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Hey Rocky
pulsarnc
Member Posts: 6,496 ✭✭✭✭
This is parked in a guys yard a ways down the road from me . He also has a huey sitting there .
cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of war.....
Comments
The guy is a Vietnam vet . It is part of a roadside museum he has built in his front yard. There are few more items but I don't have pics .
I wonder if he flew the Bird-dog or the Huey in Nam…
My guess is he may have been an Army artillery spotter. Army guys couldn't control Air Force airstrikes, only artillery and gunships. But otherwise, they flew "find 'em and kill 'em" missions just like we did.
I flew backseat with one or two of those guys on what were called "liaison" flights - so we could learn what the other guys did. That was with the 173rd Airborne Bd, which was a tough unit. Their pilots held up that reputation.
i dont ride in helicopters and i dont jump out of anything thats still flying.
I did the opposite. I had 20 sky-diving jumps in college before my ROTC commander told me that I was too valuable as a pilot candidate and to stop forthwith. Luckily, I never rode a parachute again - but I came damn close a few times.
If you have never done so, floating down under a nylon canopy is one of the most serene things you can imagine. It is glorious. Once you get past the terror of the drop and the opening, that is.
I made 5 static line jumps from a Cessna 172. Quite exciting, to crawl out that little door at 2,800 feet your left foot on a little peg, like a 10 inch long nail, 1/2 inch diameter, hanging from the strut with both hands, the right leg dangling in the air. My instructor yelling in my ear, "Now when you turn loose, you hit that arch and let me hear you count to six-one thousand!" When you hit six, if the chute hadn't opened, you were supposed to go for the reserve. He slapped me on the *, I turned loose from the strut and fell into space, curled up in a ball, I didn't manage an arch, and said "Jesus don't let me die, I promise I won't do this again help me Jesus!"
In a second, the chute opened.
Once that chute opened, it was a lot of fun. Very quiet up there at 2,500 feet.
I must have had my fingers crossed while talking to Jesus, because an hour later, I was back up there in the Cessna making my second jump. The second jump wasn't as scary.
I was astounded to clearly hear conversations and cows mooing from 2,000 feet up.
I swoon, WasDano.
You're hanging beneath what is essentially a parabolic reflector. Pretty neat.
Several of us were riding the side seats of a Huey with the doors open over the Redstone Arsenal swamps, when the "cowboy" pilot decided it would be great fun to chase some deer we had stirred up. It was a worrisome feeling when it dawned on me that the belt/retainer system was all that kept me in the aircraft when he stood it on its side to make the tight turns.