allah did save him. He put you in that seat that day. He did.
• 33:06
  I think we have a good title for this episode, because I don't know.
• 33:11
  That's pretty damn good.
• 33:12
  Well, that's good. I like Logbook Entry, Almost Died Today.
• 33:17
  And I do, I like that one too. Yeah, I got a four or five of those that are in there.
• 33:24
  And it was funny. I lost my log book for, it must've been five or six years.
• 33:28
  And I ended up finding it in a box that I had set away in the basement somewhere.
• 33:34
  And when I finally pulled it out, I was like, oh, cool. I, I still got it and
• 33:38
  was showing it to my boys.
• 33:40
  And they're like, dad, what does that entry almost died tonight mean?
• 33:44
  So it'd be a good story to tell the kids and they go, Oh man,
• 33:47
  that's crazy, dad. No, yeah, it was pretty stupid.
• 33:51
  Holy cow. So Styx said the Navy did that too, that they had to go with other students.
• 33:56
  So apparently Styx was the weak one cause they put them in with another Marine student.
• 34:00
  So, you know, busting your chops, because we can't.
• 34:05
  If they put a Coast Guard Marine guys together, that's good.
• 34:08
  It's when you start putting Coast Guard Marine guys with the Navy guys,
• 34:11
  you know that the, you know, where the weak spot is.
• 34:14
  Yeah, so they sent Lieutenant Tarek back a class since he didn't do his,
• 34:19
  complete his supervised solo.
• 34:22
  And I still got to see him every once in a while, because we had a townhouse
• 34:26
  outside of post because we didn't have post housing.
• 34:29
  And the Arab Middle Eastern group of the Allied Exchange Program had a party
• 34:34
  place that ended up being right next to us.
• 34:38
  So they weren't supposed to drink or carouse or any of that stuff.
• 34:42
  But that all happened at the place right next to us.
• 34:45
  Well, that's within sight of Mecca or something, I think. But I don't know. Weird.
• 34:48
  I don't know those rules, but it's something like that.
• 34:51
  So I don't know. No kidding. It's funny how that works. I know.
• 34:56
  So, so out of flight, out of flight school.
• 35:00
  Where'd you go? First post. Yeah. I went to Fort Wainwright,
• 35:05
  Alaska up in beautiful Fairbanks, which, which I got to in, I guess it was March of 85.
• 35:14
  And it was stationed in E-Troop First Air Cav, which was a scout troop that had OH-58s,
• 35:20
  Cobras, Hueys, and an infantry blues platoon that would go out and do cavalry
• 35:26
  type maneuvers and protect the interior defense of the state of Alaska from
• 35:31
  the communist horde coming across the Bering Strait in case that happens.
• 35:35
  So that was our mission and learn how to train in the cold weather in case that
• 35:39
  was ever needed. Well, in Alaska it is.
• 35:43
  In Fairbanks, Alaska, it's colder than the well digger's ass in the wintertime.
• 35:48
  I mean, really cold, but it's not dry, but it's cold, right?
• 35:52
  Yeah. I think every way you can really kill yourself in an aircraft,
• 35:57
  especially a helicopter, you can get into about every flight up there.
• 36:01
  So great place to learn it and how to really fly out of flight school.
• 36:05
  Yeah. So did you have to do any cold weather survival training or anything like
• 36:09
  that before you went up there to get based up there?
• 36:11
  No, it was, it was when you got up there. If you were a pilot,
• 36:14
  you had to go to the Air Force Cool School, which was at Eielson Air Force Base,
• 36:19
  which was about 10 miles down the street.
• 36:21
  And it was two and a half days of classroom, learning about how to survive,
• 36:27
  and then they take you out on a bus to the training area where you'd get out
• 36:30
  at noon on Wednesday and you were out in the cold until noon on Friday.
• 36:35
  So that was two and a half years later?
• 36:37
  Yeah, so when I think the warmest it was for the 48 hours I was out there was 25 below.
• 36:46
  So it wasn't the coldest I'd ever been while I was up there,
• 36:49
  but for 48 hours with nothing else protecting you other than a community igloo,
• 36:55
  which you slept in the first night.
• 36:57
  And then the second day you spent all day building your own snow cave slash
• 37:02
  igloo to sleep in by yourself the second night.
• 37:06
  And meanwhile, you're trying to catch some rabbits or something to eat because
• 37:11
  all they gave you was a tiny little air force survival meal,
• 37:14
  which had a couple of cornflake bars and a pouch of coffee and a candy bar.
• 37:20
  So, so my group, we didn't catch any rabbits. We, we put snares out and the
• 37:26
  rabbits, I think were pretty smart up there.
• 37:28
  They get a different crew every week that was learning and there'd be tracks
• 37:32
  going right up through there. And you're like, how'd they get through that,
• 37:35
  man? We had that sucker nailed.
• 37:38
  Did you laugh at you too? Oh, yeah, you're lucky to let rabbits didn't pin a
• 37:44
  note to your snare going.
• 37:47
  Hey, nice try a hole. This was wide open.
• 37:52
  Oh yeah. Yeah. It's like one of the graduation certificates I have on my,
• 37:57
  on my wall in my office is, is from cool school.
• 38:00
  So nice worth, that was a sacrifice worth putting it up on inside the wall there.
• 38:06
  How do mechanical things operate at 25 below zero?
• 38:11
  Tell me what you have to do to get mechanical things to work.
• 38:15
  Yeah, they had special oil that would work down to, I think it was like 70, 80 below.
• 38:22
  The biggest thing that we encountered is all of our field exercises were from like October to April.
• 38:30
  And so it was out in the cold and we'd sleep in a 10-man Arctic tent so,
• 38:37
  this tent was big enough you put five cots in
• 38:40
  it so you'd have have five pilots in each one and then we had two crew chief
• 38:43
  tents and there was a Yukon stove in the middle of it that was you know probably
• 38:49
  two feet long and eight inches square and we'd rig up an old oil can to a tree next to the tent,
• 38:59
  and you'd tap JP4 from the helicopters down into the Yukon stove,
• 39:04
  and it'd keep it nice and toasty 70 degrees.
• 39:07
  The only safety concern on that was... Asphyxiation?
• 39:13
  JP4 didn't burn real cleanly if it wasn't going through a jet engine,
• 39:18
  and it would produce a lot of soot.
• 39:20
  And so to fix that, you'd get an M16 blank and about every eight hours,
• 39:26
  you'd throw an M16 blank inside the Yukon stove.
• 39:30
  You'd squeeze it down underneath the burner plate.
• 39:33
  And when that would cook off, if you were standing outside, you'd see this big cloud of.
• 39:37
  Sick.
• 39:45
  So to go back to the question on the aircraft the crew chiefs would take the
• 39:49
  battery out Every night when we weren't flying and they'd stick that inside
• 39:54
  the tent and keep the battery warm,
• 39:57
  so we go out and we do we do a pre-flight they'd put the battery in and And
• 40:02
  the next check was you'd grab the throttle and if the throttle opened and closed
• 40:06
  you were good to go If it didn't it mean the fuel control was frozen shut.
• 40:11
  So they had these big Herman Nelson Heaters, you know like the big elephant
• 40:15
  trunk it would blow hot air and they'd stick that right over the fuel control
• 40:19
  until you could move the throttle and,
• 40:22
  Once you can move the throttle clear Start it up and off you go They flew great
• 40:27
  when it when it was that cold those molecules of the air were put together You
• 40:31
  never had to worry about over temping or over torquing, but did you have to pre-heat?
• 40:36
  Pre-heat just just a few if the fuel control was frozen if the throttle wouldn't
• 40:41
  open and shut which was part of the,
• 40:44
  Before engine start you had to bring the Herman Nelson heaters over and blow
• 40:48
  it other than that other than that It was good And then you'd let it you'd let
• 40:52
  it start and run up for a couple three minutes and the same thing when it shut
• 40:56
  down You'd let it shut down slowly,
• 40:59
  That's a whole another special set of procedures.
• 41:04
  Yeah, and then hot refueling was always an adventure too, when you had that
• 41:07
  big fan going and it was 40 below out and with the wind chill it was colder
• 41:12
  and if you had to be stuck,
• 41:13
  the guy on the right seat had to do the fire extinguisher and fire guard while
• 41:19
  that air is blowing and do a hot refuel. That was a fun adventure too.
• 41:23
  That's kind of a moxie moron turn in Fairbanks, Alaska in the winter. Yes.
• 41:30
  Refuel. Right. Yes. Yeah.
• 41:33
  Right? I think it was the term of running while the engine was hot, so.
• 41:38
  Right. Oh, yeah. Oh, I get it, but it's just like, oh, okay. Holy shit. Wow.
• 41:48
  I see I'm looking through some of your, I'm looking through some of your show
• 41:51
  notes here Because so, so is this a story from when you were in,
• 41:57
  oh yeah, when you were in, yeah, it must be two army pilots ordered to shut down aircraft by two.
• 42:02
  Oh yeah, that was, that was special police. That was my, that was my first and
• 42:07
  last introduction of landing on an air force base.
• 42:11
  Why are you last? Because you never went there again? Never had to do that again, thank goodness.
• 42:17
  But we, so we were out on a field problem, two-week-long FTX and.
• 42:24
  To be able to refuel out in the woods, they bring in this big 10,000 gallon
• 42:29
  blivet, a big, big tank of JP4.
• 42:33
  And they'd come and they'd put the blivet out and then they'd bring trucks in
• 42:37
  and fill the whole thing up.
• 42:38
  And before you would use it, we had to make sure that there was no,
• 42:43
  no debris or anything else that would come in and from the truck into the blivet or whatever.
• 42:50
  So we had to check it out at a lab and the closest lab was at Eielson from where we were at,
• 42:58
  so we took two bottles that we took a little sample out of the blivet and I
• 43:03
  flew with I was the s1 at a time got the s4 and the two of us To his flu and
• 43:08
  this was like a weekend of this field exercise.
• 43:10
  This was our second second one that we had done and It was a good deal because
• 43:16
  we got to go back in and sit where it was warm for a couple hours while they
• 43:19
  did to testing and get some real food.
• 43:22
  So we went in, parked the aircraft, went in, dropped off the fuel sample and
• 43:27
  got done. They came out and they said, here's your paperwork. Everything's good.
• 43:32
  We said, okay. And we had been on a field flight plan, a tactical flight plan to fly into Eielson.
• 43:41
  So we didn't, we didn't file with the FAA or anybody else. It was just all tactical.
• 43:46
  Called the control tower when we came in, Hey, we're on tactical flight plan.
• 43:49
  Where do you want us to park? They told us, we parked, got the fuel all done,
• 43:55
  went back through base ops, talked to the operations scheduler,
• 43:59
  said, Hey, are we good to go?
• 44:01
  We were still on this tactical flight plan, right? We don't have to do anything special.
• 44:05
  No, you're all good. Just, you know, talk to the tower when you're ready to go. Okay.
• 44:11
  So off we went, we, two of us got, got in the aircraft, started it up.
• 44:17
  And we were just about ready to call the tower to do a takeoff from where we were parked.
• 44:23
  And this SP security police Jeep came flying up with its lights going, stopped in front of us.
• 44:32
  These two guys jumped out and they're going like this, I don't know, what, what?
• 44:38
  They're giving you the cut sign. Shut it down. They didn't find this amusing
• 44:44
  or whatever, which led to M-16s being pointed at us along with shutdown.
• 44:50
  And I turned to my buddy and I, I, I think we screwed something up.
• 44:53
  I don't know, but we got to, we better shut down because we got M-16s pointed at us.
• 44:57
  So you got two captains sitting in having M-16s pointed at us by two enlisted E-2s and on.
• 45:05
  Disclose my mind. Something's not right here.
• 45:08
  Something's not right here. So by the time it got shut down,
• 45:12
  we got out and we're like, hey, what's going on?
• 45:16
  Get down on the ground. So they had these two captains face down on the tarmac
• 45:20
  when it's 20 below zero out.
• 45:22
  And oh, my gosh, what is wrong here?
• 45:26
  So they said, you didn't call the tower. And I said, we weren't ready to take off.
• 45:31
  Well, you got to you got to you got to call the control tower on an Air Force
• 45:35
  base before you're allowed to start your engine. And I go, well,
• 45:39
  why didn't, why didn't they tell us that when we were in base ops?
• 45:43
  I said, you know, our army base, you, you call ground when you're ready to taxi
• 45:48
  and you come down when you're ready to take off.
• 45:52
  So we had to, they escorted us back into base ops. We got our butts chewed by a Lieutenant Colonel.
• 45:59
  All right, sir. Sorry. No, it's different way of doing business.
• 46:03
  We won't let it happen again. Can we go now?
• 46:08
  So we went out, called the tower before we cranked the aircraft and they gave
• 46:14
  us permission and off we went on our merry way,
• 46:16
  but still remembered two captains being faced down with an M16 and our necks by two E2s.
• 46:23
  And I was like, this is interesting.
• 46:26
  Yeah. Interesting. That's probably laughing their butts off,
• 46:30
  but we were not No, no, we're not Little bit funny.
• 46:34
  Yeah, that's not that's not funny at all Nobody likes that.
• 46:38
  Yeah, I had a similar experience crossing a red line in Kunsan,
• 46:42
  South Korea on my Walking from a Harrier into base ops and I'll tell it another time.
• 46:49
  But yes, I feel your pain Type of treatment.
• 46:58
  Wearing full regalia, G-suit, torso harness, carrying my helmet.
• 47:03
  All I need to do is make sure the flight plan's still in.
• 47:06
  I crossed a red line and you would have thought I pulled a pin on a grenade
• 47:10
  and threw it in the wing commander's office. Right.
• 47:14
  Cavalry game. I, I had a similar one.
• 47:18
  I actually had, it was a Kadena and they pulled the vehicle,
• 47:21
  the MP vehicle in front of my airplane while I was taxiing,
• 47:25
  you know, in retrospect, I didn't see him, you know,
• 47:34
  how's, how's that working out for you smart guys, you just damaged a $35 million
• 47:37
  jet instead of having tower call and say, stop and hold your position, please,
• 47:42
  that would have worked just as effectively.
• 47:47
  So, wow. Inter-service rivalry. I think we called it. Yeah, exactly.
• 47:52
  So I always referred to that red line on air force bases as the less necessary. line. And...
• 47:59
  For those who aren't old enough, there was a show back in the seventies called
• 48:03
  WKRP in Cincinnati and they had a newsman in there whose name was Les Nesman.
• 48:09
  It was a little AM station in Cincinnati, Ohio and it was a sitcom and the station
• 48:15
  didn't have enough money to give everybody offices.
• 48:19
  And so Les Nesman, the newsman was ticked off about it.
• 48:22
  So he put yellow tape on the floor around his desk.
• 48:26
  And if you walked up to his desk to talk to him, he wouldn't talk to you unless
• 48:30
  you stood at the place where he had put a dashed line,
• 48:33
  which was the door and not without knocking, he wouldn't talk to you.
• 48:40
  So that's why I was called the red line at the air force base.
• 48:42
  So less Nesman line, I couldn't have said that any better. Perfect. Yeah.
• 48:50
  All right, so you led this whole thing with, I believe, this.
• 48:59
  You were NVGs, snow blowing, right?
• 49:04
  Yeah, again, what could go wrong? Yeah, so what could possibly go wrong?
• 49:08
  What could possibly go wrong? Yeah, so- Could you cross the T on that story?
• 49:15
  So, several of the very scary things that you could do in a helicopter in Alaska,
• 49:21
  one was landing on top of snow,
• 49:25
  especially if it was just come down because that big fan on top of your aircraft
• 49:32
  would blow it all over the place.
• 49:34
  And as soon as it started blowing, if you hadn't landed and put it down yet,
• 49:38
  you lost all reference with the ground.
• 49:40
  And if you're still in the era to hover, back in those days without any autopilots
• 49:46
  to be able to hover, it was never a good thing.
• 49:50
  Going out flying with night-vision goggles. I gave a little background on the first wave of,
• 49:58
  NVGs back in the 80s that you know 2050 visual acuity you thought you were at
• 50:05
  a five-foot hover and you could be at 15 feet because the depth perception was screwed up and.
• 50:12
  Then coming in and doing a an approach into a confined area.
• 50:16
  So you got this, this big cutout field inside of, instead of a forest or a bunch
• 50:22
  of 200-foot trees all the way around it.
• 50:24
  So I'm on my PIC checkride, and I piece, pilot in command.
• 50:30
  So IP said, All right, let's go out and, let's go out and land.
• 50:33
  I can't remember the name of the confined area that we go into.
• 50:36
  And I was like, all right.
• 50:39
  And another, another quick backstory to put it all together is we had high skid
• 50:44
  gear on these OH 58s and on the bottom of the skids were skis.
• 50:50
  So it made it a little bit more stable. If you were landing on top of snow,
• 50:54
  especially if it was packed, it was just a bigger square inch.
• 50:59
  So it's spread out a little more. Yeah.
• 51:02
  It spread the way out. So you wouldn't punch, so you wouldn't punch through
• 51:05
  with the, with the, uh, skids and the skids were, were much higher to give a
• 51:10
  little bit more space for safety as well. Okay.
• 51:14
  So, so the proper, proper deal on doing blowing snow approach,
• 51:19
  whether it was with NVGs or not was you'd come in and you'd keep a very small
• 51:24
  bush off, like 45 degrees off to the right.
• 51:28
  And you'd bring it in and you basically do what they call the slam dunk approach.
• 51:33
  So you come in, almost to where you were stopped, you kept the bush off to your
• 51:39
  right, so you knew that where the ground was.
• 51:42
  And then before this big wave of snow would come off of the rotor blades,
• 51:46
  the slower you got it gradually would come around to the front until it engulfed the whole aircraft.
• 51:51
  And you'd slam it down on the, slam it down on the ground, hopefully with the,
• 51:55
  the bush still in, in view and
• 51:57
  hopefully without moving after you did slam dunk it down onto the ground.
• 52:02
  So you add into the frailty of night vision goggles as well and having crappy
• 52:06
  depth perception and everything else.
• 52:08
  So in I came, everything was perfect. I had the bush off to the right, everything was good.
• 52:15
  I slam dunked it and I thought everything was good and we stopped a little bit
• 52:20
  more quickly than we normally would and the next thing I know my butt's.
• 52:26
  Going like there's a roll rate happening and there's emergency
• 52:30
  procedure in a helicopter called dynamic rollover Which
• 52:34
  means if you get if you get one skid on the ground and the other one comes up
• 52:39
  If you get thrust equal to weight and a consistent rolling motion You're not
• 52:44
  going to be able to stop it and you're going to go over and land on your side
• 52:48
  So that's what I'm thinking is happening to me right now.
• 52:50
  I'm thinking okay the skid got caught in some heavy snow or or whatever and,
• 52:56
  My right skid didn't and now I I'm getting ready for a crash.
• 53:02
  So everything I learned in flight school about dynamic rollover went through
• 53:06
  my brain in about a hundredth of a second,
• 53:09
  including thrust equals weight and I Threw the cyclic over to the right and
• 53:14
  I felt it stop a little bit and I go I got more thrust than weight And I yanked full collective,
• 53:21
  I'm going, I'm doing an instrument takeoff because now I can't see anything.
• 53:25
  And I, and I looked at the VSI and I got, I'm climbing and just,
• 53:31
  just went straight to the instruments and everything on the instruments looks
• 53:35
  good. We're getting some air speed.
• 53:36
  We're going up. And then I'm thinking, yeah, but do you have trees around you?
• 53:40
  Yeah, that's what my brain is. There's, I wonder how close those 200 feet foot
• 53:45
  trees are in front of us. giant redwoods, the giant sequoias are here somewhere.
• 53:52
  Holy crap. And finally all this, all the snow went away and it cleared out.
• 53:57
  And I'm about 50 feet over the tops of the trees going about 50 knots of forward airspeed.
• 54:02
  And I'm like, Oh man, we, we lived.
• 54:05
  And IP looked over at me and he goes, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen
• 54:09
  in aviation. Did you think he over-torqued it?
• 54:12
  I don't know. I wasn't looking at the torque meter. I was just trying to keep us alive.
• 54:16
  Keep my butt alive, meter. He said, what do you think happened?
• 54:21
  I said, I think I caught a skid in some chunky ice or something.
• 54:25
  And he said, well, well, let's go back and land and check it out.
• 54:31
  And I go, controls are yours. I am never flying again until I have whiskey at least once.
• 54:41
  So he actually he wanted to see what happened so badly as a teaching point for
• 54:44
  the next guy that was that was going to go through to keep it from happening. That he went land.
• 54:50
  And sure enough, there was this big chunk that had gone into the into this crusty
• 54:55
  snowbank from the front of the ski on the skids.
• 54:58
  And that's what kind of stopped us. But that was you think that was probably
• 55:03
  the closest closest of ever crashing and balling up an aircraft and potentially
• 55:08
  dying You know the the thing with all of that was I saved myself,
• 55:13
  but this one was kind of like, you know that,
• 55:15
  That was pretty stupid.
• 55:17
  It's like every stupid thing you can do in an aircraft weather-wise.
• 55:23
  Everything else. I was all put into one and like why are we doing this?
• 55:28
  I'm never flying again, unless I have whiskey once. Until I have whiskey at
• 55:34
  least once. At least once.
• 55:37
  So he took it back and landed it. So is that what happened? Did it catch a skid?
• 55:41
  It did catch the front of the ski into a big bucket of crusty ice.
• 55:48
  So there was like this big cutout notch up into the snow. So it was interesting
• 55:55
  because he said, Oh, I want to figure out if this, what we can do as a teaching point.
• 56:00
  And a couple of weeks later, they had a guy that was, don't land in this, don't land in the snow.
• 56:05
  And he took a guy out that was a W four and he was the OH 58 test pilot in the maintenance platoon.
• 56:13
  And he didn't get NVG qualified when he went through flight school because he'd
• 56:17
  been out for 20 years. And so they were doing onsite NVG qualification and he
• 56:23
  was going out through the end of that for his PIC check, right?
• 56:26
  They took him into the same confined area, the exact same thing happened,
• 56:30
  and he got out of it the exact same way.
• 56:33
  So they came back in the next day, and they're like, good job, Captain.
• 56:39
  58 test pilot did the exact same thing and got out of it the exact same way.
• 56:44
  So I was like, yeah, good for him.
• 56:46
  And yeah, I figured I could sit here and go, man, that sounds like a good job,
• 56:52
  but sticks being another rotor head goes, yeah, that was good.
• 56:55
  Recognizing that that's, that's huge. Cause your other option is if you hadn't
• 57:00
  gone around you to basically dug your main rotor in, right. And been done.
• 57:04
  Yeah. We would've, we would've kept rolling to the left and you're rolling.
• 57:07
  Yeah. would have landed on the side. And as soon as you got,
• 57:09
  as soon as those rotor blades got, got into the ground, they would have stopped
• 57:13
  pretty quickly and blown off and we would have been stuck out there where it
• 57:16
  was cold, hoping somebody would come out and find us.
• 57:19
  And it landed in the same crappy conditions you were in with even more confined
• 57:25
  because now there's a helo balling up part of that space.
• 57:28
  And holy smokes. And then, so rolling to the left, I forget,
• 57:33
  Styx was telling me that one of them is bad.
• 57:36
  Depending on the direction of your main rotor, if you roll right,
• 57:40
  you know, it pushes the rotor head aft.
• 57:41
  If you roll left, it pushes the rotor head forward and you get to meet it.
• 57:45
  Or do I have it backwards?
• 57:48
  It has to do more with the torque from the direction it's going.
• 57:53
  Okay. And you got more torque if you're rolling to the left,
• 57:57
  you're probably going to roll over a little bit more quickly,
• 58:00
  but I had more thrust, so it may have stopped the thrust Yeah, so what I'm asking,
• 58:04
  I guess, is so if you're sitting in the cockpit and you look up at your rotors,
• 58:08
  is it going clockwise or counterclockwise?
• 58:11
  It's going counterclockwise.
• 58:14
  Okay. And so if you go to the left, it's going to pull the main it's going to
• 58:18
  try and push the main rotor head aft When that left wing digs in repeat.
• 58:32
  It's more the more the tail rotor that counteracts the way that it's going okay, okay,
• 58:41
  Here's the thing Don't fly helicopters and you don't have to worry about this crap people. Yeah.
• 58:49
  Some of that aerodynamic knowledge is 40 years old, so it's a little crusty
• 58:53
  and they're going, oh yeah, what was that?
• 58:55
  Oh, they terrify me. That bastard Stig sent me a video of all these dynamic,
• 59:00
  what'd you call it? Dynamic? Rollover?
• 59:03
  Yeah. Yes. He sent me a video of that. I think he sent it to both of us.
• 59:06
  Oh yeah, he did. And it was terrifying to watch.
• 59:09
  It scared the living shit out of me. What I've learned about here's the main
• 59:15
  point I've learned over my years about helicopter aerodynamics.
• 59:18
  The more I learn, the less I know, the more terrifying it is.
• 59:23
  Those things will kill you six ways to Sunday before, you know,
• 59:30
  I mean, if you can really run out of thrust, you can run out of thrust with
• 59:35
  the tail rotor, you run out of left pedal and all of a sudden you're spinning to the right.
• 59:41
  And, uh, they say the emergency procedures to, to roll the throttle off and
• 59:45
  do a hovering auto rotation, cause that'll stop the torque or to try and fly out of it.
• 59:51
  And the only time I ever got into it was over that previously mentioned 10,000 gallon blip at a JP4.
• 59:57
  And, uh, our, our POL guys hadn't placed the landing ports for refueling in
• 1:00:02
  the right direction. And there's a bad deal. If, if the wind's coming over a
• 1:00:07
  certain direction over the main rotor system, It'll help stall the tail rotor a little more quickly.
• 1:00:12
  And I think I spun around about three times and fortunately it weather veined
• 1:00:16
  again cause I'm thinking I can't do the hovering auto rotation over 10,000 gallon blip at a JP4,
• 1:00:23
  cause that probably sets the earth on fire, me included with a big boom.
• 1:00:28
  It's like crossing the streams, right?
• 1:00:30
  I lucked out and got weather veined again with another gust and remember just
• 1:00:35
  sitting there at a 50 foot hover with a Cobra in line behind me getting ready to refuel.
• 1:00:41
  And they're like, Captain, that was really cool. We didn't have our video cameras
• 1:00:44
  out. Can you do that again? We want to see that.
• 1:00:48
  I'm like, no, I'm going back over and parking in my Bivouac site and let one
• 1:00:52
  of my warrant officers that's like a real highly trained pilot to come over and fill it up with gas.
• 1:00:57
  Another potential title, right? That probably sets the earth on fire. Yes, yeah.
• 1:01:03
  So Chris, repeat teased me earlier. And he said, there's a repeat theme here. Sorry, not repeat.
• 1:01:10
  There's a reoccurring theme here about wildlife.
• 1:01:14
  Yes. So can, can you expand on that? Yeah.
• 1:01:18
  Air Cavalry always helps out.
• 1:01:21
  I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what we're getting at the point where we're
• 1:01:25
  a geez, look at this, we're an hour in.
• 1:01:28
  Can you believe it? Holy, it looks like 10 minutes ago we started.
• 1:01:31
  So what I'd like to do is a real quick thanks to Robbins Birdbrain Designs and
• 1:01:37
  we'll be back in about a minute and we'll get into the wildlife stories.
• 1:01:45
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• 1:02:51
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  They got some new laser printers and they are able to do those much faster.
• 1:03:04
  Yeah. So get your squadron logo or, or whatever other organization,
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  organization that you have, get them on there and, uh, and you'll be good to go.
• 1:03:13
  So, all right. So crazy animals, wildlife animals. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:03:20
  So, I think my favorite one, it involved a search party and the previous night,
• 1:03:28
  there was a Cobra that went out on a night training mission and it was all unaided, no NVGs,
• 1:03:35
  and they had to navigate and find a couple of areas on their 1 over 50,000 map,
• 1:03:42
  and so it was all time distance heading.
• 1:03:44
  We're going to fly a certain time, a certain distance, certain knots,
• 1:03:50
  and hopefully we find the place.
• 1:03:53
  And I think they had set a 200 foot altitude.
• 1:03:58
  To do all this. And at some point about 45 minutes into their flight,
• 1:04:04
  they happened to run into the top of a tree.
• 1:04:08
  And they kept flying, but it knocked off the TSU,
• 1:04:14
  which is a telescopic site unit, which is what's used by the designated gunner
• 1:04:21
  to track the It's a thermal site to track the tow missiles weapon system.
• 1:04:26
  And it's pretty expensive. I think it was a hundred thousand dollar piece of
• 1:04:30
  equipment way back when.
• 1:04:32
  And I'm sorry to interrupt. What kind of airplane was this? This was a Cobra.
• 1:04:35
  Cobra. It was, it was our Cobra platoon had been out doing some training. Okay.
• 1:04:40
  And I found out about it. I came in the next morning and troop commander is
• 1:04:45
  like, Chris, I need you to take out maybe three or aircraft.
• 1:04:49
  Go find out what the time-distance heading quotients were for their training
• 1:04:53
  mission last night See if there's any way you can have go out find a needle
• 1:04:57
  in a haystack maybe you can find this broken tree because,
• 1:05:01
  Hopefully it was just a strange tree that was 50 feet taller than all the other ones.
• 1:05:07
  Snap the top off and because that's a story We find that then maybe we can find
• 1:05:13
  the the TSU And we won't have to claim it as a Class C mishap.
• 1:05:19
  So, so off we go.
• 1:05:22
  And I was out flying with one of my warrant officers and sure enough,
• 1:05:26
  about 45 minutes in, we saw the top of a tree that was like 90 degrees bent over, snapped over.
• 1:05:33
  And we're like, holy crap, maybe we found it.
• 1:05:38
  And you know it's it's the right time it's the right location according to where
• 1:05:45
  they think that they hit it and we started looking around and there was a big confined area cut out,
• 1:05:53
  probably within 50 meters or so where we thought this TSU might have landed
• 1:05:58
  if it got knocked off and kept going straight. Let's be heroes!
• 1:06:03
  Let's land in the confined area. Let's go walk around a little bit.
• 1:06:08
  See if we can find the TSU.
• 1:06:11
  So we land in the confined area, fairly close to the one side of the trees that
• 1:06:16
  this thing's at, that we think.
• 1:06:18
  Put everything down to flight idle. We friction all the controls down.
• 1:06:23
  Because it, you know, it was like 20 below out and we didn't want to stay out
• 1:06:26
  a whole long time and we didn't want to shut the aircraft down and then have
• 1:06:29
  it not start back up because it was frozen or whatever.
• 1:06:32
  So we go, I think we got about, I think we got about 10 minutes we can go walk
• 1:06:37
  around before we got to worry about running out of fuel to get back to the main camp.
• 1:06:43
  And so off we go and we start wandering around. We find- Wait,
• 1:06:47
  wait, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I got to interrupt.
• 1:06:49
  Did you shut down completely? No, no, we put it we put it at flight idle.
• 1:06:55
  Okay, so so the aircraft still running at idle we got the we got the collective
• 1:06:59
  and the cyclic friction to where they won't move and both of us get out and,
• 1:07:06
  We go in and we find the tree,
• 1:07:14
  There's a helicopter with a rotor spinning and nobody's in it.
• 1:07:18
  Nobody's in it. Oh, you're not and And because we don't we we don't want it
• 1:07:24
  to be cold when we get back.
• 1:07:33
  So so we go in and we find the tree,
• 1:07:40
  Now we split apart about 30 feet from each other and we're walking down and,
• 1:07:45
  we kept going looking around and we're like Shit, we can't find it,
• 1:07:50
  but we know where it's at now.
• 1:07:52
  We'll send the Blues Platoon of infantry guys out here and let them freeze their
• 1:07:56
  butts off and walk around and see if they can find it.
• 1:08:00
  So we walk back out and as soon as we get to the edge of the tree line,
• 1:08:06
  we look out and there's this big bull moose, 60-inch rack between us and our aircraft.
• 1:08:15
  All right. That was freaking stupid. What are we going to do?
• 1:08:21
  How's that working out for you smart guys? I know. So we're like,
• 1:08:24
  well, we don't, we don't have a whole time left before running out of gas, you know?
• 1:08:28
  And so I said, well, let's just go around to the other side of the confined
• 1:08:33
  area around the tree line.
• 1:08:35
  Mr. Moose is, as long as he doesn't see us, he's not going to hear us cause,
• 1:08:39
  cause of the sound of the aircraft.
• 1:08:41
  So we walked all the way around and then walked to the aircraft.
• 1:08:47
  Was in the I was in the right seat and I climbed over all the controls first
• 1:08:52
  the other guy got in We buckled in and I said What do you think?
• 1:08:57
  Let's should should we just like kind of roll the throttle up normal like we
• 1:09:00
  normally do or do we risk over torquing it by?
• 1:09:03
  Cranking it up and getting the hell out of here, and he said well let's let's
• 1:09:08
  just roll it up nice and easy and,
• 1:09:11
  He goes out He goes I'll fly you're on the right side You keep you keep looking
• 1:09:16
  at the at the bull and if he starts moving toward us Just yell out yell out to me to crank it.
• 1:09:22
  I'm like, all right So we're gradually rolling it up rolling it up.
• 1:09:26
  And I think we're about halfway up to full full throttle and this thing looks
• 1:09:33
  and I don't know if he looked at me, you know, he's.
• 1:09:36
  Like I'm gonna get these guys and it starts hauling ass toward us,
• 1:09:41
  Out of here now He rolled the rest of it and cranked everything he had and we
• 1:09:47
  had to have over torqued it and I think we probably missed it by a hundred feet.
• 1:09:53
  It seemed a lot closer than that. Was his head down charging that you guys?
• 1:09:57
  Yeah, he did not want us to be found. Holy shit!
• 1:10:02
  Flying squirrel almost hits moose.
• 1:10:04
  Yes! That was Bullwinkle. That was Bullwinkle by the way.
• 1:10:07
  That was from Sticks. He said that was definitely Bullwinkle and he was pissed.
• 1:10:12
  Bullwinkle. He was angry a flying squirrel.
• 1:10:18
  Yeah, but we all made it back and lived to tell about it.
• 1:10:24
  Hey rookie, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat. That's not a rabbit. Oh, wrong hat.
• 1:10:30
  Yeah, see what would MacGyver do now, you know.
• 1:10:36
  See I can see the mishap report now. Well, you see, we got out of the helicopter
• 1:10:40
  and there was this moose.
• 1:10:43
  But he wasn't there when we got out.
• 1:10:48
  She came out of nowhere. I don't know. Ruby, why don't we have stories like
• 1:10:53
  this? Why don't we have moose?
• 1:10:54
  Well, we had Luke. Luke killed a deer on the runway. OK, you're right.
• 1:10:59
  You know, and if you go look at I think that was show three or four.
• 1:11:03
  He actually still has the photo or he
• 1:11:06
  still has the plaque with the photo of the
• 1:11:09
  airplane leaning over on its side and
• 1:11:12
  the rack mounted to that plaque which I didn't realize he had it that was awesome
• 1:11:17
  so yeah one of our compadres hit a deer on the runway and it took the outrigger
• 1:11:20
  off his harrier but that that deer did not survive looks like looks like Bullwinkle
• 1:11:26
  survived this one and we've had a number of wildlife deaths on this podcast so,
• 1:11:32
  So, good on you for not killing that one.
• 1:11:34
  Nobody died fortunately, because it most likely would have been us.
• 1:11:39
  Yeah, Moose almost died that night. There's your log pick entry.
• 1:11:42
  But you had to consider...
• 1:11:48
  Large game into your exercises because of where you were, right? Absolutely.
• 1:11:57
  Since I'm looking at it. You had some bear issues?
• 1:12:01
  Large game animals were an item of concern for all your MTXs.
• 1:12:07
  Yeah. You talk about the large game and the fish and game group up in Alaska
• 1:12:14
  are great at taking care of the wildlife. They're like you can't abuse them.
• 1:12:19
  You know, you bet you better make sure and have all your permits if you're hunting
• 1:12:22
  you go out and Screw around with our wildlife and then you're going to jail,
• 1:12:27
  and We used to help we used to help them tagging grizzlies What?
• 1:12:34
  So that the Hueys which I wasn't flying but they'd go out and they take a fish
• 1:12:39
  and game guy and And he'd stand on the skid with a special harness and he'd
• 1:12:44
  have his tranquilizer dart gun and off they'd go looking for grizzlies that
• 1:12:50
  they thought that they had a close idea where there was going to be.
• 1:12:52
  And we see, you know, every time you flew, you'd see a hundred moose.
• 1:12:56
  You very rarely saw grizzlies, you know, one, one every once in a while.
• 1:12:59
  They're pretty shy creatures and they can be my understanding, but.
• 1:13:04
  Yeah, but, but they can be mean and come after you, especially if they got one
• 1:13:08
  of their little critters with them.
• 1:13:09
  And they can get annoyed, but so they, we heard about it when,
• 1:13:14
  when the crew came back in, they were still shaking their heads and they,
• 1:13:17
  and they were shaking because they went out and they got low and slow because
• 1:13:22
  they'd get down at like 20 knots and they'd get real low to where the tranquilizer
• 1:13:26
  dart would go in as far as needed and.
• 1:13:29
  And knock the thing out so they could land.
• 1:13:31
  And then the fish and game guide go out, tag it and get back in the aircraft and come back.
• 1:13:38
  So, on this one particular one, they got low and slow.
• 1:13:42
  The guy shot it with the dart and it didn't knock the thing down and he got
• 1:13:47
  pretty pissed off and Got up on his back paws High of any these things were these things were huge.
• 1:13:55
  They'd be up 15 between the bottom paws and their top paws And when that when
• 1:14:00
  the aircraft flew by it hit the skids,
• 1:14:04
  Like no boom and made the aircraft go this and now you got a fishing game guy
• 1:14:10
  laying out almost horizontal,
• 1:14:12
  looking at this bear face to face, you're going, try to shoot me.
• 1:14:17
  So they went around and I guess they, they, they shot it one more time,
• 1:14:20
  a little bit more carefully and wait,
• 1:14:22
  wait until it was down for 10 minutes before they landed and then got it and,
• 1:14:27
  and, uh, that, that one had some notes attached to it, so file on the,
• 1:14:32
  on the tag number that almost knocked the Huey out of the sky.
• 1:14:37
  Yeah. Because you know, like King Kong, you know, it's just swatting it. Airplanes. Yeah.
• 1:14:43
  Yeah. It's just like, no, we're not going to do that today. No, no, no, no. Okay. Yeah.
• 1:14:51
  Actually, we had another one. We had another one if you've got time that you
• 1:14:54
  were out. Yeah, let her rip, man. We... Yeah.
• 1:14:57
  We were starting a two-week field exercise, and we had it at a place called Fort Greeley.
• 1:15:03
  And so in Alaska, there's Elmendorf Air Force Base and Fort Richardson that are in Anchorage.
• 1:15:09
  You got Eielson and Fort Wainwright that are up in Fairbanks.
• 1:15:13
  And then about 100 miles east-southeast from Wainwright is Fort Greeley.
• 1:15:18
  Which is where all the cold weather training courses are and where most of the
• 1:15:23
  training areas are, especially during the cold weather season.
• 1:15:28
  So we all had our area picked out and we said, all right, let's get some good training done.
• 1:15:33
  Let's do an area recon to go look for the bad guys, make sure our area is all clear.
• 1:15:39
  And then we can set down our aircraft and hook up our tents with our Hukon stoves
• 1:15:45
  and stay warm. And we, we, we got out there.
• 1:15:50
  I was in the lead OH58 and I had a, I had a Cobra with me and we got right to
• 1:15:56
  where my tent was supposed to be.
• 1:15:59
  And there's this big Buffalo that's standing motionless. And there are two bison herds up in Alaska.
• 1:16:06
  There's one that's, I think it was like 20, 30 miles South of Fort Greeley.
• 1:16:10
  And then there's another one about a hundred miles North. And somehow this one
• 1:16:14
  had either gotten lost or he decided he was gonna he was gonna go out for a
• 1:16:18
  while and be on his own and.
• 1:16:21
  This thing this thing stand in there like oh my gosh, you know,
• 1:16:24
  we can't we can't land in set up camp with this big frickin animal and,
• 1:16:31
  so I called fishing game on we had a private radio frequency with them and Told
• 1:16:36
  him what was going on and asked for permission to hover over the top of this,
• 1:16:40
  Buffalo and just to make some racket and see if we can get him to move and they're
• 1:16:44
  like yeah go ahead you know don't piss it off too much but you know you want
• 1:16:48
  to get it to move that's okay with us so I hovered over the top of it,
• 1:16:53
  Didn't move didn't blink didn't do anything and I'm like I wonder if this thing
• 1:16:57
  died and rigor mortis is set in where it's just not Moving but so I called the
• 1:17:02
  Cobra and I oh, yeah, you're three times heavier and three times louder you
• 1:17:05
  hover over the top of it Nothing.
• 1:17:08
  I said do like a gun run down on it where you pull up at the bottom and it makes
• 1:17:12
  all kinds of racket Didn't do anything.
• 1:17:15
  All right All right, this thing's dead. It's big the sink and it's not gonna
• 1:17:20
  but it's not it's not gonna bother us So it actually, it actually did.
• 1:17:25
  We just said, well, we got to do this FTX.
• 1:17:29
  Where else are we going to go? We'll move over a little bit. And we did.
• 1:17:33
  And three days later, we woke up in the morning and it was gone.
• 1:17:38
  No idea where it went, but it sat in that same place, stood in the same place without moving.
• 1:17:44
  It didn't lay down, didn't do nothing other than stand there. And then he left.
• 1:17:50
  Wow. So way less scary, way less scary than a bull moose stick in its nose into
• 1:17:55
  the GP media. Well, there's a, or a bear trying to swatch you out of the sky,
• 1:17:59
  but you know, so, hey, Sticks has a real quick question.
• 1:18:03
  What was the mission of the OH-58 and did you have any defensive weapons or ordinance or?
• 1:18:10
  I, I had a 38 special revolver. Strapped to your hip. Okay. Strapped to my hip.
• 1:18:17
  That was it on the OH-58s.
• 1:18:18
  The, the Cobras had all, all the weapons.
• 1:18:22
  So we'd go out and, and they'd, they'd fly with us.
• 1:18:26
  We'd usually have a Cobra in either one or two Oys 58s, but the main mission
• 1:18:29
  was air cavalry type tactics.
• 1:18:31
  So either area recons or zone reconnaissance or a point reconnaissance where
• 1:18:36
  you're going out to a screen line where you're expecting the enemy to come up and,
• 1:18:41
  and you're sitting there on, on a defensive line looking for the bad guys coming,
• 1:18:45
  coming North or whatever they were direction they were coming from.
• 1:18:49
  And you it's, we had, we had missions where we'd go out and we'd be on one of
• 1:18:53
  these lines for eight hours, just hovering, you know, and you're,
• 1:18:57
  you're passing it back and forth with the other pilot. I'm I'm tired of hovering, man.
• 1:19:01
  Did you, did you have like a, like a, some kind of sensor on top?
• 1:19:06
  That was the OH 58D. Okay.
• 1:19:09
  I flew, we had 10 OH 58s, nine of them were A models and I had a Charlie model.
• 1:19:15
  The only difference on the Charley model is you had 200 more pounds of max gross
• 1:19:19
  weight and it had a VOR and a glide slope.
• 1:19:23
  All the A models only had an NDB for navigational purposes and listening to
• 1:19:27
  the radio tunes while you were out flying around.
• 1:19:31
  But the D model came in after I had, right when I was getting out, I think about 87.
• 1:19:38
  That came in. I know I'm getting old when when OH-58 or aircraft type models
• 1:19:44
  that I hadn't flown yet are now totally out of the service, but that's weird, right?
• 1:19:49
  Yeah, that one that one had all the had all the different FLIR and other types
• 1:19:54
  of things where you could pull you could hover up just enough out of the trees
• 1:19:59
  to where that big bulb would look out and then you'd look at it on a scope and
• 1:20:04
  you could pass it off to a Cobra or an Apache at that point to do its business,
• 1:20:09
  but we had to pull up and use our own eyes for gazing around for the bad guys.
• 1:20:14
  Okay. Okay. And FLIR being forward-looking infrared.
• 1:20:17
  Infrared radar. It was night vision. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Hey, Ken,
• 1:20:20
  can we just cover a couple other acronyms that you threw out that I don't think
• 1:20:26
  we- Hopefully if I threw them out, I knew. T-F-U. T-F-U.
• 1:20:32
  T-F-U. Yeah, Tango Sierra. That was the telescopic sight unit that was on the
• 1:20:38
  front of the Cobra, which- It was sort of laser-guided missiles.
• 1:20:42
  Yeah, and the Cobra is the, it had two pilots, but the guy in the front seat
• 1:20:46
  was the designated gunner and they would use the TSU to be able to look out.
• 1:20:52
  And when they fired a tow missile, which was an anti-tank round for the most
• 1:20:58
  part, but it was all guided with a wire cable all the way till it- It's like a telephone.
• 1:21:06
  Yeah. They'd look into this deal and they'd push buttons to keep it going and
• 1:21:10
  keep it centered on whatever it was. Isn't that crazy?
• 1:21:14
  If you were off to the side and they fired one, you could see the cable and
• 1:21:19
  then when it ended up hitting whatever, it'd release and you'd see it come down.
• 1:21:25
  We also did missions where we'd work with the Air Force, especially the A-10s,
• 1:21:31
  and do joined air attack training missions where we'd be out with Cobras,
• 1:21:35
  and then we'd get artillery that would come in. And A-10s.
• 1:21:39
  One time I got to bring in an F-15 and drop some F-15 ammo into the impact area, which was very cool.
• 1:21:46
  It had just gotten on a mission from chasing a Bear bomber back into Russian airspace.
• 1:21:51
  And he called in with his call sign. And I go, Eagle 1-5, who the heck's,
• 1:21:56
  I've never even heard Eagle, and I'm looking on my knee board,
• 1:21:58
  and I go, F-15, and I go, yeah, what do you want?
• 1:22:01
  We want to play with you. We got some stuff to drop. We just got authorized.
• 1:22:05
  Like, yeah, come on in. Nice.
• 1:22:08
  So that was kind of, those were really fun when you're dropping,
• 1:22:10
  you know, 810s had come in and
• 1:22:11
  tear everything up and artillery come in either behind it or ahead of it.
• 1:22:16
  So that, that was the funnest missions we'd do because you were actually blowing up stuff.
• 1:22:22
  Were you, were you calling in, could you call in artillery?
• 1:22:25
  Yep. You guys, air mission commander. And so we did it all or sometimes,
• 1:22:30
  sometimes we'd get an aerial observer that we would train from one of the artillery units.
• 1:22:36
  And there was, there was one artillery battery at Fort Wainwright and their
• 1:22:40
  XO was one of my West Point classmates and really good buddy.
• 1:22:43
  And so I, I'd let his guys come over whenever we could and give his guys training.
• 1:22:50
  And so that was pretty fun.
• 1:22:52
  Yeah. Do a dog and pony show for the generals a couple of times that was kind of fun.
• 1:22:57
  I got one last thing. You said class C mishap.
• 1:23:02
  So you were trying to keep that piece of equipment, the TSU that came off that Cobra was $100,000.
• 1:23:11
  And so we've talked about this before, but the difference between a class A,
• 1:23:15
  B, C mishap is dollar amount or injury or life, like a Class A would be life.
• 1:23:23
  I think they went down to class C, I think, but I think class C was where a
• 1:23:28
  commander could start having it affect his career.
• 1:23:31
  That's all we had in our community was A, B, and C, and then hazard report after that.
• 1:23:35
  So if a lieutenant got hurt, that was a hazard report.
• 1:23:44
  It was, it was not even a class C, so that commander wouldn't have to report, right.
• 1:23:50
  Which is what I think happened when,
• 1:23:52
  uh, when we ended up with a couple of Harriers that were hail damaged.
• 1:23:56
  Yeah. Yeah. The canopies were consumables like tires and brake rotors and canopies,
• 1:24:04
  you know, little stuff like that.
• 1:24:05
  And well, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much. Yeah. I had a lot of fun.
• 1:24:11
  Thanks guys. I really enjoyed it. I wasn't sure how it was going.
• 1:24:13
  That was fun. I feel like it was five minutes.
• 1:24:16
  I know, right? I know. Where did this go?
• 1:24:20
  Well, unfortunately, we have to land this plane. My company says I have to go
• 1:24:24
  to work tomorrow. They're not going to pay me the cheap people that they are. Unbelievable.
• 1:24:29
  Bastards. Yeah. Had a bunch of people listening tonight live,
• 1:24:33
  so thanks for joining us live.
• 1:24:35
  We appreciate the input, the comments, the questions. Those are great.
• 1:24:38
  You can always listen on or watch us when we record. I try to put the word out
• 1:24:42
  on Facebook when we're going to do it.
• 1:24:44
  And then we get Rumble and YouTube and Facebook.com and all that good stuff.
• 1:24:49
  But we we need to to get some thank yous out here. I think first and foremost,
• 1:24:53
  thank you, Chris. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your sacrifice.
• 1:24:56
  You and your family putting up with. Thanks, guys. Thank you for your service as well.
• 1:25:01
  It was a privilege. Yes, and it really was.
• 1:25:04
  And thank you because I got a core workout. Yeah, I really did. It was awesome.
• 1:25:12
  And today's the 13th, but let's say thank you, because first of all,
• 1:25:15
  we had a 248th United States Marine Corps birthday last Friday.
• 1:25:20
  Hoorah, Semper Fi. Do or die. Chase, Chase Cole, happy birthday, Marine.
• 1:25:24
  Thank you for being on here with us, and thank you for managing our Facebook
• 1:25:28
  page and being our number one fan.
• 1:25:30
  That's huge. And hey, hold on. While you're mentioning Chase Cole,
• 1:25:33
  he wrote, and I sent it to you, Fig.
• 1:25:35
  I don't know if you saw it or not yet. He wrote a...
• 1:25:40
  I don't have it in front of me and I meant to do it.
• 1:25:43
  Go look at our Facebook group, so there are facebook.com slash so there I was.us.
• 1:25:49
  Find our group. He wrote a birthday message for all Marines.
• 1:25:54
  I haven't, I haven't seen that. I sent you the link.
• 1:25:57
  It's how, and he even put a line in there about Chesty taking off faster than figs spit gristle.
• 1:26:06
  All right. It is creative and outstanding, like you wouldn't believe.
• 1:26:12
  So yeah, thank you, Chase. That was, that was, I was laughing my ass off reading
• 1:26:17
  that. So very well done, sir.
• 1:26:20
  Yeah. All about, uh, just in the matter of fact.
• 1:26:23
  On the Marine Corps birthday, I was in South Dakota, as you know,
• 1:26:26
  as you know, offline, we, I was on a bird hunt, had a Marine Corps birthday
• 1:26:30
  with another Marine, Sinbad, also a previous guest.
• 1:26:33
  And I had to tell to the table. He forced me to tell that table about the gristle.
• 1:26:41
  The gristle spit at least he didn't make you repeat it did he Okay,
• 1:26:47
  yeah, no, I mean he didn't he didn't he didn't make you repeat the act.
• 1:26:57
  And had a lot of gristle only plate he goes you got to tell him this story and
• 1:27:01
  I'm like I don't want to tell it and he started telling the next thing,
• 1:27:03
  you know, I got to finish because he's got it all dicked up.
• 1:27:05
  Yeah, well, you know, here's what I think.
• 1:27:09
  We also need to thank none other than Dave Hamilton, our mentor and supporter
• 1:27:15
  who helped us get this up and underway.
• 1:27:17
  Thank you, Dave Hamilton. He's over at BeckBeatMedia.com online,
• 1:27:21
  handles all the advertising for this show and many others.
• 1:27:24
  If you have a show you need advertising, reach out to BeckBeatMedia.com and,
• 1:27:27
  they may be able to help you out as well.
• 1:27:30
  Hit a few acronyms here, Fig. What do you do if we heard an acronym we didn't ask about?
• 1:27:35
  Well, you can email us at fig, so there I was, repeat, at so there I was,
• 1:27:42
  or sticks, at so there I was, slash US, dot US.
• 1:27:48
  Dot US. Yeah. If you really want a good answer, email Sticks.
• 1:27:53
  Sticks at so there I was dot US. He's got the answers.
• 1:27:56
  He's got the answers. Absolutely.
• 1:28:00
  And got some cool merchandise up there, including coming into the winter season,
• 1:28:04
  got our hoodie up and running.
• 1:28:06
  I got one. I love it. It's man is it warm too. It is a nice.
• 1:28:10
  It's a nice hoodie. I'm enjoying it I saw you.
• 1:28:13
  I have a hoodie in me. Yeah.
• 1:28:19
  We got let's see what else so give give us a rating Please if you could get
• 1:28:24
  on we're we've gained about seven or eight ratings this week since we put up
• 1:28:28
  So there I was that US slash rate,
• 1:28:31
  Hey, and just share the show, share it, the show, share it to your friends, share the show.
• 1:28:38
  And here's a way you can share it, folks. When I put up an announcement about
• 1:28:41
  a show on our Facebook group or the Facebook page, there's two separate ones
• 1:28:46
  for, so there I was, you, there's actually a little share button at the bottom of that.
• 1:28:51
  You can post that to your page to tell your friends about it.
• 1:28:53
  We've had a couple of those get posted.
• 1:28:55
  I'd like to see more people sharing it personally to their page.
• 1:28:58
  If they aren't too embarrassed to be associated with us.
• 1:29:04
  Just saying, you know, we get it. If you're too embarrassed to put our show
• 1:29:08
  up on your personal page, you know, we know, we understand.
• 1:29:12
  I don't understand it, but I get it. Well, oh, I understand not wanting to be
• 1:29:18
  associated with us, but that's a whole nother, you know, story there.
• 1:29:21
  So, hey, Fig, look at that picture behind me. If you're looking online,
• 1:29:25
  I just changed that up, you know, see. That is an awesome picture of a Harrier.
• 1:29:29
  I bet you that was taken by Brad. That was Brad Silcott picture, wasn't it?
• 1:29:35
  BDS aviation photography. Over at BDS.
• 1:29:41
  Absolutely. Brad, that's an awesome thing. He lets us use that.
• 1:29:44
  Hey, lower your head for a second. Lower your head. Move your head slightly
• 1:29:48
  to your left. I'm trying to lower it.
• 1:29:49
  Yeah. Dude, okay. That's got, that is a, let's see.
• 1:29:54
  Oh, that's got a radar and a flitter on the front of it. That's shit hot. Yeah.
• 1:29:58
  Nice, nice picture, Brad. So that's a night attack radar jet there.
• 1:30:02
  That's a super, that's a super Harrier 2 plus or whatever they call it now or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:30:09
  Yeah, and then for those still watching, I get it, this is an audio show most
• 1:30:14
  of the time folks, I totally get it.
• 1:30:16
  For those still watching, there are some Harriers in the break.
• 1:30:20
  In the break. He took that too, he's got some amazing, amazing photos,
• 1:30:27
  Brad does, bdsaviationphotography.com.
• 1:30:31
  Then there's those fine folks making that music for us.
• 1:30:35
  That's the F-16 pilots that make the Air Force sound good. the Dos Gringos.
• 1:30:41
  Awesome music. I'd never get tired of listening to it. As a matter of fact,
• 1:30:45
  I keep pushing it on everybody I meet.
• 1:30:48
  You want to have a fun, listen to the Dos Gringos.
• 1:30:52
  It's fun music. I play it pre-flight and guys love it.
• 1:30:57
  Find them on Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music and anywhere you get your
• 1:31:02
  music, they should be there as well as those are the same locations,
• 1:31:05
  you can find us and find our show.
• 1:31:09
  So, I don't know, Fig, until next week. Do you have any good aviation advice for our listeners?
• 1:31:17
  Well, in honor of our guest, I guess we should say, don't sit on the Collector.
• 1:31:24
  Don't do it. It's hard for me to say that, don't sit on the Collector.
• 1:31:29
  Music.
• 1:31:31
  I love you, Chris, don't sit on the Collector!
• 1:31:38
  Well there I was, crossing the pond, and you could see that I wasn't exactly
• 1:31:43
  fond Of all the shit I was wearing on that day Now an F-16 is cramped enough,
• 1:31:52
  but it's even worse With all that stuff supposed to save your life But we knew
• 1:31:57
  there was no way Cause when you're going down in the North Atlantic, man, it's over.
• 1:32:05
  It's what? He said it's over. Where the hell have you been, soldier?
• 1:32:12
  Training, sir! Training, sir! What kind of training, son?
• 1:32:18
  Army training, sir! Army training, sir!
• 1:32:23
  That's for you. That's for you, Chris. That's for you, Chris.
• 1:32:25
  Great movie. We're out. Great movie.
• 1:32:28
  Man, that was a great movie. That was fun. Thanks guys. I really enjoyed that.