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20th Mar 2008, 22:41

#21 (permalink)

BEagle

Join Date: May 1999

Location: Quite near 'An aerodrome somewhere in England'

Posts: 26,817

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Hey, Wholi' - you actually duelled with 3" twirlers back then....

Respect!

I quite liked the SNEB. As it wasn't long after my degree course when I did my first TWU course in 1976, I could still remember some calculus. So I worked out the error in horizontal range with respect to pitch error (dx/dθ) and found that it was inversely proportional to the square of the dive angle. Hence if you waited a tadge after the ideal pitch in and came down steeper, you would get much better scores...

Armed with this, I poked off to Pembrey and came back with a couple of DHs

. Mentioned my theory to the PAI in the cine room afterwards ('Clack clack clack, clunk...."Ride up, early pickle"...scrabble with plotting jobber...OK, just about allowable...wot didya get? Clack, clack' - remember that?) and was told "Hmm, that's why we used to scrub anything over 20 degrees on 79 Sqn - the old buggers knew how to cheat!".

Weaponeering really was the sport of kings back then - but wasn't quite as much fun on the Hawk without a decent sighting system. God knows how, but I managed to win the Viking Trophy on my post-Vulcan pre-F4 TWU. "Did you do much live weaponry on the Tin Triangle", someone once asked. "No, there would have been too many complaints", I responded. "Why?", he persisted. "Because a 950lb HEMC bucket of sun makes quite a bang, I understand" was my riposte!

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