In article ,
Juvat wrote:

Chad Irby posted:

Maybe back in Vietnam, but I can guarantee you that a good number of
pilots had a severe lack of interest in ECM matters in the early 1980s.

I'm guessing you're talking about Phantom pilots. As one of them, I'd
say you're wrong. We got tested on it in RTU '80-'81 all the time in
USAFE '81-'84, as an RTU IP '84-'86...

"Getting tested on it" and "caring" are, as any high school kid can tell
you, two very different things. When you get a writeup that says,
basically, "RWR makes beeping sounds when in self-test," someone was
asleep in class...

I was one of the enlisted men who got to go in and "assist" the training
from time to time.

I'm guessing you were an EMS guy that dropped in to talk about 781
write-ups or unique problems you saw in the shop or on the line. You
didn't actually train aircrew how to operate the equipment in a
tactical sense, or did you?

No, we had a wing EWO for formal tactical training (and you should have
heard *him* complain!). But I did get to go in and do quick training
sessions with a lot of the pilots before they launched. Basic stuff,
short sessions about self-test and the like.

...and yet, on a weekly basis, we had a problem with pilots who couldn't
even do a correct built-in test on an ALR-46 system.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, the only time I turned the ALR-46 on
as a "pilot" was as an IP in the backseat. Pilots generally speaking
let the WSO operate the RWR. Hell I was even a squadron ECP
(Electronic Combat Pilot) in Phantoms. In the Viper we used the
ALR-69.

I'm using pilots and backseaters interchangeably here.

And they'd write it up as bad because they did it wrong ... And we'd
test, it, it would work fine, and we wouldn't get another writeup on it
until that same guy went back on the plane.

Any chance that the guy making the write-up was a RTU student WSO?

Maybe sometimes, but we didn't have a high rate of exchange in our wing.

And you wouldn't *believe* how confused they got over the use of the
ALQ-119 pods.

How 'bout this for another perspective? Rarely carry them because
it's too much trouble for maintenance (that's what we were told), and
and don't think of turning them on because they were programmed with
"war files," we don't want those pesky Warsaw Pact ESM assets
detecting our EC plan. So go to STBY...that's it unless you're at
Red/Green Flag.

Exactly. If you don't use it, you don't care.

Going to Spade Adam in the UK? Take a training pod, yeah it turns on
the same way, but the button pushing for countering the threat
symbology (on the ALR-46) was not what you would do in combat. Hmmm,
train in a way you won't fight...okay, color me confused.

And the way many officers dealt with it was... blow it off. If it's not
important, why care?

I'll agree that the 119 could be a most confusing piece of equipment
to operate when you personally fly with one maybe 6 times a year.

Try being the guy who has to load it on the plane and then figure out
what was "wrong" with it when it comes back with a writeup that
describes, basically, normal operation.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.