[ARC5] Command Sets for Longer Range?

[K2GKK D C_Mac_ Macdonald]

Not really the same thing, but when I was at Harlingen AFB, TX
going through basic navigator school, we were told that the trailing
wire antenna in the T-29 (Convair 240) aircraft was accidentally
rolled out over Brownsville, TX and when reeled back in, the
lead weight snapped off and went through the roof of a house
in the town!

73 de Mac, K2GKK/5
Licensed 30 Nov 1953
Oklahoma City, OK
USAF (Retired) 61-81
FAA (Retired) 94-10


________________________________
From: arc5-bounces at mailman.qth.net <arc5-bounces at mailman.qth.net> on behalf of Hubert Miller <Kargo_cult at msn.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 31, 2023 02:00
To: arc5 at mailman.qth.net <arc5 at mailman.qth.net>
Subject: Re: [ARC5] Command Sets for Longer Range?

The person who phoned me somewheres around 1985 and told me about planes landing on carriers
with the trail antenna not retracted, i didn't know the person's age, never met the person, so i don't
know what years he was speaking of. It may well have been postwar. He had a unique last name but
subject to various possible spellings and years later, i tried to look him up, but no luck. The radio -
gunner who flew off the Gambier Bay, in fact whose plane took off while the Japanese were still hitting
the carrier, is gone now too, so i cannot ask him more. He told me his plane was not armed up so they
dove on Japanese ships anyway just to draw away fire. This is the fellow who told me "HF was just used
for CW practice". Maybe a slight exaggeration, but not by much. Warfare at remote locations seems to
me to have romance and adventure, but i wasn't there, and many a memoirist has told of feelings of
loneliness and homesickness and being depressed. He told me when he felt like that he went out to his
plane and tuned the ARB around for entertainment. "Tokyo Rose" did qualify as prime entertainment.
I suppose checking the receiver was retuned correctly was on the checklist for takeoff.
( OH, i just remembered, i read that the running water was turned off, on the carrier at night. Another
fun factor. )

Years earlier i talked with a fellow who had flown in some kind of gunnery spotter plane while Wake
Island's Japanese occupiers where being targeted. He told me his plane had 2 RU receivers. I specifically
remember that; for a 2 - place plane that is not a standard manuals setup, i think. I think this fellow's
name was Bob Power. I remember his saying enemy soldiers "scattered like ants" when one building
was hit.

I also talked with a fellow who had flown for the 'Flying Tigers' however now there is some controversy
that people who flew in China after the U.S. entered the war then claimed to be 'Flying Tiger' veterans
altho they really were not. So not having learned more from him, i can't say. He told me one factoid,
that Yunan had the callsign 'YK9'. I tried looking up that callsign in the meager docs i have and no luck.
Probably under wartime situation at some point or points the callsign was changed. Anyway so now i have
shared that factoid; i'm not the last person on Terra to remember that, maybe.

As a child i flew with my parents from New York to California on a Flying Tiger Airlines plane. I have written
down somewhere what kind of plane it was, a 2 engine i think. There was a refuel landing on a field in
Colorado with the only amenity a shack with a gas pump out front. I got airsick, of course. There was no meal
offered either, of course, and unfortunately, no airsick bags of any kind. My poor mother.
-Hue Miller

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/arc5/attachments/20240101/369b5d5f/attachment-0001.html>