Cougar "one-five" revisited

[Daveroo]

been hearing cougar one-five and one-four on 125.400mzh this morning,,finally got to ear some of the traffic,"one-five" said he was "off beale and was going to do a wide 360,then over sacramento,,then back over into beale airspace to do 360s while they calibrate equipment"....


soooo....im going to assume they are the MC-12W of the 427th based at beale..its just a guess...but i doubt they are the U2s and why would a T38 need to do 360s and calibrate equipment?

[Roadburner440]

I will explain. Someone who works on fixed wings can come and correct me if need be, but the H-60 had a similar modification done recently..

Older aircraft (H-60's included) came with standard gyroscope systems, and they took a tremendous amount of time to fine tune them during the yearly calibration. You were outside in the heat with a diesel generator hooked up in the middle of nowhere on what we call the "compass row" that you parked the aircraft on. It was just a line facing North. Then you would literally hook up all kinds of equipment, and "swing" & fine tune the gyro's. Then you would make the compass card and place it in the aircraft (you can see this card in some FSX aircraft, and the cards are a standard feature in real life to let you know what gyro heading to fly to fly X heading)... We still do this same process for the wet (backup) compass.

A few years ago they upgraded all the old H-60's to this new laser ring gyroscope system, and removed all of the boxes that was involved with the older stuff. So now you no longer have to do the process... Just once a year you send up to pilots, but it in cal mode, and fly a circle. The pilots write down the numbers, we create the card, and boom you are done! Really makes for a painless process, and it does not take the aircraft off the flight schedule for an entire day.

I imagine the T-38's have this same upgrade, and that is why they were out there flying a 360 degree circle. In a helicopter we just do a circle in pattern, but for the jet I imagine you need permission since you need a larger area to do a circle. Not to mention there are certain parameters (speed, bank angle, etc) that you must follow during the process. Piece of cake though.

[Victory103]

I do agree with RR's assessment as we in the UH-60 have a new digital AHRS now, making compass swings a thing of the past. I actually believe they are calibrating mission systems in the back of the aircraft. Army RC-12's will fly up to Sacramento as well for testing, but normally use a "Rail" callsign.

Dave, is this on your own scanner or LiveATC?

[Daveroo]

good old bearcat ( radioshack) scanner...it has the trunk tracking on it...but ive never gotten that to work correctly...i have a antena mounted on a 30 foot pole in the back yard,i cant hear fire dispatchers from morgan hill to shasta,and almost any northern california airport..