Quote:
Originally Posted by labatt
Welcome MrB! We've been on Champlain for a few years - over in Willsboro Bay. We spent more time on the VT side, however, as Burlington is one of the cooler destinations. We recently decided to go cruising and are currently holed up in Annapolis waiting for some work to be completed and a weather window to pass. Welcome aboard and perhaps we'll see you at some point, here or on Champlain!
|
Warning Gentle Readers: This is MisterBilge long.
Hey ‘Batts
We “met’ over on another forum. I think you PM’ed me re: hauling the standing rigging down below the Champlain Canal as being prohibitively expensive. I was thinking of hauling it myself with an open trailer and my p.u. truck, rigged on jack stands. Probably highly illegal if not also stooooooooopid, but I’ve found that when I get pulled over for whatever moving violation, whining and sobbing uncontrollably and threatening suicide usually gets me off the hook.
I swapped emails with our mutual friend Gene. Hoping to meet him in, where is it, Catskill? for a libation on my trip down the canal. Which conveniently leads me into another yarn concerning the movement of vessels (or vehicles) through a fluid environment, qualifying (albeit oh so slightly) for review by this August body.
As back drop, Gene was an A-10 pilot in the USAF. I, on the other hand, flew much more manly airplanes, F-16s, F-4s, and F-106s. REAL men have afterburners and the ability to fly past Mach 1, and, for that matter, Mach 2. There’s a highschool-ish rivalry between fighter pilots and their noble steeds, so grant me a minute to trash his.
The A-10 was designed around it’s gun, a 30 mm monster that, when they’re test firing them up here in the Green Mountains, sounds like a cross between Godzilla and the world’s largest bear being rudely awakened from hibernation. It’s straight wings and high bypass fanjets give it great maneuverability whence scurrying around a battlefield in a “bogey rich environment” of Ivan’s currently rusting 50,000 tanks.
As it would be getting up close and personal with ZSU 23 mm anti-aircraft-artillery, the Air Force was nice enough to give the pilots a titanium “bath tub” to sit in for protection from the aforementioned problem.
So, the good news is, it can take a lot of hits. The bad news is, it’s gonna. In order to prepare (“Train like you’re going to fight!”) these sheep for the slaughter, they’d set them in a Dempsey Dumpster and throw bricks at it. Effectiveness still under review.
Formally the “A-10 Thunderbolt II” it is such an ugly piece of hardware it carries the more appropriate moniker of “Warthog” and it’s knights bear shoulder patches inscribed with “Go Ugly Early.” More manly aircraft have limitations measured in Mach (speed of sound) number or skin temperature, hence when entering into battle we would first attempt to acquire the “speed of heat.” The ‘Hogs were more famous for being able to get them up to the “speed of snow.”
One of the more fun things in life, besides sailing, of course, is “Hog Poppin,’” truly, the Sport of Kings, and about as fair a fight as fox hunting. In order to keep it interesting, we’d usually set it up so that it was simply a gunfight. Their lacking radar, missiles, and the ability to fly away from a well-thrown softball it seemed like the honorable thing to do.
Here’s where it starts to get fun. For the sake of safety, a pilot has to know the greatest number of how many airplanes are going to be in the “fur ball” in order to minimize the chances of running into each other. While setting up the fight over the phone, I’d always let them think there was going to be 2 in my flight, even if I was going to be alone. We’d brief up altitude blocks (they’d always get the bottom 2000 ft) kill criteria, etc, and inter-flight radio on UHF, intra-flight on VHF. Entering the airspace, we’d “check in” with each other on UHF. I’d disguise my voice/change accents to indeed appear to be a flight of 2 F-16s.
At “Fight’s on…cameras on.” They would start marching up the track, trying to gain speed, one eye on their radar warning equipment, one eye on a swivel looking for the “dreaded Hun.” The trick is to fly pretty much over the top of them by 20,000 feet or so, not locking them up with the radar to give away position, and just doing some mental math as to where they are going to be after they “gimbal” the radar at the bottom of the case, then roll over on your back into a “split-S” maneuver to swoop down on them. Like sailors, pilots tend to spend more time looking around the horizon rather than vertically. Sometimes as a courtesy, we’d call a “Fox 2” heat seeking missile shot, just to let them know “We’rrrrrrre Herrrrrrre” and watch them go into “The Hog Dance” which was a counter-rotating circle just about impossible to get inside of because of their straight wing, small radius turning circle.
So the thing is to press in, take at least a “snap shot” (as opposed to a near impossible tracking shot) with our 20 mm gun, then pull up in the vertical trying to escape their long range 30 mm. At this point, with a voice feigning a sense of urgency, one would “screw up” and call “Off to the (direction)” on the inter-flight frequency. Thence, with the disguised voice, the “other guy” (still me) would call “Two’s in from the (other direction)” and watch the ‘hogs break off the counter attack and start looking for the “other” coming in from…… wherever.
Hey, it’s kinda like throwing the screw and washer into the other guy’s mainsail when racing….if y’aint cheating……
So, dear moderators, there’s a bunch of bandwidth you’ll never have back. And Gentle Readers a good 5 minutes. But I did qualify it by vessels moving through a fluid environment.
Lemme know if my yarns are too far out there, and I’ll cease and desist.
Cheers,
MrB