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The view: Wild Broncos
The pilot: Dale Hill, callsign “Nail 49”
The airplane: North American Rockwell OV-10 Bronco
The mission: As Forward Air Controllers (FACs), we would often join up with another FAC ‘on-station’ as we were either relieving them or else they were relieving us.
The memory: Somewhere over Laos in late 1972, I was ‘sandbagging’ with another Nail FAC. Sandbagging consisted of riding in their backseat logging time, but also providing an extra set of eyes watching out for bad guys shooting at us as well as monitoring/answering the five radios that many times all came active at one time! We had joined up on another Nail FAC to get briefed on the area over which we would be operating. The Nail FAC we were relieving had been highlighting suspicious activity or else handing off targets that were still viable. When the briefing was over, this Nail broke away on his way home and you can plainly see the two rocket pods and the 230-gallon centerline fuel tank slung under his fuselage.
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- Friday Photo:Wild Broncos Over Laos - September 6, 2024
- Friday photo: herding checks in southeast Asia - April 5, 2024
- A hard day’s flight - March 13, 2024
I had that same view of an OV-10 about 50 years ago. I had just earned my private pilot certificate at Bud Walen Aviation at Van Nuys Airport. I convinced three of my friends to share some of the expense of renting a new Piper Archer for a day trip to Las Vegas for lunch and some small wagering. The Archer was well equipped including a King KNS-80 RNAV/DME unit that I did not fully understand how to operate. That was before GPS or even LORAN so navigation was accomplished using the KNS-80 as the primary nav device. I diligently tuned in the VOR station and set up a course that would keep me out of both the Edwards Air Force Base and Twenty Nine Palms Marine Base airspace. I failed to notice that it was in RNAV mode, not VOR mode, with an offset already programmed in. The offset steered me directly over the Twenty Nine Palms practice bombing range. It was moments after one of my passengers asked what those big white circles on the ground were, that on OV-10 appeared off my right wing in fairly close formation. The pilot motioned with his hand pointing me to turn in a direction to depart his airspace. I, of course, complied. It still took me about 10 minutes to figure out my RNAV ignorance. It must have been a kinder and gentler time as I was sure that I would be in big trouble when we landed in Las Vegas but I never heard another word about it. I wonder if any others fell victim to that same little RNAV gotcha for a new pilot.
When I was flying F-16’s in Florida, we had a gunnery range some 40 miles NW of Lake Okeechobee. It was RESTRICTED airspace, but occasionally some civilian aircraft would wander in and disrupt our zooming around going 500 knots at 500 feet as we delivered our weapons (practice munitions, not LIVE stuff!). When that happened, we would come up behind them and blow past on either side in full afterburner at the ‘speed of heat’. That would get their attention that they were somewhere where they shouldn’t be and we would watch them beat a hasty retreat to get north of FL highway 60 that defined the northern boundary. Use ‘Google Maps’ and search for ‘MacDill AFB Auxiliary Field’, which was an active divert field if the runway at MacDill was unexpectedly closed (I landed there once). Zoom out from that field and you’ll see another runway about 5 miles NE. That is NOT an actual runway, rather, it’s a ‘target’ where we could bomb and strafe old trucks and aircraft some real and others plywood replicas. Thanks for the comments!