user wrote in message . ..
Hi Kirk,
I read your story and couldn't help but ask,,,what is a crewchief???
You mean a plane captain right? (Oh never mind, I just read a little
closer and saw the Mather AFB thing, sorry,,,must be an Air Farce
thing.)

Correct, in the Air Force the crewchief owns the jet, the pilot just
borrows it for a while and tries not to break it, and the WSO tells
the pilot where to go...a banana tied to the end of a stick works
pretty good; you wave it in the direction that something interesting
is going on...Then when you get to the target area the front seat
stick actuator rows the boat while the guy in back shoots the ducks.
Especially true when PGMs came into widespread use (AGM-65/130s,
GBU-10/12/15, and now WCMD/JDAM/JSOW etc).

Another post in this thread mentioned tankers leading fighters through
the murk in bad weather due to better nav systems. For awhile after
the F-4E got the ARN-101, we had a much better nav system (integrated
INS/LORAN) than the common KC-135 tankers, so were often asked for a
position update on long overwater hops. Always happy to oblige (not
that we were in any position to refuse!).

It's funny, now 20 years later - I own and fly a racing sailplane
(LS6-b) that has more communication and navigation gear installed than
any F-4 ever had: 2 independent comms (OK, one is a cell phone but it
works!, other is a VHF) and 2 independent GPS's, with moving maps,
aviation and terrain data bases, glide computers, and probably more
computing power than the old Rhino.

But looking out the window is still the best way to aviate and
navigate!

Kirk