PSP air museum / F-117 stuff
- Thread starter MikeD
- Start date
knot4u
Repeat Offender
If I worked for you monitoring one of those rentals (you don't leave them unattended do you?) I would want a whistle to announce the change of shift when I took over from the other engineer. A horn would be better, but a whistle would work. I have a desk sized steam turbine with an electric boiler I restored a few years ago. It has a pulley that could provide power for something but I never hooked it to anything. It also has a whistle, when the whistle stopped working I stopped playing with it. Maybe it's time for another more in depth restoration. It's a funny little old antique, little wooden knobs and glass tubes, a little water tank with all of the fury 110vac can bring and most importantly spinny things. Maybe it's time to revisit that 'toy".
knot4u
Repeat Offender
Choo Choo is the noise the engine makes, he's not renting engines, he's renting boilers.
milleR
Well-Known Member
Depends on the facility. Some places require stationary engineers 24/7, some don’t. The equipment will run on its own regardless and we do have remote monitoring capability, it just comes down to local/federal regs and insurance requirements for personnel on site.
I actually have a little steam tractor that will drive itself once you get some pressure up, think shoebox size. That has a whistle which is awesome. Miniature steam systems are a real hobby and are very cool, you should absolutely keep that thing running and functional
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///AMG
Well-Known Member
Some buds of mine in college lived in a fraternity house with a very old boiler in the basement. One day it did exactly that, when we were all in class. Nearly completely leveled the entire 3 story building. It was just gone when they got home. That is some scary •.
milleR
Well-Known Member
“Stupid thing keeps shutting off”
“Well we gotta have hot water and heat” and/or “keep the plant running so we don’t get yelled at”
“Here’s the problem, this solenoid keeps shutting the damn thing off”
“Aha, we can jump that, it’s just a couple wires and the boiler will keep running”
“perfect, let’s get some coffee”
*boiler runs out of water, burner keeps burning because the safety has been jumped out of the loop, Mcdonnell Miller valve hits the bottom and dumps a rush of feed water into a red hot furnace and ^boom^
Like any equipment, love them, maintain them, and operate them the way they were designed and they’ll reward you with good, safe performance.
Just like the F-117 after it got the F-16 FBW flight control system to make it a manageable airframe and rid itself of that horrible nickname.
@MikeD did they specifically recruit out of the A-10 pilot group for the F-117 or was that just a coincidence?
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Many of the original pilots recruited into the 117 came from the A-7 Corsair II, as that aircraft flew generally similar to the 117 handling-wise,just with slower speeds. And the A-7 was the original “cover jet” for the program secrecy The original guys did come from all types of fighters and attack jets, just because no one knew what they were getting into until they signed on and were read-into what was then a black program.
Besides the A-7, many pilots came from the F-111 and F-4, then F-16, and F-15A/C and A-10 pilots lastly.
In my time during the late grey years, the majority of the senior officers were F-111/F-4, and the bulk of the pilots were F-16. There were lesser amounts of F-15C and F-15E pilots, and much less A-10 guys. We were the fewest.
You had to come from another tactical jet with an IP qualification, to qualify for the 117 program. And of the two squadrons, my squadron hosted a USN exchange pilot, and the other squadron hosted an RAF exchange pilot. In my time there, we didn’t have a USN guy in my squadron, but the other squadron had the last RAF exchange pilot who came from Jaguar fighters.
///AMG
Well-Known Member
Haha nothing about that system was being maintained. I think the closest thing they ever did was have an Elk roast night, where our alaskan boy cooked dinner. So exactly nothing done
As for the F-16 FBW, it was nearly indistinguishable from that of the F/A-18. Which is probably a feature. These systems just make perfect airplanes, really doesn't matter what the aerodynamics are. I'd hold either system up against anything from the eastern bloc. They are decades behind, until recently. I did turn down a job during COVID that would have eventually involved flying a MiG-29. Nobody in their 40's who doesn't have a death wish has time for that. It would have been garbage single engine eastern bloc trainers to start as well. Mike knows the story, I think he and some other smart guys told me to stay a mile away.
knot4u
Repeat Offender
I'll get it running properly again. It makes cool noises as it warms up and the wheel makes a cool noise when it spools up, I'd guess it probably makes .0000001 HP at full steam but that's not the point. It's an antique Bing steam toy. If I plugged it in it'd probably still work. When I was farting around with it I never ran it in the house or even the garage. Like I said steam is scary.
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Skåning
Well-Known Member
Came across this today and thought it was fascinating. @MikeD did they get anything glaringly wrong?
View: https://youtu.be/1zjcnnx7igc?si=ccqUjLYwQ8kQBLti
View: https://youtu.be/1zjcnnx7igc?si=ccqUjLYwQ8kQBLti
Pretty accurately done here. We never had a GPS munitions capability in the aircraft until a couple years prior to retirement, but we had one bomb that had its own internal GPS and could be GPS guided to its preprogrammed target, and also be refined by laser if the target appeared visually. This bomb would only be used in bad weather conditions, otherwise we’d just use our usual selection of laser guided munitions. It wasnt until the last 2 years of service, that a 1760 bus was finally installed to allow the jet to “talk” to normal GPS-guided munitions such as the GBU-38 version of the Mk82 500 pound low drag bomb.
The bombs we carried were of the Paveway II class, namely the GBU-10 and GBU-12, 2000lb Mk 84 and 500lb Mk82 bomb versions, respectively. We couldn’t initially carry the Paveway III series of bombs such as the GBU-24 Mk84 2000lb because the Paveway III tail kit was too large for the F-117 bomb bay. So a PWII rail kit was mated to a PWIII nose sensor to create the GBU-27, which would fit in the bomb bay. The sole combo GPS/Laser bomb I mentioned above, was the EGBU-27. Like I mentioned, it was an expensive bomb that was only used for dropping in bad Wx where laser guidance wasn’t able to be accomplished due to the target not being able to be seen. However it could also be refined by laser guidance in addition to its self-contained GPS capability, but it was an expensive bomb and really had to be used against very high military value targets .
The big limitation to the F-117 was its limited job. It was really only useful for the first week or so of any war, as it’s job was to kick the door down, so to speak, of an enemy Integrated Air Defense System, in order to allow “regular” aircraft to go to work and do their jobs. After that, the F-117s job is done, as it’s not going to be used for any routine work that any other fighter/attack aircraft can perform, as it’s not worth the risk. Basically, our job was to take town the early warning radars such as TALL KING, SPOON REST, or BAR LOCK. And take out other initial high value targets such as command and control centers and such. We didn’t necessarily target individual SAM systems, as that was a Wild Weasel function that the F-4Gs and later F-16s did, what we did was take out the long range eyes of said SAM systems.
Defensive-wise, for mission planning, we only concerned ourself with known fixed SAM sites to plan against route-wise. We weren’t concerned with mobile SAM systems for two reasons. One, they are mobile, you don’t know really where they are. And two, they are generally low-possibly medium altitude, and we were usually above their effective altitudes anyway. It was the fixed strategic SAM systems that we concerned ourselves with, the ones that had serious medium-high altitude capability.
The description of the loss of aircraft 806 over Serbia was kind of generic. Its loss was mostly bad and lazy mission planning on our part, which eventually bit us in the ass. A lesson we learned from the first few nights of Operation LINEBACKER II in December 1972, but somehow forgot.
What eventually killed the program was the fact that it only did one job, and there wasn’t money for single mission aircraft. Everyone had to be able to do multiple jobs to be cost effective. And with the F-22 coming out, we were keeping money from the F-22 due to our very high Mx man hours per flight hour, which was very high in having to maintain the Gen 1 stealth coatings and such. We basically became uneconomical to exist anymore. Though the F-22 is itself a single mission aircraft, for the air dominance role, that is accepted to have that, as the F-15 single seaters always had except for their first couple of years.
Minuteman
Shipoaster
I never paid attention to how relatively compact a B61 is compared to Paveway II, and that compared to a Paveway III.
Paveway III (GBU-24?)
Paveway III (GBU-16)
///AMG
Well-Known Member
^^ first time I ever carried a GBU-24B/B (Paveway III) on a legacy Hornet, I was blown away by how giant it looked. It was truly cartoonish when mounted on our little stub wings. The pilot-vehicle-interface for that weapon (PWIII) was truly garbage, and it was never really a practical weapon to use other than a few very specific scenarios. It is kinda funny they bit off on it with Top Gun 2.......it was such a niche weapon, though its singular use was fairly accurately represented in the movie at least. It was a real handful to correctly employ, very much fully manual unlike the Paveway II, and unlike (as I understand it) with the F-15E which fully and properly integrated the weapon. I'd imagine the F-117 was another?
@MikeD was the EGBU-27 also referred to as the DMLGB? I'm getting a bit fuzzy, but I remember the Navy's interest was very half hearted in my time. It existed in the inventory, but we never once trained to it in my experience. Of course by the time I flew operationally, we had basically the opposite guidance priority, in the GBU-54, which we used extensively in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Pretty good weapon, a GPS guided variant of the GBU-38 500# JDAM that had a laser terminal guidance mode if you were talking a BOT sort of scenario (the main time you'd ever use it).
@MikeD was the EGBU-27 also referred to as the DMLGB? I'm getting a bit fuzzy, but I remember the Navy's interest was very half hearted in my time. It existed in the inventory, but we never once trained to it in my experience. Of course by the time I flew operationally, we had basically the opposite guidance priority, in the GBU-54, which we used extensively in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Pretty good weapon, a GPS guided variant of the GBU-38 500# JDAM that had a laser terminal guidance mode if you were talking a BOT sort of scenario (the main time you'd ever use it).
117 was fully interfaced with the GBU-27 as its primary PW III weapon. With the GBU-10/12 being our primary PW II weapon, although I’m sure we could employ the GBU-16 also, but that was a USN/USMC PW II, since the USAF didn’t employ the 1000lb Mk83 which it’s based on, only the USN/USMC.
The DMLGB was the generic USN nomenclature for what the USAF eventually termed the EGBU-27, which was specific to the F-117, but was also occasionally carried by the B-2. Oddly, there wasn’t an EGBU-24, just the -27. It was a good weapon for its time, to have a GPS guided weapon with LGB capes also, when the carrying aircraft didn’t have a 1760 bus. But, it was an expensive weapon too. Once the ability to drop JDAM came out in the last two years, the EGBU-27 became somewhat uneconomical, although it was still available in the inventory. The preference seemed to go towards full GPS capability, rather than a GPS guided bomb that could be laser refined for end game.