Warbird Information Exchange

That must be the one, guys. All I saw mainly was rear end view through a red cloud of a four engine prop job on a brief photo clip. I goofed here too. I spent the time looking for the tail # instead of i.d. ing the a/c type.

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"I love the smell of 100LL in the morning."

There was a little activity out of Redmond this week due to a lightning caused fire on Black Butte near the town of Sisters,Oregon.I took a few pictures of the P-2's on the ramp at Redmond today.

N531BA is C-130A 56-0531 (182-3139) do not have her unit history but pretty sure she was with 463/483 TCW (Ardmore/Dyess/SewardAFB) the the Rhodie's at the end. APG85 got anything on this beautiful lady?

Thanks for the Herc photos!

Great shots Larry. Those Neptunes look awesome.
Robbie

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Fly Fast Make Noise!

Larry,

I will be in Sunriver in two weeks. Are you going to be around Redmond at that time?

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S.

I was wondering, [and you guys on this thread i was thinking would be the guys to ask] how come no one ever used the Lockheed Constellation as a fire bomber? thanks

It might get interesting this year with the State of Oregon contracts for Butler's DC-7's.Tanker 66 went on duty in Redmond last week (July 7th,I think) and hadn't flown until yesterday (July 11th).Normally,the DC-7's stay in Oregon,but T66 went to a fire in Washington yesterday and took a reload out of the Moses Lake Tanker Base and dropped it on that same fire on the way back to Redmond.The State of Oregon has an agreement with the State of Washington (and the State of California) for us to work on state fires across the border,but it's very unusual for us to actually do so.Tanker 66 also took a couple of loads to a State fire in Northeast Oregon late in the day.

Tanker 05 and Tanker 55 also went to the fire in Washington yesterday and returned to Redmond last night.Tanker 45 and Tanker 07 were both on day off at Redmond yesterday.Tanker 21 (a P-3) ended up replacing T66 at Moses Lake and is still at Moses today.I took a few pictures at Redmond this morning of the tankers with retardant stuck to their bellies.The light wasn't the best for taking pictures from my favorite spot on top of the retardant tanks,but the shots facing west or south turned out okay.Also,for the330thbg,I'm supposed to go on duty with T62 in Medford on Wednesday (July 15th) and will be based there until the end of September.That said,there's no telling whetether T62 might end up in Remond for one reason or another during the contract period.

For tex-fan concerning the lack of Connies as tankers.I think that part of the reason had to do with available airframes for the right price (very cheap) at the right time (mid 1970's).A couple of other factors may have been the requirement for a flight engineer and a reputation of Connies being a bit of a maintenace hog vs the simpler Douglas DC-6 and DC-7.In the Douglas airplanes,the engineer just had a jump seat between and slightly behind the pilots,so the important engine and system controls are available to the pilots.In the Connie,there's a dedicated engineer position well behind and to the right of the flight deck that contains a number of controls that are not available to the pilots.

We flew Tanker 62 to Medford yesterday and I snapped a couple of shots of the panel in cruise.

Someone didn't synch the props....

Great pics as always Larry. Good to see that you guys are at least getting a little time in the air.

For Jack and Larry,
I saw Jack's post from Apr 2008 about a "Cal" who used to fly for the 474th FG and was shot down and taken POW. Well, my interest piqued when I saw the good old 474th mentioned. Can you tell me who "Cal" was. I am sure I know his story, just need to know his name. I may have further details for you.
Cheers, Gary Koch

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474th Fighter Group (WWII) Historian

CAPFlyer is correct on the prop indications not matching between the pairs.We've had that problem with Tanker 62 for about the last 15 years.If you match up all of the tach indications the props sound like a squadron of Spitfires.We've tried to locate the source of the problem without success,so the procedure that I use is to set the desired RPM using the #1 and 2 tach.The synch box will usually get all 4 props pretty close.If punching the Resynch button a few times doesn't get them perfectly synched we just synch them by ear.We also sych pairs by using the prop shadows when the light is in the right place.That's a trick that I learned in my B-17 days.Of course,it doesn't work for synching #3 and 4 to #1 and 2,but it's a neat trick.



For Gary,

The founder and namesake of Butler Aircraft was Calvin J. Butler who was a Captain at the time that he was shot down in a P-38 and captured with severe injuries from a low altitude bale out.He listed Redmond,Oregon as his home of record at the time and for the rest of his life.

Larry,

Thanks for the enlightening information about why the props aren't synched numerically. My (fairly uneducated) thought on the matter would be that maybe the 3/4 RPM combo gauge is out of calibration if the master synch mechanism is doing a decent job of synching them or you've done the sync by ear and they sound right.

I do like the idea of using the prop shadows too to make them work. In Flight Simulator at least you can synchronize all 4 engines by their prop shadow, but that's cheating.

in the B-29's the FE would shine out with an Aldis Lamp at night to synch them..,

hey.., whatever works!!!!!

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S.

In FIFI, we use the sync tach to get #2 and #3 pretty well synched together and then use the shadows to sync #1 to #2 and the same for #3 to #4. The shadow technique works quite well. Of course, sitting backwards makes it easier to see the props as well.

And for a bit of worthless trivia here......the "navigator's window" on the left side of the B-29 isn't really for the navigator at all. It's strategically placed there so the Flight Engineer can see the exact spot that the #1 and #2 propellers overlap, making it possible to see the shadows for prop synching.

Gary

Hi Larry,
I did a little digging on Butler to satisfy my curiosity when I could not find his name in my 474th FG records. It turns out Butler was a P-38 pilot in the 435th FS of the 479th FG. He was shot down in P-38J-15-LO, serial number 44-23168, coded J2-F, on 17 June 1944 near Themericourt, France. He was captured by elements of the 2nd SS and sent to the infamous Luftwaffe hospital at Paris-Clichy. His Missing Aircrew Report Number is 5965. Thought you might be interested.

Cheers, Gary Koch

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474th Fighter Group (WWII) Historian