Taking David and Mick's B-47 out for a spin. Part 1. - Page 2
Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12
Results 26 to 43 of 43

Thread: Taking David and Mick's B-47 out for a spin. Part 1.

  1. #26
    Hi All

    No strobe lights!

    However in about 1959 and 1960 there was a modification done on all B-47's (at least at Mcconnell AFB) to install rotating beacons on the top of the vertical stabilizer and on the bottom just forward of the front landing gear wheel well. The rotating beacons of that time consisted of two light bulbs positioned 180 degrees apart that rotated by an electric motor and gears inside of a red cover.

    If it worked like the one attached? It did it did

    I think that now days what was a rotating beacon has been replaced by a red strobe light and most people refer to them as strobe lights weather or not they are in fact strobes

    I think Bob was only correcting the location of the aft beacon to correspond to the model light

    David
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails light.jpg  
    Last edited by this4dave2; September 15th, 2022 at 08:10.

  2. #27
    I wrote "strobe lights" because, well, modern times.
    They are supposed to be rotating beacons and I have tried some beacon mods in the past, but they all look like strobes in FS.
    Anyone have any good candidates for red rotating beacons?

    BTW, sorry if that last post ran a little long (again) but I wanted to show how to make the VC nightlights match with the 2D panel.

    One thing I forgot to include was how I positioned the VC lights, believe it or not I hit those locations on the first try.
    The key is to find the [Views] section in the Aircraft.cfg file and use the "eyepoint" values as a "ballpark" location.
    I then moved the first VC light slightly lower and slightly behind the "eyepoint" and tested it out. For the back seat, I used the same numbers but moved it 3 or 4 feet back.
    The back seat is purely cosmetic for external views. I thought about adding a third light for "George" on the lower deck. maybe even making it "antique yellow" or green, but I was concerned about getting "light leaks" in the VC view. Maybe somewhere down the road?

    Oh, you can use that process I ran through in my last post to make your own VC/cockpit lights. Just play around with those three RGB digits in the fx file.

  3. #28
    SOH-CM-2024 Mick's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    Easthampton, Mass., U.S.A.
    Age
    76
    Posts
    3,415
    Yes, modern times indeed!

    Many times I’ve growled at the TV, “That’s not a strobe!” as some clueless narrator refers to a beacon or just a light that just sits there glowing motionless as a strobe.

  4. #29
    I get a kick out of watching an old "period" TV show or movie where a police car or fire engine screams past, with its modern Whalen siren.

  5. #30
    Most of you have probably seen this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2iU_VdHD3M

    Its a handy prep video for flying the B-47 (and the B-52), basically any of the "flat fliers".

    Things to remember-

    -Stall speed is always dependent on gross weight. It pays to make your own speed vs weight graph and keep it handy. * Don't forget to set your trim for take off and landing, this setting will depend on gross weight. You don't want to use trim to compensate for a bad approach, rather set the trim first and THEN "fly into" your approach.

    -NEVER land on the front wheels first. The B-47 does best when the forward and rear main gear touch at the same time. For the B-52, try to touch the rears down one or two seconds before the fronts. This is why IT IS CRITICAL to center the pitch and bank display (ie, "the ball" ) on David and Mick's B-47 prior to take off.

    -Memorizing weights, speeds, and procedures is great BUT it doesn't replace a good "seat of the pants" feel for the plane. The only way to get there is to build experience over time. This is even more critical when flying Alphasim's B-52 and the B-47 is a great "intro" plane. Once you build that level of experience, you'll want to maintain it and these types of aircraft make for a fun time if you want to try flying in "career mode".**

    -ALWAYS take off and land using full flaps.

    -You really want to use a Real Weather program for these aircraft. Minot AFB (the home of the Variable Crosswinds) might be bleak but it WILL make you into a better pilot.



    *- I can show you how to make your own Speed VS Weight (and Trim) graph using a ruler and a 3X5 index card. There is NO WAY you will be able to memorize what speed you need to take off and land at a given weight. The graph makes this a LOT easier, just keep it near your controllers and remember to USE it.

    **- You'll want to fly a full training mission (including Flight Planning) each week unless you're on Alert Duty which is a whole 'nother barrel of fish. Alert Duty may be a lot more than you thought it was. There's more to it than just being locked up in the alert shack for a week.

  6. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by Sbob View Post
    Most of you have probably seen this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2iU_VdHD3M

    Its a handy prep video for flying the B-47 (and the B-52), basically any of the "flat fliers".

    Things to remember-

    -Stall speed is always dependent on gross weight. It pays to make your own speed vs weight graph and keep it handy. * Don't forget to set your trim for take off and landing, this setting will depend on gross weight. You don't want to use trim to compensate for a bad approach, rather set the trim first and THEN "fly into" your approach.

    -NEVER land on the front wheels first. The B-47 does best when the forward and rear main gear touch at the same time. For the B-52, try to touch the rears down one or two seconds before the fronts. This is why IT IS CRITICAL to center the pitch and bank display (ie, "the ball" ) on David and Mick's B-47 prior to take off.

    -Memorizing weights, speeds, and procedures is great BUT it doesn't replace a good "seat of the pants" feel for the plane. The only way to get there is to build experience over time. This is even more critical when flying Alphasim's B-52 and the B-47 is a great "intro" plane. Once you build that level of experience, you'll want to maintain it and these types of aircraft make for a fun time if you want to try flying in "career mode".**

    -ALWAYS take off and land using full flaps.

    -You really want to use a Real Weather program for these aircraft. Minot AFB (the home of the Variable Crosswinds) might be bleak but it WILL make you into a better pilot.



    *- I can show you how to make your own Speed VS Weight (and Trim) graph using a ruler and a 3X5 index card. There is NO WAY you will be able to memorize what speed you need to take off and land at a given weight. The graph makes this a LOT easier, just keep it near your controllers and remember to USE it.

    **- You'll want to fly a full training mission (including Flight Planning) each week unless you're on Alert Duty which is a whole 'nother barrel of fish. Alert Duty may be a lot more than you thought it was. There's more to it than just being locked up in the alert shack for a week.
    Oooh, please?

    Going to download Minot AFB right now; I need all the practice I can get! Plus, I need a Northern AFB that's close enough to Home that I can fly my F-20 to and fro without reaching BINGO Fuel!

  7. #32
    Ehhhh....... Are you SURE your heart is set on Minot? Ellsworth AFB (KRCA) might be a better fit for what you're looking for and MAIW also did a good job on it.

    The MAIW Minot scenery looks good but I have a bone (and a half) to pick over how MAIW modeled the AI traffic, especially with the Alert Area/Christmas Tree parking. That part of the base is supposed to be very secure and open only to the Alert crews and folks with M-16s on their shoulders. To put it another way, if you see B-52s taxing out of the Alert Area and taking off, its going to be a VERY rough day. If they modeled the Alert Area with only a couple of bombers and made them out of static scenery, it would be much more accurate.


    If you're interested in the old Alphasim B-52s, be aware that its a much bigger commitment compared to most FS aircraft. I would be more than happy to teach you but if you're looking for something to zoom around in a couple of times each year, the B-52 probably isn't it. To put this in perspective, I logged over three hundred flight hours with the B-52 in FS2002 before it burned me out. It took the better part of one hundred flight hours before it felt like I knew what I was doing. Its a challenge, but it feels great when you can hit all of your waypoints within 20 seconds of what you planned and grease those touch-and-gos and landings on a consistent basis.

    If you're asking about the speed vs weight chart for the B-47, I don't have one...yet. It takes time to put one together, you basically figure out the stalling speed (the hard way) for different weights and with the gear up, gear down, flaps up, and flaps down. You can also add in the best trim setting at different weights and stuff like Max take-off weight and Max landing weight. I'll crank one out and post it in this thread.

    For the B-52 stuff, I'll start another thread and I promise it WILL be a p###er.

    You'll start out at Mather AFB learning how to produce a planned flight using the old ACS-GPS gauge. From now on, I'll refer to this as the "Hey, Nav??" gauge and it still works fine in Win 7 to Win 10/11. This is the best "GPS" I've found for this type of flying. Your training flights at Mather will be in the old Tin Mouse T-43 (737-200) where you'll really start to shine using your "Hey, Nav??" gauge and your wits. After that, its off to Castle AFB just to the north and Alpha's B-52G (the G is the best model to learn in, its slightly more complicated/P.I.T.A. than the H model). B-52 Ground School is where you'll "unconbobulate" the snake pit of the panel folders (there's a LOT of stuff in the panel.cfg files you really don't need) while adding the "Hey, Nav??" gauge plus some other goodies. You'll finish Ground School learning how to taxi the beast (and its a handful) before starting your first training flights. Along the way, you'll learn about what SAC expects from you and your crew mates and then you'll pick a squadron and base to fly with based on which model (G or H) you want to fly.

    Let me back up a second. If one or more of you are interested, I'll gladly teach you. This WILL be a pain for both of us, but I think its worth it. If no one's interested, that's cool. Just please, don't go into this half ###ed. Unless you can commit, it will be a waste of time for both of us.

    Eventually, you will NEED to become combat rated. I've pieced this stuff together from unclassified and de-classified sources and some of it can be surprising. You'll be assigned one or two primary SIOP targets plus some secondary's and you'll need to brief a SAC general officer about each part of these missions. If you want to talk to an expert about these targets, you'll need to get good at talking to yourself. YOU are the expert when it comes to your assigned targets. There is a lot of latitude in how you get there, as long as you get there ON TIME.

    How about weps files and effects? I have them. In FS2002 they work as advertised, in FS2004 you're on your own (FS2004 was "declawed" in terms of combat effects).
    If you're interested and serious, send me a PM here. Again, if no one's interested, that's cool.

  8. #33
    SOH-CM-2023
    Join Date
    Jul 2005
    Location
    Bristol, Vermont, United States
    Age
    57
    Posts
    1,362
    Just a correction to the used bases. Platsburgh (KPBG) is in New York, Not Vermont (It is close however, just across Lake Champlain.) Vermont hosted two Atlas F silos attached to Platsburgh when they were in service.

    The only Military aircraft in VT at that time were the USAF F-86D's and later F-102's at Ethan Allen AFB (A ramp with alert hangars attached to Burlington International Airport (KBTV) and the VT Air Guard flying F-94's and later F-89's on the same exact mission as the Regular AF guys. So they closed Ethan Allan and moved the 102's across the airport to the Guard.

    VT Guard flew the 102 until the early 70's and switched to the EB-57 Canberra. About 78' ish they got fighters again, flying the D model F-4 Phantom.

    The Phantoms were replaced by the ADF version of the F-16A and later moved to the F-16C/D.

    The F-16's went away in late 2018 and VT re-equipped with the F-35A (First Guard unit to get them) in 2019.


    Meanwhile, Platsburgh flew the B-47's until they were phased out and replaced with the FB-111A, until that airframe went away. They also had a wing of KC-135's from the B-47 days that were there until BRAC closed Platsburgh in the 90's.
    You can't take the sky from me...

  9. #34
    SOH-CM-2024 Mick's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    Easthampton, Mass., U.S.A.
    Age
    76
    Posts
    3,415
    Brian, your post brought back some pleasant memories. I used to spend a lot of time on Lake George through the seventies, eighties and nineties, and planes from Plattsburgh and Burlington/Ethan Allen liked to make very low runs up the lake. Well, I suppose it was the pilots who liked it, not the planes.

    I guess they did their antics it over Lake George because if they did it on Champlain they’d visible to eyes they’d rather not be seen by.

    I recall standing on an island in the middle of the lake and watching a B-52 coming at us so low that as it approached us it had to pull up to clear the trees. Another time, on another island, a C-5 came over so low that we could read the stenciling on the nose gear doors. Many an ANG F-102, B-57, F-4 and various presumably transient types gave us brief, impromptu air shows before they jumped the pass into the Champlain valley and on to Plattsburgh or Burlington. Great fun!

  10. #35
    Sbob,

    Everything you post is a gold mine of information and insight, and it's very much appreciated. As my self imposed re-training in proper Landing attitude is slowly bearing fruit and as the Landing process becomes easier, I am looking forward to delving into flying larger birds like the Stratojet. Watching old movies like Strategic Air Command and A Gathering of Eagles helps to feed that desire as well!

    I did load Ellsworth AFB along with Minot... all part of populating my FS World with places to takeoff and land from!

    Cheers!

  11. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian_Gladden View Post
    Just a correction to the used bases. Platsburgh (KPBG) is in New York, Not Vermont (It is close however, just across Lake Champlain.) Vermont hosted two Atlas F silos attached to Platsburgh when they were in service.

    The only Military aircraft in VT at that time were the USAF F-86D's and later F-102's at Ethan Allen AFB (A ramp with alert hangars attached to Burlington International Airport (KBTV) and the VT Air Guard flying F-94's and later F-89's on the same exact mission as the Regular AF guys. So they closed Ethan Allan and moved the 102's across the airport to the Guard.

    VT Guard flew the 102 until the early 70's and switched to the EB-57 Canberra. About 78' ish they got fighters again, flying the D model F-4 Phantom.

    The Phantoms were replaced by the ADF version of the F-16A and later moved to the F-16C/D.

    The F-16's went away in late 2018 and VT re-equipped with the F-35A (First Guard unit to get them) in 2019.


    Meanwhile, Platsburgh flew the B-47's until they were phased out and replaced with the FB-111A, until that airframe went away. They also had a wing of KC-135's from the B-47 days that were there until BRAC closed Platsburgh in the 90's.
    Now, there's another name I've seen on the forums over the years.

    Yeah, I was a little deceptive about Plattsburg because it always felt (to me) that it was a part of Vermont more than New York state.

    Plattsburg and Pease hid some very quiet history. Due to the FB-111's avionics, those two bases had a lock on SAC's (mostly) annual "Bomb Comp" trophies back in the 1970's and 80's. It wasn't until the B-52s got a digital upgrade to their radar that the FB's got pushed down in the stack.

    I've mentioned before that I grew up really close to the IP for the Ashland Bomb Plot in northern Maine. I was always seeing FB's from the 380th BW and the 509th out of Pease flying low and fast. I'm pretty sure the 380th owes me a couple of deer. I would be out hunting when all of sudden this shadow would fly over me, THEN the sound would hit and there wouldn't be any furry creatures within 100 acres. At the very least, they owe me a couple of loads of laundry. Those planes had a red stripe on the tail.

    Plattsburg and Loring were hit really hard by the BRAC in the early 1990's. I can relate, I was serving on an attack sub and a lot us wound up wondering what we would be doing when we became civilians, again. I know Loring (and most of northern Maine) got hit really hard and never recovered.



  12. #37
    SOH-CM-2023
    Join Date
    Jul 2005
    Location
    Bristol, Vermont, United States
    Age
    57
    Posts
    1,362
    Due to the FB-111's avionics, those two bases had a lock on SAC's (mostly) annual "Bomb Comp" trophies back in the 1970's and 80's. It wasn't until the B-52s got a digital upgrade to their radar that the FB's got pushed down in the stack.
    I've mentioned before that I grew up really close to the IP for the Ashland Bomb Plot in northern Maine. I was always seeing FB's from the 380th BW and the 509th out of Pease flying low and fast. I'm pretty sure the 380th owes me a couple of deer. I would be out hunting when all of sudden this shadow would fly over me, THEN the sound would hit and there wouldn't be any furry creatures within 100 acres. At the very least, they owe me a couple of loads of laundry. Those planes had a red stripe on the tail.

    I know of three Platsburgh 111's that went down on the run up there. Usually on the US Route 2 corridor from Montpelier up past ST. Johnsbury. Last one I remember going in, was in the early 90's. I recall seeing the high speed convoy of USAF security police escorted by the VT State Police headed from Plats to the crash site in Concord VT as they went by my work.

    Two were engine explosions I believe (Gotta love the GE TF-30) and another was one wing didn't swing back with the other causing a very rapid roll rate. All crew go out safe.

    A friend of mine hunts in an area of Plainfield VT and told me there is still B-52 landing gear in the woods from one that had the crew bail out over the Adirondacks in NY and the the aircraft continued to fly for a while until crashing in the fields of Vermont https://newenglandaviationhistory.co...nt-b-52-crash/
    You can't take the sky from me...

  13. #38
    SOH-CM-2023
    Join Date
    Jul 2005
    Location
    Bristol, Vermont, United States
    Age
    57
    Posts
    1,362
    This is the Facebook page for a bunch of volunteers that are slowly restoring the two gate guards at the old Platsburgh AFB

    https://www.facebook.com/Plattsburghaircraftrestoration
    You can't take the sky from me...

  14. #39
    You can fly that route.

    It was known as IR800 and it takes you from the mid-coast up to Aroostook County in northern Maine. There's also an older version of the "oil burner" route but they are mostly the same Ashland and Ft. Drum bombing plots.

    Like I wrote, I grew up really close to the IP for Ashland. The original "target" was a paper mill which is still there. They later changed it to an "offset/no-show" target in the woods.
    As you fly north and get close to the IP, you'll notice that you're flying between two large lakes. The one on the left is Lake Mattawaumkeag and the one on the right is Pleasant Pond.

    You should cross a road just before you get to the IP, that's Route 1. On the right is a small town named Oakfield and on the left you'll find another town named Island Falls (if you updated your scenery mesh).

    I think the original IP was May Mountain? Calling it a mountain is a little brash, its more like a tall hill.

    When you fly these IR/Oil Burner/STRC routes, ALWAYS look for the train tracks. The Air Force kept the MSQ radar and the plotting team in a box car.

  15. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by ViperPilot2 View Post
    Sbob,

    Everything you post is a gold mine of information and insight, and it's very much appreciated. As my self imposed re-training in proper Landing attitude is slowly bearing fruit and as the Landing process becomes easier, I am looking forward to delving into flying larger birds like the Stratojet. Watching old movies like Strategic Air Command and A Gathering of Eagles helps to feed that desire as well!

    I did load Ellsworth AFB along with Minot... all part of populating my FS World with places to takeoff and land from!

    Cheers!

    Aw, pshaw..
    Its just an almost slave-ish devotion to some old computer games.

    What's tough with these "flat fliers" is getting used to using the throttles to control your decent rate and NOT your stick/yoke.
    It takes a while to get in the groove and it never really feels "right". You just have to get used to it.
    Wait until you get into flying low and fast. It takes some fortitude (or a lot of beer) once you put large wings into "ground effect" and you have to push the yoke almost into the inst. panel to control your altitude.

    One thing about Ellsworth, if you ever want to try one of those "Looking Glass" flights in an EC-135.. They didn't fly ONLY out of Offut.
    HJG has a nice EC-135 texture set for an EC based at Ellsworth. I haven't really dug into it, but I think almost half of those flights were based out of Ellsworth? There was ALWAYS one of those planes in the air for something like 40 consecutive years. Where they flew isn't documented, but its easy to figure out.

  16. #41
    Quote Originally Posted by Sbob View Post
    Aw, pshaw..
    Its just an almost slave-ish devotion to some old computer games.

    What's tough with these "flat fliers" is getting used to using the throttles to control your decent rate and NOT your stick/yoke.
    It takes a while to get in the groove and it never really feels "right". You just have to get used to it.
    Wait until you get into flying low and fast. It takes some fortitude (or a lot of beer) once you put large wings into "ground effect" and you have to push the yoke almost into the inst. panel to control your altitude.

    One thing about Ellsworth, if you ever want to try one of those "Looking Glass" flights in an EC-135.. They didn't fly ONLY out of Offut.
    HJG has a nice EC-135 texture set for an EC based at Ellsworth. I haven't really dug into it, but I think almost half of those flights were based out of Ellsworth? There was ALWAYS one of those planes in the air for something like 40 consecutive years. Where they flew isn't documented, but its easy to figure out.

    The first thing I thought of when I saw your latest Post was ALICE in the LOOKING GLASS plane from the film "By Dawn's Early Light"...

  17. #42
    Same thing. Those Looking Glass flights were mostly concerned with maintaining comms with the launch control centers of the ICBM silos in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana.
    The plane could also carry out the missile launches remotely if needed. The only conclusion I could figure out was that Looking Glass needed to stay close enough to all the control centers while also staying distant (for obvious reasons). Looking up the locations of the silos put Pierre, SD in about the right spot.

    One of my MAIW installs included an updated map overlay and there's an MOA (military operations area) located near Pierre that's now controlled by the SD ANG.
    It kinda gave me chills the first time I spotted it. That had to be the area they used.

  18. #43
    BTW, a long time ago and a couple of pages back, I mentioned George Carlin and his relationship with the B-47.

    He rarely talked about it, but here's an interview where he does:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtrXT79SP6k

    Skip to about the 12:30 point and you'll learn about George, Barksdale AFB, and the B-47 and it's K System.

Members who have read this thread: 2

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •