Preflight the OH 23D heli before flight
The real heli - OH 23 D Raven, the heli that we flew on our initial training phase.OH 23D Raven, notice that the heli was without doors.
The Raven OH 23D, was a basic bare aircraft. All of them were very old as they were of the Korean War vintage. Most were without doors. In winter, if we were schedule to fly early in the morning, we used to go to our allocated helicopter as early as possible; and if we see that it is without doors, we used to steal the doors from the next nearby helicopter.
Before flight on OH 23D
What we do was to go to the next nearest helicopter that has doors; jettisoned them and fix them to our helicopter. Sometimes this could be very embarrassing and comical because the owner of the nearby helicopter can claim back his doors, and if we could not find any other replacement, than we have to fly without the doors and suffer the cold winter morning
The opposite happened during the summer time. The weather in Texas can be very hot and we used to jettison the doors of our helicopter so that we could get some fresh cool air in because our aircraft has no air condition.
The instrument phase of this initial flying was done on the Hughes TH 13T. Again this aircraft were of the Korean War vintage also and some of them can be rickety and noisy.
We had to fly 40 hours on this helicopter and at the end of this phase we have to take an exam. Only when we passed this exam, can we graduate and proceed to the tactical phase at Ft Rucker, Alabama.
Preparing to fly the TH 13 T Hughes helicopter, I flew my instrument phase on this
To be continued....
3 ulasan:
Thank you Dato Fawzi for sharing your experiences ..
Sir,
Just to comfirm,is Mej Chong whose Nuri received bullets in Gubir OA in late 70s an ex Army Officer,to be exact from Ranger Regt,Thank You.
Saudara Anon,
Lt Col Frank Chong K.L. was shot mostly during Selamat Sawadee OA. He was not from the Ranger but Engineering Corp.
Catat Ulasan