Aviation is boring

[BlueStar 323]

8 minutes ago, Chock said:

the Loach which was there (Hughes OH-6 Cayuse for the sticklers to proper nomenclature). He was telling me that their chopper was indeed an ex Vietnam War veteran which had in fact been shot down once whilst in service over there (a not uncommon fate for the type), although evidently not destroyed it would seem. It

It didn't take a lot to shoot one of them down especially if the rounds were anywhere near the engine compartment.  

blaustern

[Chock 17,769]

24 minutes ago, Bluestar said:

It didn't take a lot to shoot one of them down especially if the rounds were anywhere near the engine compartment.  

blaustern

Didn't help that they were actively use for fire recon missions either, deliberately trying to get shot at so the enemy would reveal their position; that and the fact they were usually flown by 20 year old kids who thought they were invincible, which certainly isn't the case when your armour is comprised of a big sheet of plexiglass lol.

[BlueStar 323]

2 hours ago, Chock said:

they were usually flown by 20 year old kids who thought they were invincible

They were not all 20 and they were reminded daily that they were not invincible.  The "6" was replaced by the "58" which wasn't better or worse, just different. There were a lot of Scout pilots that did a whole tour without getting shot down.  

2 hours ago, Chock said:

deliberately trying to get shot at ...

This is a misconception about the Scout mission in the Cav. 

I can assure you no one wants to get short at or draw fire.  

blaustern

[Chock 17,769]

10 hours ago, Bluestar said:

They were not all 20 and they were reminded daily that they were not invincible.

Never said they were all 20, but this was actually not far off the truth a lot of the time if you check the statistics, average age was in fact 23 years during the Vietnam War. Not too surprising when you check this out. An Official Department of Army announcement of requirements for training of Army Helicopter Aviators (Warrant Officers):

'Individual must not have reached his thirtieth birthday, and be not less than 20 years and 6 months of age at the time of application for training.'

10 hours ago, Bluestar said:

This is a misconception about the Scout mission in the Cav. 

I never mentioned the Air Cavalry, it's definitely a misconception that it was only the Air Cavalry which used helicopters in South East Asia (probably as a result of war movies where they always seem to want to put a crossed cavalry sword badge on the front of absolutely any Huey in a Vietnam War movie, as though Hueys of the Air Cavalry were the only helicopter units ever there lol).

The Hughes OH-6 Cayuse, and indeed all the other helicopter types in theatre, was used by all kinds of US Army units in Vietnam, not forgetting the ARVN used them too of course, and the CIA. The specific OH-6 I was talking about is a case in point: OH-6A 69-16011, which was manufactured in 1969 being number 470 off the production line. It served with the 'Red Hats', i.e. the 20th Transport Company at Cu Chi, being shot down from an altitude of about 100 feet whilst performing as part of a Pink Recon mission, it landed intact with one of the three crew members injured. It was temporarily repaired and flown to a safe area, but then sling loaded to a proper base where they determined an in-country repair to operational status was not possible so it returned to the US for a full repair at Hughes.

10 hours ago, Bluestar said:

I can assure you no one wants to get short at or draw fire.  

As anyone who has ever been shot at knows (including me, and I can assure everyone that it definitely is not fun lol), it's not really a case of 'wanting to', it's a case of that being the mission a lot of the time, unfortunately for the OH crews concerned, because of the terrain and tactics used by the NVA and the VC, that was the quite often only way to get enemies to reveal their position.

As I'm sure you know, the principal role in Vietnam for most observation helicopters was one of reconnaissance; this was quite often as part of a 'Pink Team'. A Pink Team comprised a White Unit (typically the OH-6 Cayuse, but also several other types) and a Red Unit (usually either a UH-1C Iroquois or an AH-1 Cobra). The White Unit would deliberately troll (more correctly at the time referred to as 'trawl' as in what a fishing boat does, but now almost universally referred to as troll courtesy of it being adopted by internet users who don't know the origins of the term) for fire by flying low so that any concealed enemy would reveal its position by opening fire, the OH crew would then either radio the position of the muzzle flashes or mark the position with smoke, then the Red Unit would engage the target. It's not a nice mission to be on, acting as bait, and as you say, nobody would really want to be doing that, but it is unfortunately sometimes what one is ordered to do when one has signed on that dotted line.

 

[BlueStar 323]

1 hour ago, Chock said:

if you check the statistics

Don't need to check the statistics, I spent two years in Vietnam flying in an assault helicopter company and the air cav. 

blaustern

[Chock 17,769]

2 hours ago, Bluestar said:

Don't need to check the statistics, I spent two years in Vietnam flying in an assault helicopter company and the air cav. 

blaustern

Yup, I'd gathered that and I'm very glad you were not one of the statistics. 

[BlueStar 323]

3 hours ago, Chock said:

Yup, I'd gathered that and I'm very glad you were not one of the statistics. 

Thanks Alan, I appreciate that. 

A really hard way to make a living and getting shot at takes all the fun out of flying. 

blaustern

[Lionel Mandrake 7]

[Chock]>Personally, I can't wait to see the movie 'From Da Nang to Fleetwood'<

MOL (Somerset acronym: Made Oi Larf)

It seems that I am among helicopterists. Helicopters are wonderful things and I am sure that it is not really true that they cannot actually fly.

Coincidentally I was at Middle Wallop a few days ago, impressing everybody by keeping the little ball in the middle of the turntable on the Scout trainer, until I had a funny turn and fell off the wretched thing.

For myself I remain strictly fixed wing, never having been able to master (e.g.) rolling a cigarette while riding a horse. In the words of the great Clint Eastwood:  "A man's got to know his own limitations."

 

 

[KTV 2]

If you're talking about flight sim aviation, then I have no comment. I don't get a lot of time to play around anymore due to my career in real-world aviation in a tiny country called New Zealand and it is far from boring. I don't enjoy that on most days I have to wake up at 3 a.m but once I'm in that lovely airbus, I have no complaints.

Just recently my company has been approved night arrivals and departures into a smaller field named Queenstown (NZQN) provided we fly the company's RNP AR app. This approach in itself is usually done mostly with the autopilot but the scenery (during the day) is stunning and can be quite daunting in the evening. 

Aviation is not boring, working in aviation is more of a pain in the butt... But I love it and would hate to be doing anything other than exploring my home country at 36,000 feet.

[Hansaspeed 18]

On 10/30/2017 at 1:54 PM, JYW said:

The challenges, itineraries and fun to be had by armchair pilots, are as varied as the armchair pilots themselves.

To fans of tecnological wonders like the 777, the thought of toddling along in a Tigermoth, keeping ones eye out for visual reference points would perhaps be as boring as driving through Chipping Norton in a 1958 Morris Minor. 

Horses for courses as they say. 

As a fellow X-Plane user, might I suggest that you would perhaps enjoy something along the lines of the fairly recently released DC-3 from Vskylabs.

http://store.x-plane.org/VSKYLABS-DC-3C-47-Flying-Lab-Project_p_660.html

It is not a 'study level' model but it's vintage offers the opportunity to make some seat of the pants, eyeball-reliant flights.

Cheers.

If we are going to discuss the DC3, there is a freeware version of the wonderful Manfred C47 for FSX and P3D readily converted to XP.

[Guest T7747BA]

If you truly wanna edge, I suggest you the old, but amazing, 747-200 RFP. That's where it all started for me.

It truly is an amazing aircraft. Very complex, frustrating and stressful to learn and command, of course (took me almost 2 months to learn all the procedures correctly). But once you get the heck out of it, and get yourself more and more familiar with all the checklists and manual procedures, it truly is a joy to fly.

It's probably one of the best classic real-life flying experiences brought into a simulator. You will really feel the massive tension of operating a 3-men machine all alone.  

 

 

 

[HighBypass 2,339]

OMG you did not literally re-post the whole original post from several months back without first reading the rest of this thought provoking & amusing thread??   Sorry.  One shouldn't be offended - I do like being a (virtual) child of the magenta and watch the world rolling by under the wings of my (insert favourite airliner), only taking over at about 2000 feet AGL on final. However, committing aviation by hand flying a smaller plane (or even the big stuff) is more demanding (and fun) when trying to keep things smooth and staying ahead of the plane, even in the sim.

This in no way is meant to demean all the hard work, dedication & training which a qualified pilot has in order to be allowed to dial another number into the autopilot, training which means they can take over when the airliner itself forgets how to fly...

[flyalways 5]

On 2017. 10. 30. at 10:41 PM, Lionel Mandrake said:

Now that got your attention, didn't it?

It's quite true, though. Aviation is boring. It promises, and works very hard to deliver, safe, predictable results - the minimum fuel used and the minimum gin spilled, as airline types put it. Aircraft older, and in some cases better qualified, than their pilots take off, fly to somewhere and land on it, untouched by human hand except possibly to dial another number into the autopilot.

And we seem happy to simulate this safe but uneventful state of affairs. Of course there are those who simulate fast jets and air combat - often unsuccessfully, in my view, as the lack of inertial feedback is far more obvious if one indulges in turns above rate 1.

Instrument training has always been the most satisfactory form of simulation because instrument flight is (or certainly ought to be) stately.

Unfortunately now it is also terminally dull thanks to the computer and GPS. In a twin-engined aircraft there is now little to do (in a single-engined one, of course, one spends all of one's spare time in gloomy contemplation of the harsh earth beneath, wondering where to forced-land).

Simulator programmers always try to be ahead of the game. For example, Denham (EGLD), where I trained, is a small and unpretentious little field just inside Heathrow's control zone, but is represented in X-Plane 11 as a major airport with all kinds of things it never had, still hasn't, and might never have. Therefore designers will doubtless be just as keen promptly to 'switch off' VORs and other traditional navaids provided in the simulation as budget-conscious aviation authorities are with the real ones.

While this is of course correct from the training point of view I have to say that pressing the 'Direct-To' button on a GPS - simulated or real - is pretty poor entertainment.

What I would like, and would be prepared to pay a reasonable price for, is an historical flight simulator, preferably based on X-plane or, if not, as good as.

For example, I should like to try flying at night around the USA (perhaps carrying the mail) in a suitable period aircraft like a YB-10, using only airway light-beacons and four-course 'A-N' radio ranges, assisted no doubt by a copy of Mr. Jeppesen's famous notebook.

Would this not be more difficult, more demanding, and therefore in general more fun?
 

 

Sorry, you makes me sound more boring. I skipped your paragraph.