Page 34 - Volume 15 Number 1

32 • ­TWIN & TURBINE JANUARY 2011
From the Flight Deck by Kevin R. Dingman
Passing Gas
I’ve done this before, although I wish it was a KC-10. Once you hook up to one of those monsters, the darned thing pulls and pushes you into position. The rising sun is exactly centered on the bottom fuselage line of the KC-135, which is right where the director lights are. If I put my visor down, it’s too dark, if I raise it up, it’s too bright. OK, I’ll just fly into the position that looks about right.
I’ve done this dozens of times before in all kinds weather, bumpy, day, night, heavy, and light. How hard can it be? I am tired already; how am I going to make it across the pond? I remembered to open the A-R (air refueling) door, didn’t I? The boom operator would have said something by now if I’d forgotten, right?
We’ve just gone “feet wet” somewhere near New York City. That’s military talk for the civilian version of “coast out” – headed out to sea. Me and 11 other F-16’s are headed for Italy. A few hours ago we left Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas in the middle of the night. We’ve all refueled three or four times already tonight before we got to the coast.
Not that we needed fuel. The drill is that you refuel almost continuously. There are 12 of us in three separate four-ship formations. It takes about 50 minutes to refuel us all. So you get a break of about an hour between refueling. You refuel often so as to always be nearly full. That way, if your turn comes to refuel and you or the tanker malfunction and you can’t get your gas, you have lots of fuel to divert.
It’s my turn on the KC-135 tanker and the sun is in a really bad spot.
Two’s pre-contact. Roger cleared to contact. I have contact. Roger, Two’s contact....taking fuel.
And so it goes; all night and into the next morning.
Two’s got 2,500 pounds... disconnect. Roger, cleared to disconnect. Two, your (A-R) door is closed, you’re cleared off. Roger, cleared off.
Back to my four-ship way out off the right wing of the tanker. This one by New York was a pain though, thanks to the sun.
I Don’t Need
No Stinkin’ Director Lights
Normally, you have a set of director lights on the belly of the tanker. One row of lights tells you to go up or down. The second row tells you to move forward or aft. Once you’re in the correct position, the boomer actually flies the refueling boom into your air-refueling receptacle. The boom has a set of wings the boomer operates with a joystick.
On the F-16 the refueling receptacle is about eight feet behind your head on the spine of the jet. This morning the tankers director lights were totally obscured by the rising sun. Hey, I’m a fighter pilot; I don’t need no stinkin’ director lights. All 12 of us take our gas and the KC-135 peels off to go home. We pick up a fresh tanker that will take us across the Atlantic.
Once you finish your turn on the tanker you have some personal time, like I said, about an hour. What’s to do, you say? Well, you’re in a single-seat fighter with almost no room. About like Mercury 7. You still need to do all the normal guy
Four-ship of 474th Tactical Fighter Wing F-16’s near Nellis AFB, Nev.
stuff. You know, stretch, scratch, eat, and, ah-hum...pee. The dinner the Flight Surgeon arranges for us before a trip like this is officially “low bulk.” Supposedly that means you shouldn’t have to pooh. But you have to stay hydrated. So not only did you drink a bunch before flight, but you have four or five containers of water and juice to consume on the trip as well. So yes, you have to pee.
It’s September so the ocean water temperatures require we take precautions. We’re all wearing a survival suit that’s very...restrictive; to say the least. This is in addition to the g-suit and parachute harness. So the process of “going” could be a problem. I opted for the easy way out, however. Back in Vegas I took the Flight Doc’s advice and elected to attach what is basically a sticky condom with a tube that goes into a plastic bag. Way easier than trying to “whip it out” as Sheriff Bart would say in Blazing Saddles. The difficult part is convincing yourself to “let go” when it’s time. You are, after all, fully clothed. By the time you’ve filled that square and had a little snack, you have a few minutes to listen to some music. And before you know it, it’s tanker time again.
You Could Do It
For those of you that have never done the formation-flying thing, it’s not as hard as some might tell you. The folks that like to make it sound difficult say: “Well, you’re in two jets, 25,000 feet in the air, flying at over 400 miles per hour only a couple feet away from each other.”