John,

I second your point about needing to understand the basic principles.

Later, when flying with newbie B/Ns (and an occasional weak "old guy") in
the A-6, I could often sense well ahead of time when things weren't going
quite right, and had to make use of the planned manual backup. Then there
are the times when rolling in for a CCIP or General Boresight attack, a
press on the Attack button decided to cause general hate & discontent in the
computer, and a quick slap of the gunsight button to Manual allowed a good
hit in spite of it.

Brings back many memories of the A-6A and its squirrelly AN/ASQ-61 computer.
In this machine that sense of "sense" you mentioned was often a lifesaver.
An experienced and coordinated pilot-B/N crew could often tell pretty
quickly how well the Q-61 was going to hold together, and (as you said)
would have a backup for the all-too-frequent times when things turned to
worms. (Most B/Ns of that era - myself included - had tighter degraded
system CEPs than full-system ones.)

The OB-16 low-level route (through the eastern Oregon canyons) was a good
test of the team and machine. How you both felt about the "tightness" of
the system determined how low into the canyons you went - if at all.

Owl sends.
--
Mike Kanze

"Owl", B/N
A-6A, A-6B (PAT ARM), KA-6D

436 Greenbrier Road
Half Moon Bay, California 94019-2259
USA

650-726-7890

"Friends don't let friends take home ugly men."
- Women's restroom, Starboard, Dewey Beach, DE, USA

"Beauty is only a light switch away."
- Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA


"John R Weiss" wrote in message
news:ZQemb.18835$Fm2.9908@attbi_s04...
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