aloft
New Member
A few pics from yesterday's flight aboard a KC-10. We were part of a flight of three, along with two Utah ANG KC-135s.
The flight's purpose was solely a familiarization flight for the three AFROTC programs in Utah. The pilots of our arcraft along with most of the passengers hailed from BYU. The other two tankers had the Univ of Utah and Utah State contingents, and yes, their pilots were grads of those dets too. The Civil Air Patrol group I escorted flew with the BYU folks since the aircraft commander (left, above) was the father of one of our peeps.
Flight Engineer's station. He was following the flight's progress on a moving map display on the laptop. (The app is FalconView, an AF flight planning/mapping program.)
Approaching one of the KC-135s from behind for aerial refueling. Since the 135s are not air-refuelable, we were the only ones to get this view.
Pre-contact position.
Also pre-contact. Kinda gives you an idea of how much the tanker fills up the forward view.
Zoomed in on the boom. You can just make out the boom operator peering through the sighting window.
Boom Operator demonstrating the A/R boom. Our intended receiver, another KC-10, was delayed and wasn't able to make the rendezvous, so we didn't actually refuel anybody.
Putting the KC-10s two convection ovens to use. They have these for those really long misisons. (No, that's not me.)
Another sign that this was the BYU flight...who else would have a milk & cookies social at 27,000 ft? lol
The flight's purpose was solely a familiarization flight for the three AFROTC programs in Utah. The pilots of our arcraft along with most of the passengers hailed from BYU. The other two tankers had the Univ of Utah and Utah State contingents, and yes, their pilots were grads of those dets too. The Civil Air Patrol group I escorted flew with the BYU folks since the aircraft commander (left, above) was the father of one of our peeps.
Flight Engineer's station. He was following the flight's progress on a moving map display on the laptop. (The app is FalconView, an AF flight planning/mapping program.)
Approaching one of the KC-135s from behind for aerial refueling. Since the 135s are not air-refuelable, we were the only ones to get this view.
Pre-contact position.
Also pre-contact. Kinda gives you an idea of how much the tanker fills up the forward view.
Zoomed in on the boom. You can just make out the boom operator peering through the sighting window.
Boom Operator demonstrating the A/R boom. Our intended receiver, another KC-10, was delayed and wasn't able to make the rendezvous, so we didn't actually refuel anybody.
Putting the KC-10s two convection ovens to use. They have these for those really long misisons. (No, that's not me.)
Another sign that this was the BYU flight...who else would have a milk & cookies social at 27,000 ft? lol
