Strange lights over Denver?

a reply to: Cavrecon22

Nellis is designed for huge exercises. They have some crazy setups with simulated SAMs, aggressors playing foreign aircraft, etc. The Nellis range covers a huge area so they can do all kinds of things there.

Thirteen of the C-17s landed at March in California.

I love UFO's that adhere to FAA regulations and have strobe/beacon lights during night flight. I hope they were all current on night flying and did the mandatory 3 landings as well !

A total of 10 bases were involved.

Video of Coyote Freedom in action.

I have been to Nellis a few times in the late 80’s on the Green Flag exercise’s with the Tornado’s...very busy flight line and some good burgers had in the burger bar that was there at the time...good hangover cure whilst waiting for your jet to come back...good times!!!a reply to: Zaphod58

originally posted by: Zaphod58
Video of Coyote Freedom in action.

What exactly are we looking at? Are those people dropped?

a reply to: gariac

Yes. This was the force that was doing the "entry" into hostile territory dropping from the C-17s.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: gariac

Yes. This was the force that was doing the "entry" into hostile territory dropping from the C-17s.

That had to be a logistics nightmare to pick up that many people on the ground. I recall Nellis buying a number of souped up quads.

a reply to: gariac

That's one reason they loaded up before departure. It's a lot easier to load at home base, than it is to land at a strange airfield and load up there. They had a total of 120 Army paratroops between all the aircraft.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: gariac

That's one reason they loaded up before departure. It's a lot easier to load at home base, than it is to land at a strange airfield and load up there. They had a total of 120 Army paratroops between all the aircraft.

My comment was regarding picking them up on the ground. These people will be scattered all over the place. I've watched smaller exercises where they attempt to land in one spot and still there is a lot of ground activity. With this many participants, the will have to be spaced out for safety.

There has considerable confusion around the range during these ground exercises. One of the MAFEX that I watched had some confusion about which plane the guys that landed were supposed to get on. (I heard that a few days later from a contact.) We noticed these guys wandering around on the ground.

Even stranger was a person I know who drives a white truck. He was parked in the land east of Keno watching a night exercise. Two choppers approached, one landed. Someone came to the window, spoke some coded gibberish, eventually figured out they were talking to a tourist and the choppers left.

a reply to: gariac

There's usually a lot of confusion with loading. With an exercise like this, they would have moved the C-17s to different areas ahead of time to pick up the units participating, unless they were using units near where the C-17s were coming from. That would have allowed them time to load properly and take their time to reduce confusion somewhat. Most of the C-17s involved returned home, with a few staying in the Nevada/California area.

Once the exercise ended, or they picked them up during the exercise, then that confusion you mentioned would be a lot worse. That's one of the things that makes these exercises interesting and so important. I always hear about people being left behind in these, or people getting lost due to vehicle breakdowns, and occasionally even fatalities because they were left to watch a vehicle and it took so long to recover it that they wandered off into the desert.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I had a close encounter with a yucca plant a while ago. Lots of pointy things in the desert. I suppose you have to be ready for non-ideal conditions in real life, but I'd hate to get chewed up or worse in a training exercise.

I know during Red Flag and other exercises they don't fly under windy conditions (at some limit). Not because of the planes, but rather the adverse effects that can occur if a pilot punches out on high wind conditions.

a reply to: gariac

Training is important, but you don't want to risk lives if you can avoid it. I've seen some really stupid decisions result in some completely avoidable accidents.

In 1988 I was part of the see off crew of a Tornado that crashed on the Nellis range...I strapped the crew in..did the see off and waved the crew off and then went off shift...a few hours latter whilst enjoying a beer in our hotel bar some of the other shift lads came in and said we had lost a Tornado...which one we asked..yours was the reply..!!! Straight away you start thinking did I do this/that correctly etc etc...luckily both crew ejected with minor injuries but it turns out that unofficially the crew had been told to turn off a certain system in the Tornado which prevents it from going into a spin by limiting the amount of manoverbility. This was turned off to increase the chances of them evading simulated attacks by the red forces but caused the crash as they got attacked and whilst trying to evade the pilot lost it..could not recover it and banged out...much to the surprise of the nav who said the first thing he knew about it was when he was hanging under the chute!! They landed by the way near a certain area in the range and where taken there to be checked out/treated before flying back to Nellis via Janet Air. Morale of the story is don’t turn off your spills unless really necessary...it’s only training after all!!a reply to: Zaphod58

a reply to: Silentvulcan

aviation-safety.net...

Well only one crashed in that year at Nellis.

Modern cars have "stability" controls to do similar limitations. I don't know aircraft had such limitations, but like you said, if you switch it off, you had better have trained that way. It wouldn't surprise me if someone got fired over that.

Incidentally Nellis does a CSAR during Red Flag. My audio uploads are a mess, so I don't know if I ever uploaded that training. You need to at a high location in the range, preferably east of the ET Highway so the local hills don't shadow you. The comms are simplex. Sometimes there is an "enemy" force. Other times rescue needs to handle a faux broken leg. So Nellis does train for night ground exercises. I suspect the purchase of the new super quads is to handle these large force jumper exercises.

If you trawl the interwebs, they wanted to move JFEX further into the range, but I guess after the expense of building Keno, someone nixed than idea.

It was an “unofficial “ order from the Sqn Ldr at the time to turn it off to improve survival chances and improve manoverability !!!. The pilot got busted from fast jets down to flying Herc’s for a living..nav carried on as he was just along for the ride when they banged out.apparently once they had got out the aircraft sorted itself out and flew straight and level...straight into a cliff...rest of the jets on the mission saw this and thought the crew had bought it as they did not see them bang out...happened so quick they did not give a radio message they where getting out.!!!a reply to: gariac

a reply to: Silentvulcan

There was an FB-111 out of Plattsburgh many years ago that wound up making a landing in a field. Other than destroying both engines everything was fine, but they didn't have time to radio anyone beyond their emergency call. So the pilot hiked into a small town, that had a payphone and called the base. The guy in MOC picked up, said, "call me back, I have an emergency" and hung up.

Well the pilot only had change for one call. So he hikes back to the aircraft, gets change from the WSO, hikes back to the phone. As soon as MOC answers, and before he has a chance to say anything, the pilot yells into the phone, "don't hang up! I'm your emergency!"

They wound up taking a flatbed and crane out and trucking the aircraft back to the base.

Had a good look inside and out a few F1-11’s back in the day as well as the “Spar-vark” on the Nellis flightline...nice!!! a reply to: Zaphod58

a reply to: Silentvulcan

We lost two, and Plattsburgh lost one and a crew in the 80s when they would go into uncommanded rolls. One of ours went into a river and the capsule ended up blocking traffic on a bridge.

The Plattsburgh bird hit the water just as the crew pulled the handles.

Sorry if moving off the thread topic...In the 5 years I was on that sqn that was the only jet we lost...i’ve had 5 back seat rides in Tornados in various countries around the world..best flight though was in. KC-135 from Eilson AFB on a cope thunder exercise...got to sit in the rumble seat for take off and landing and laid next to the boomer for about 7 refuels of various jets..cannot believe how close they get...a reply to: Zaphod58