Osama.. sssssshhhh! The RC's are listening!

[Toad]

Eagl,

They only let me play with the yoke, rudders and throttle type stuff.  

Started in <cough> '75 as a co-pilot, left in '80 as an instructor.

But I did have more than a little idea of what was done in the back of the bus.

An amazing airplane for it's time. I got to fly a few sorties on the prototypes of what became the RC-135W just before I left. I never actually flew an "official" W; they were standardized after I got out.

I think though that a crossbreed JSTARS/RC on a 767 airframe would be the ideal platform. I'm sure it's an idea that has occurred to someone other than myself.

Hey, it's only money... and someone else's at that!

<Jeez, I sound like Tom Daschle there, don't I!>

[Hangtime]

"Crows" were guys on a diffrent career path.. more beeps and clicks, less stick and rudder.

[Hangtime]

Vipe.. those Marines were playing with an Aeroviornment R/C electric sailplane called 'Pointer'. I did a lot of work with that project and got quite a bit of stick time on every prototype.

   

You would be stunned to learn the capabilites of some of these platforms nowadays..  A Pointer is dead silent; climbs at 2200 fpm, can stay up for more than two hours and in IR mode at night can provide a IR picture of a bad guys footsteps from up to 5 miles away from the recon squad thats operating it. It's the only drone platfrom designed to be operated right from a battlfield position, flown from either of the 'aboard' cameras, use pre-programmed route and station keeping or be operated and landed via conventional eyeball from the ground R/C mode. The software overlays are truly exquiste.. and it's a pretty good sailplane too. I thermaled one at Dugway for 6 hours some years back.  

In and of themselves they are but a part of the battlefield picture.. but the guys that have 'em have an immense edge over the guys that don't.

[Toad]

"Crow" is a term the pilots and navs used in reference to Electronic Warfare Officers... which the EWO's hated. (So that's why we called 'em "crows".)

The EWO's referred to themselves as "Ravens", derived from the squadron patch of the 343SRS. Somehow, they thought "raven" had much more cachet than "crow".   (Initially, there was only the 343rd and pilots, navs and crows were in it. When the outfit got larger, the pilots and navs were split off into the 38th SRS.)


Note the sleepy looking crow..

 

[ 12-19-2001: Message edited by: Toad ]