Spy Planes

Yea, its buggs me he seems familiar, the U-2 pilots said that landing is like riding a thin tire bike on ice with a 20ft 2x4 across your waist, those guys practiced and practiced and practiced landings, did he tell you about the HP mustang chase cars that their ground pilot would chase them with upon each landing attempt to tell them how close to the ground they actually were ie 12 ft 10, 6, 4 etc.... they would turn those 5.0s in if they wouldn't do 140mph LOL "here tune it back up " it was fun to get rides with them!!! Otter

 

Interesting..... Got me curious so I just did some searching. Looks like all models of F-18 have VHF radio and the SR had it added in the early '80s. I suppose for fighters it's a little less important to be able to talk with everyone and their brother as they wouldn't visit such a wide variety of fields.

 

Mark- For most AF fighters, visits were pretty much limited to airfields with barriers (actually cables, BAK 9/12/14 etc) and 8000' or so runways. The fourth generation fighters were fitted with UHFVHF, not sure what the Navy carried on earlier fighters. Solid state components made it much easier for later fighters to carry both VHF and UHF without having to worry so much about the heat the LRUs generated. Plus cooling was much improved on fourth generation fighters.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

I know Warmington very well, it's a nice village. I encounter a few USAF guys around here through work who are at Lakenheath or Mildenhall and my brother plays ice hockey with a few of them.

 

Zo- Nice area and nice village. My favorite is still the Plough at Rede, just south of Bury St Edmunds. Not too many Yanks. Kept an insider secret.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

What an historic place that is for WW2 8th AF crews who were stationed there. Wasn't the 100th Bomb Group there? And others. I can't recall right now...too much after dinner wine.
Switches

 

That's not really in my local area but there are some very nice villages out that way, I work out there sometimes. I am a few miles from where Otter was living in a place called Peterborough.

 

Going to Peterborough was like going to the big city for shopping, sights etc. and you had to go through the big round-a-bout, I picked up driving a rt side driver pretty quick and driving on the Lt side of the road, but turning around messed with me sometimes, we started off in a small place in Oundle then moved to Warmington into a 400 year old place with an excellent rear garden, about that time the USAF utility uniform changed to camouflage and I was in the back garden when the girls came out to call for me and I was only standing like 10ft from them and they got startled when I answered them so close, LOL, Otter

 

LOL

 

There was a pretty good documentary on the SR-71 the other night. 'Great Planes' on the military channel. The host talked with 2 former pilots, 1 of them being the last guy ever to eject from a Blackbird. There was a little about the U2 and its role is early US recon planes.....

 

Missed it by 6. It was the 94th BG.