Lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut.

Floyd · Unread post by **Floyd** » November 14th, 2011, 5:06 pm

I stumbled on this web site and had to share these pics, too fantastic to keep just for myself. Enjoy.

http://www.vintagewings.ca/VintageNews/ ... n-Rut.aspx

Floyd

Unread post by **rickf** » November 14th, 2011, 7:26 pm

What, none of the flybys over a lake at Mach 1.X with the water kicking up?

These were good, shows that flyboys have always been crazy.

Rick

Motorcityman · Unread post by **Motorcityman** » November 15th, 2011, 8:17 pm

I know a guy who was doing a low level fly by over his ex girlfriends house in a G5 or something similar basically a 30 million dollar plane and hit some branches of a tree, the branches went right though the windshield of the jet and ripped off the guys face, it peeled all the skin off his face. The co pilot nursed the plane back home and this guy I know lived

Never to fly again or see from what I understand, he went blind. This happened in Indiana I wanna say 8 or 10 years ago.

Unread post by **rickf** » November 15th, 2011, 9:39 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTsHgTt8TmA

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7ce_1196939821

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=45b_1266683785

Floyd · Unread post by **Floyd** » November 16th, 2011, 12:34 am

MCM: What a story, definitely not one of the benefits of Top Hating.

Good ones Rick. I noticed they were from live leak. For those of you that have not had the chance to be right next to a low level flyby by a high speed jet you could easily end up a victim of a live leak.

Floyd

moose53 · Unread post by **moose53** » November 16th, 2011, 1:14 am

Floyd wrote:MCM: What a story, definitely not one of the benefits of Top Hating.

Good ones Rick. I noticed they were from live leak. For those of you that have not had the chance to be right next to a low level flyby by a high speed jet you could easily end up a victim of a live leak.

Floyd

been there.... close enough to an F-4 coming in hot and fast,to count the rivets, and have to agree with you!

Jim

SEABEE62 · Unread post by **SEABEE62** » November 16th, 2011, 12:11 pm

Love it !!!..And the Navy boys LOVED to fly low !!! I was on some kind of transport flying from Adak to Amchitca in the Aleutians chain, and we were flying really low over the waves...something to do with Russian radar or so....the crew passed out maewests, and I said I appreciated getting one ....they said it was only to be worn so they can find the bodies if we hit the water....

Seabee

Horst · Unread post by **Horst** » November 16th, 2011, 4:58 pm

when I was introduced to crop-dusting and after doing the first passes as low as possible with 15ft booms sticking out on both sides, the only comment the instructor pilot said : waaay too high.

The operational manual at the company I fly over here specifically spells out the right to under fly power lines.

Of course all of this happens at slow 60 - 70 knots, not like the fixed wing guys in those pics, so not really comparable. Still risky so. I have personally trailered a crashed Jetranger which rolled over his nose forward when the booms hit the corn he was spraying.

swordmd · Unread post by **swordmd** » November 22nd, 2011, 10:08 am

Back in 1983 I was at Ft Bliss,TX (Dona Ana/McGregor) in a training border star. I was on a M42A1 duster, we had two dusters and a M151A1 we were to shoot at a sock pulled by a Firebee drone when it flue by, but it came bye so close to us, we were unable fo fire a shot, the shock wave broke our antenna.

toptiger · Unread post by **toptiger** » November 23rd, 2011, 6:28 am

Some of VN vets here who spent time on ops on the ground may recall that we sometimes used Huey 'Smoke' ships during multi-ship insertions. Basically 'fog' oil was injected into the exhaust pipe of the turbine from a ring around it with nozzles and thick white billowing smoke was produced.
The concept was to lay down the smoke between the landing slicks and the tree line or suspected enemy positions allowing the infantry to debark and find ground cover. The catch was the smoke had to be laid down within a foot or two from the ground, at a speed of less that 10-15 kts so as to avoid being thinned out by the rotor wash. Plus the Smoke ship had to be close to the tree line where the unfriendlies could be hiding.
All in all a very interesting mission which in our unit was only flown by a few gunship qualified pilots.
The 3 gunners were also specially selected. The ship had two free guns - M-60s- and a 50 cal mounted on a plate {once mounted it could not be turned to go out the other side door- it was too long}.
These missions seem to me today to carry an absurd amount of risk, but we did them without much thought. Before, during, and just after my year long tour only one one co-pilot was killed flying Smokey, one gunner wounded, and I assume some grunts lives were saved during the insertions.
When, on the rare occasion, a VC or NVA would be seen {usually about 10 feet away as we flew by him}, I was never sure who was more scared, him or us. None of us had much time to shoot the other, but we always dropped a colored smoke grenade marking the spot and announced our find on the radio so that the gunships could do the job and the ground unit was warned.
After my military service, I rarely flew very high in my own civilian aircraft {a Lake Amphib 270 Turbo}. I was generally uncomfortable flying higher that 1,000 ft AGL. I would fly from Florida up the coast to the NYC area at 500 ft or so over the beaches, only climbing to read the map. Same thing on the Gulf side, the Pacific, and the Great Lakes. Later I put a Garmin GPS in the ship and didn't need any maps. It was all FAA legal but I had to swing out over the water when a town appeared or out to 3/5 miles when I passed a military facility or civilian airport. Even then, If I called and asked for clearance, I usually received it. This was before 9/11 of course.
I named one of my dogs 'Smokey'.

mrdibbles · Unread post by **mrdibbles** » November 23rd, 2011, 9:02 am

Thanks for sharing GR.

Unread post by **rickf** » November 23rd, 2011, 4:43 pm

500 feet doesn't leave a lot of room for finding a flat spot in an emergency. Of coarse along the coast you had the beach but that would not be one of my first choices due to soft sand and people. OOP's, forgot you were flying a boat.

SV2IPW · Unread post by **SV2IPW** » November 23rd, 2011, 4:48 pm

Somethink realy low!!! from the Hellenic air force.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziMf6H0P ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFwTEZVE ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfeDpeQN ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfL68_Bw ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnzzgOQv ... re=related

And somethink from my personal archive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLyn1GLef4k

Lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut.

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