Tanking
The Vulcan was a brilliant tanker - I remember being told that the rabbit hutch round the HDU meant that the trade of aircraft carpenter had been reactivated! The other benefit was that the Vulcan crews had clearly missed out on the Victor OCU training on how to find alto/cirro-stratus to hide in, useful angles of bank for inducing the leans, and 10 infallible methods for dropping the chicks at the furthest end of the towline while pointing in the opposite direction to that requested....
C130 was probably the easiest in the F4, especially at low level. Does anyone else recall the "If you get behind me you can have some gas" affil in the FI, before plugging in at 1000ft?
Agree with Beags though - the Q-fit F4 v KC-135/BDA at FL30O was definitely in the 'demanding' category.
C130 was probably the easiest in the F4, especially at low level. Does anyone else recall the "If you get behind me you can have some gas" affil in the FI, before plugging in at 1000ft?
Agree with Beags though - the Q-fit F4 v KC-135/BDA at FL30O was definitely in the 'demanding' category.
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Probably the most difficult was the KC-135 with the wretched ‘boom-drogue adapter’
I’d drink to that, Beags; in August 1972 I didn’t know that this machinery existed & the briefing was simply to tell me on which towline I could find one and to see what it was like. The first couple of contacts didn’t work out as the drogue seemed to move away at the last moment; at this stage I noticed somebody looking out of the 135’s rear window & asked what he was doing. Response was “That’s the boom operator, Sir, he’s trying to help you make contact”. When I replied “Please ask him to stop doing that” , the situation improved no end........
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Anything but the KC135!!
A chorus of agreement there I'd say from across the RAF. The boom was a nightmare on anything but the smoothest of days and I vividly remember my probe tip disappearing up over the intake on thankfully only one occasion. As well as the helpful boom operator, the crew sometimes had a nasty habit of finessing their nav up the towline; with the length of the extended boom any roll was alarmingly amplified!!
The brief for a first stab against a 135 was like a horror movie. How the solid 'basket' could break the canopy or nosecone, how the hose could snap off and end up dangling down the engine intake , etc..... Not surprising then that we were all a little reticent when the Tri* cancelled.
I'd take any drogue over that thing any day: VC10, Tri*, KC10 wing and C/L, Herc wing and C/L to name all the ones I saw.
Twos up on a Canadian KC130's wing hoses was a bit hairy too. If your backseater tells you not to look at something, it's for a good reason!
The brief for a first stab against a 135 was like a horror movie. How the solid 'basket' could break the canopy or nosecone, how the hose could snap off and end up dangling down the engine intake , etc..... Not surprising then that we were all a little reticent when the Tri* cancelled.
I'd take any drogue over that thing any day: VC10, Tri*, KC10 wing and C/L, Herc wing and C/L to name all the ones I saw.
Twos up on a Canadian KC130's wing hoses was a bit hairy too. If your backseater tells you not to look at something, it's for a good reason!
The brief for a first stab against a 135 was like a horror movie.
The boom-bitch kept moving the bloody thing every time I missed - and I couldn't understand a word she was saying in any case. But at least when I finally did make contact after asking "Will you stop moving the damn thing!" the transfer rate was pretty good.
Whereas the KC-10 centreline hose (again without a brief) was a piece of wee wee!
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Tanking Tonkas from an RSAF KE-3A was also interesting. The basket and hose assembly were almost wingtip mounted. The hose was a lot shorter than normal ones and this meant sitting well close to the tanker itself. The hose was prone to "whip" on contact or disconnect. The drogue basket was weighted with a hefty lump of metal; the combination of this and the hose length meant that anything other than a dead centre contact would result in hose whip and the heavy drogue bouncing off your jet's nose; in the case of the Tonka, this could and did sometimes result in either a bent or broken AOA probe.
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KC135s - draw up a sandbag...
Ah, the joys of short hose tanking on the KC-135. During the 3 years I spent on exchange with l’Armée de l’Air that was all we ever had apart from the odd occasion when we were lucky enough to get the chance to refuel from a VC-10 or KC 10.
You did eventually get used to it and its many traps for the unwary, but by far the most terrifying trips I ever did in my life involved checking out convexees to clear them to lead a pair to the tanker at night. Gawd knows who the genius was who designed the syllabus but as the check pilot, you had the joy of flying night close formation on young Bloggs while he carried out the intercept to get himself in behind at the right time and place without bumping into anyone who was leaving the tanker and then get you both safely into echelon starboard. Why they couldn’t have done a couple more trips in the 2-sticker is beyond me. The bad news was that as number 2 you had to put your radar into standby to avoid co-channel interference (not that looking into the tube while flying night close is an awfully good move), so the only way to get an idea of where you were in the process was from a sneaky look in at the air-to-air tacan distance to the tanker and the odd glance at the INAS distance to the racetrack datum in the HUD. Needless to say, as soon as the weather got a bit ropey and he had to use the radar most of the way in, Bloggs’s SA would start to crumble and all niceties of keeping things smooth for the wingman would disappear while he tried to sort out the intercept geometry, keep to the timing and not roll out in front of the tanker etc.
On one night, that quiet little voice that tells you that things ain’t going quite as they should do prompted me to look up and see that we were practically level with the tanker, which was getting very, very big in the windscreen very, very quickly and I just about had time to react before the inevitable happened. At the same moment, Bloggs spots the tanker too, rolls towards me, shuts the throttle and stuffs the boards out – thanks a f*cking bunch, mate. Amazingly enough, and more by luck than judgement, I avoided hitting either him or the tanker. The debrief, shall we say, was somewhat one-sided and I admit that later that evening I partook of strong drink.
The short hose sometimes caught out the experienced guys too. On a very rough night during the Balkans do, one of the lads from our wing was refuelling over the Adriatic, got very high and out of position to such an extent that the hose whipped, taking off the end of his probe (and maybe the basket too, but memory fails me) which then went down the intake with inevitable consequences for a single-engined aircraft. Luckily, he survived the MB let-down with nothing worse than a stiff neck and was fished out of the sea by an Italian warship.
You did eventually get used to it and its many traps for the unwary, but by far the most terrifying trips I ever did in my life involved checking out convexees to clear them to lead a pair to the tanker at night. Gawd knows who the genius was who designed the syllabus but as the check pilot, you had the joy of flying night close formation on young Bloggs while he carried out the intercept to get himself in behind at the right time and place without bumping into anyone who was leaving the tanker and then get you both safely into echelon starboard. Why they couldn’t have done a couple more trips in the 2-sticker is beyond me. The bad news was that as number 2 you had to put your radar into standby to avoid co-channel interference (not that looking into the tube while flying night close is an awfully good move), so the only way to get an idea of where you were in the process was from a sneaky look in at the air-to-air tacan distance to the tanker and the odd glance at the INAS distance to the racetrack datum in the HUD. Needless to say, as soon as the weather got a bit ropey and he had to use the radar most of the way in, Bloggs’s SA would start to crumble and all niceties of keeping things smooth for the wingman would disappear while he tried to sort out the intercept geometry, keep to the timing and not roll out in front of the tanker etc.
On one night, that quiet little voice that tells you that things ain’t going quite as they should do prompted me to look up and see that we were practically level with the tanker, which was getting very, very big in the windscreen very, very quickly and I just about had time to react before the inevitable happened. At the same moment, Bloggs spots the tanker too, rolls towards me, shuts the throttle and stuffs the boards out – thanks a f*cking bunch, mate. Amazingly enough, and more by luck than judgement, I avoided hitting either him or the tanker. The debrief, shall we say, was somewhat one-sided and I admit that later that evening I partook of strong drink.
The short hose sometimes caught out the experienced guys too. On a very rough night during the Balkans do, one of the lads from our wing was refuelling over the Adriatic, got very high and out of position to such an extent that the hose whipped, taking off the end of his probe (and maybe the basket too, but memory fails me) which then went down the intake with inevitable consequences for a single-engined aircraft. Luckily, he survived the MB let-down with nothing worse than a stiff neck and was fished out of the sea by an Italian warship.
Well, Ali, your instruction must have paid off well! During 99% of the FAF refuelling I did from the VC10, the receivers turned up at the right place spot on time. Over Turkey / Iraq, even without A/A TACAN, you'd be wondering where they were and the next second they'd appear in their F1s or Jags exactly on time - and exactly where they said they'd be!!
More than could be said of certain RAF receiver crews; some squadrons were excellent, but the turkeys who all set their time hack 39 sec slow at briefing....
It seems they'd used the time from a PC, believing it to be accurate....
More than could be said of certain RAF receiver crews; some squadrons were excellent, but the turkeys who all set their time hack 39 sec slow at briefing....
It seems they'd used the time from a PC, believing it to be accurate....
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Beags,
The guys who were really impressive were the French Jag mates. The Mirage 2000 had a PD radar that would get you in to 160 metres on an unlit target, a very good INAS and an IFF interrogator to help find the tanker and loads of spare thrust and lift when you got there. Apart from TACAN and INAS, the Jags had none of the above, but however claggy the weather and even at night they seemed to find the tanker dead on time every time as you rightly said.
The guys who were really impressive were the French Jag mates. The Mirage 2000 had a PD radar that would get you in to 160 metres on an unlit target, a very good INAS and an IFF interrogator to help find the tanker and loads of spare thrust and lift when you got there. Apart from TACAN and INAS, the Jags had none of the above, but however claggy the weather and even at night they seemed to find the tanker dead on time every time as you rightly said.
Last edited by Ali Qadoo; 30th Mar 2009 at 15:34.
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Can an aged former 'Fairy' ask a question here?
During my time on 214 Sqdn, Feb 59 to Oct 62, we were doing trials with a Rebecca/Eureka Mk X system. The Eureka X transponder was in the tanker and the Rebecca X in the receiver. This worked on a frequency of about 1,000 MHz and was to assist receivers to find the tankers.
Working at 4 times the frequency of the regular Rebecca IV and DME, it had a much shorter minimum range.
When I left 214, the trials were still ongoing. Did anything operational ever come from it?
During my time on 214 Sqdn, Feb 59 to Oct 62, we were doing trials with a Rebecca/Eureka Mk X system. The Eureka X transponder was in the tanker and the Rebecca X in the receiver. This worked on a frequency of about 1,000 MHz and was to assist receivers to find the tankers.
Working at 4 times the frequency of the regular Rebecca IV and DME, it had a much shorter minimum range.
When I left 214, the trials were still ongoing. Did anything operational ever come from it?
Jay Tayock
"How the solid 'basket' could break the canopy or nosecone, how the hose could snap off and end up dangling down the engine intake , etc..... "
That brought back unhappy memories......the b****er could certainly bend the top corner of the fixed portion of the intake Ramp on an F-4 ...
That brought back unhappy memories......the b****er could certainly bend the top corner of the fixed portion of the intake Ramp on an F-4 ...
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Italian B707 tankers on the port hose could be a little tricky in a Tonka, since the pod was just about at the wingtip, so your 'reference' was somewhere on the distant horizon........ but far preferable to a BDA anyday (which usually resulted in an airborne CSAS Bite
)
)
Gosh, where to start.
My benchmark was the jolly old Victor, we always knew we would get an excellent service; notwithstanding that a wing hose at the top of the height bracket in "Q" fit (F4) was interesting; having to tickle a burner made the transfer rate almost negative.
The best transfer rates were, Vulcan, Victor centre, Albert and KC10 centre.
The most flexible were the Vulcans and Alberts ( particularly in FI - lovely LL tanking!)
The most obstructive was the VC10, they seemed to have combined the most restrictive of AAR and truck rules,not to mention the bloody dihedral!
The KC 135 was just hilarious!
There are two sorts of pilot, those who've spoked ? and those who are going to.
My benchmark was the jolly old Victor, we always knew we would get an excellent service; notwithstanding that a wing hose at the top of the height bracket in "Q" fit (F4) was interesting; having to tickle a burner made the transfer rate almost negative.
The best transfer rates were, Vulcan, Victor centre, Albert and KC10 centre.
The most flexible were the Vulcans and Alberts ( particularly in FI - lovely LL tanking!)
The most obstructive was the VC10, they seemed to have combined the most restrictive of AAR and truck rules,not to mention the bloody dihedral!
The KC 135 was just hilarious!
There are two sorts of pilot, those who've spoked ? and those who are going to.
Sorry, forgot the Tristar; not too bad apart from the advice I got over the ether one day whilst in contact and transferring which suggested I should move forward 3 feet! I recall I mentioned that they should learn how to land the bloody thing.
Some things don't matter very much, most things don't matter at all.
Wrong thread but M2's funeral was an excellent occasion, Ripon Cathedral was filled to bursting, triffic eulogy by DiM Jones, nice F3 reheat over the mess at Leeming and a very tasteful finger 4 missing man by the hawks, well done by all concerned, Pete would have approved.
Some things don't matter very much, most things don't matter at all.
Wrong thread but M2's funeral was an excellent occasion, Ripon Cathedral was filled to bursting, triffic eulogy by DiM Jones, nice F3 reheat over the mess at Leeming and a very tasteful finger 4 missing man by the hawks, well done by all concerned, Pete would have approved.
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Wiggy
The stories were probably recycled 'Blah Jet' stories anyway. Scared the b-jesus out of me anyway, I can tell you! Thank goodness for the modified weak-link probe tip is all I can say.
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Tanking in a 'rod
The great thing (not) about tanking in a 'rod was that you had 13 other experts nad part-time comedians on board!
Remember being sat on the flight deck step dreading my 'go' whilst the other poor sod slashed in, out and all about when, on his 4th or 5th attempt, with the sound of the basket banging and scraping down the fuse, 2 of the knockers appear on the flight deck with a basket and hose attached asking what to do with it now they had finally caught the f*@k!ng thing. The poor sod in the left seat nearly fainted.
Remember being sat on the flight deck step dreading my 'go' whilst the other poor sod slashed in, out and all about when, on his 4th or 5th attempt, with the sound of the basket banging and scraping down the fuse, 2 of the knockers appear on the flight deck with a basket and hose attached asking what to do with it now they had finally caught the f*@k!ng thing. The poor sod in the left seat nearly fainted.
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Busta,
The reason you may have been asked to move up a few feet is because the refuel valve cycles if you're on the cusp, and the fuel flow stops and starts. A couple of feet closer makes that issue go away.
I wouldn't take it too personally.
The reason you may have been asked to move up a few feet is because the refuel valve cycles if you're on the cusp, and the fuel flow stops and starts. A couple of feet closer makes that issue go away.
I wouldn't take it too personally.
