100 Years of Flight

[revwardoc]

We had both styles at Norton AFB. Most were the metallic, unpainted style but we had a few like the pictured one. Those were used primarily for the desk bound officers who needed to keep up their flying status. These clowns would show up once a month in their starched flight suits, aviator sunglasses, spit-shined boots and act like they were at "Top Gun". They were good for a laugh. Most times, once they were airborne, they'd take the controls for one "touch-and-go" then move to the extra seat to the right of the flight station door and sack out until it was time to land again.

We didn't have to wax the metallic finish ones. The problem with the metallic finish was that it was (or at least, seemed) much hotter than the painted style. We had to wear long sleeved shirts and gloves while working on them because the skin got so hot we would literally burn ourselves if we touched it.

I heard that they were replacing the C-141's with the C-17's. We'll probably wind up selling the C-141 surplus to some 3rd world countries...like Iraq.

I agree with you about the camo paint jobs. Talk about more "military intelligence". Even if you could get planes above it, I seriously doubt it could be mistaken for the ground. I'm surprised they don't paint the bottom of the fuselage and the wings a sky blue with cloud patterns and take the joke even further.

[Seascamp]

Dark colors reflect heat, light colors adsorb heat. During my Nascar racing days I loved to see a rig show up with fancy chrome header pipes. The header heat wouldn?t dissipate as quickly and it was a certainty the heads would over heat, trash out a valve or so and one easy pass coming up, regular as clockwork. In pit humor, I?d look at the engine and stuff of a competitor and if I saw chrome headers; which were seen often in the Charger division, I?d give it a nearly silent ?Dumb de dumb-dumb?, ha. Ever wonder why wood burning stoves are flat back?

Scamp

[Dragon Lady]

Scamp,
That's a little backwards. The light colors reflect sunlight and are actually cooler than darker colors. The old white C5's could be as much as 20 degrees cooler on the flight deck than the Cammies. They camms would get so hot in the summer we would pop all the hatches just to try to get a little air and even then you could only work for 20 minutes at a time up on the flight controls or you could end up in the hospital from heat stroke.

The AF finally switched over to the European Grey in the late 80s early 90s. Strangely it is much more difficult to spot even that huge behemoth in the sky when it is grey. Even on the bluest of days.

Rev, Don't go giving them any ideas for painting. I remember when we got a new wing commander (former TAC man) who decided that all of the stop signs, poles and all, and the dumpsters needed to be painted brown. I don't know the reasoning behind that one but they did manage to convince him that the stop signs should remain red. He compromised and just had them paint the posts brown.

Gotta use that budget or lose it next year!

[revwardoc]

I remember having to climb into the tail to lubricate the horizontal stabalizer actuator (at least I think that's what it was called, the memory is fuzzy on that). While I'm 5'10", I also have wide shoulders and it was more than a bit of a bitch trying to wedge myself into that narrow crawlspace, carrying a grease gun, then try to hold it onto the fittings without falling down the ladder. In the summer, it would be so damn hot inside the tail I'd have to open the hatch to create a chimney effect just so I could breath. When I got down, I'd be completely soaked in sweat and only after about 10-15 minutes of effort. One guy passed out up there and we forgot about him. It was a full hour later when we finally realized he was missing and we checked the tail. He suffered from heat stroke and dehydration. Another job that sucked was going up on top of the tail to change the anti-collision light bulbs. Like I said, I have wide shoulders and the "safety" harness didn't fit someone my size but that didn't stop my team chief from sending me up there (when I was assigned to his team he was a 26 year E5 who had transferred from being a cook and this was his first time at being in charge of anyone; we used to call him "Night Light" 'cause he wasn't too bright). One time I was right in the middle of changing the bulbs when the whole tail started to move. Some idiotnavigator doing his pre-flight ignored the red warning tags I had put the circuit breakers and pushed them in so the co-pilot could check on the stabilizer operation. There's nothing quite like the feeling of being 40' off the ground, with no safety harness, and sliding off the tail. I managed to get hold of the hatch door and hung on for dear life. When I got down I went after that SOB and it was the closest I ever came to striking an officer and the a$$hole had the nerve to tell me to come to attention when speaking to him! And my team leader backed him up!! "Night Light" tried to lecture me in front of everyone but all that did was make me even more angry so the rest of the guys pulled me away and sent me to cool off. The next day I was told that "Night Light" tried to write me up for insubordinaton but our Flight NCOIC chewed him out instead, then he told me to control my temper. Too bad there weren't any anger management courses back then.

[Dragon Lady]

Oh I HATED T-Tail inspections!!!! Since I was the "little un" they often stuck me with the job too. At least I had a hangar to shade the plane. I loved the T-tail job almost as much as I loved inspecting the Wing Spars. I could always tell where I was crawling by the bruise patterns on my body. My ex used to call the love bites from my planes.

We too had our fair share of "Tag morons". Went to FTD school with this guy that we called Twang after an of BC Comic. He had no idea what anything did on the plane and the very first thing he did was start pushing buttons. He was a cross trainer too although I cant remember where he came from. Our instructor crawled so far up his innerds that I swear I could hear his voice coming out Twang's head!

Then there was the moron on the C5s that they actually allowed to become a flying Crew Chief. That was a coveted position amongst us on the ground. He got the position because his fiance was the base commander's daughter. This idiot had the audacity to pull BOTH flight computers out of the sockets at the same time in order to reset the system...IN FLIGHT! The crew said they never came so close to popping open the back doors and seeing if he would "touch down" before they did! This same Einstein worked in the ISO docks at Dover and nearly killed some dignitaries on tour. It was a hot, muggy July day and they had the hatches popped open with this HUGE giant fan stuck in the hatch to attempt to cool the plane down a bit. Idiot boy was not happy with the position of the fan and decided to repostion it. I guess he wanted it to be on the hangar floor 40 feet below because that is where it landed, not 20' from the dignitaries. I believe that was the last time we saw him, fiance or no.

Ahhhh, those were the days!

[revwardoc]

We had a self-styled "Romeo" who was dating an officer's daughter, too. This guy never met a mirror he didn't like. Once we were clowning around in the barracks and he fell and hit his head on something. Since head wounds tend to bleed easily, there was more blood than he could accept. But the first thing he asked us was, "Do you thing it'll disfigure my looks?" I told him, "Yeah! With any luck!" He didn't think that was funny. Anyway, he got Flying Crew Chief status by sucking up to "Daddy". He lost it when the word got out that he had a babe at Hickam, Clark, Elmendorf, and one of the bases in Japan. I guess Daddy didn't like when his little girl got the short end of the relationship.

[Seascamp]

Not backwards Lass. Big difference between heat adsorb or radiate and light reflection. Light colors adsorb heat and dark colors radiate heat. Have a look at the radiator in your car. Most are painted black but some are silver for some reason as with a cross flow high capacity Corvette cooling system. The silver is about styling and looking macho I think. The intercoolers on a high performance multi stage centrifugal compressor are painted black, deep blue or dark forest green; depending on manufacture, and at a high speed pinion speed of 50, 000 RPM ya got the keep the compressed air cooled down or ya melt the last stage compressor blades in an instant. In the case of a combined cycle power generation rig where the exhaust from the gas turbine flows into a boiler for a steam turbine the best deal is to have light colored exhaust ducting out of the gas turbine as heat loss needs to be minimized.

Scamp

[revwardoc]

Seascamp,

Dragon Lady is right about dark colors absorbing heat and light colors reflecting it. I found this from the NASA scatter project site:

1. Dark colors absorb sunlight whereas light colors reflect sunlight.
2. Because dark colors absorb heat they are usually warmer than lighter colors.

Sorry, guy, Air Force wins again!

[Seascamp]

I think we are talking about two different things. I was talking about an internal heat source as in a radiator or stove. I think you are talking about an external heat source like the sun. Different set of circumstances.

Scamp

[Dragon Lady]

Dan; Scamp,

Now, now...Can't we all just get along? These are the same types of "conversations" that go on in my house. Me being AF and my hubby being a Navy Chief. There's no living with him since he metamorphosed into a "CHIEF" pain in the batootie. "The Chief is always right", talk about your indoctrinations! Wow! ;-)

Scamp, all I know is that when we were kids in CA and summer heat would hit the road we would walk on the stripes because they were cooler than the blacktop. The heat on the planes didn't necessarily come from within, i.e. engines, and equipment like a stove. In my experience any way, it would be just as hot on a plane sitting out on fuel cell row without any power on it as it would be on the plane preping for preflight.

But that is just this airman's experience.