"J. McEachen" wrote in message ...
Boy do I feel old. In the true bomber days of the A-3 we actually
carried a chronometer and a bubble sextant, shot the stars and got a
three-point fix. Ditto the sun and LAN local apparent noon. Plus a
"potty" of sorts and a working p-tube. Box lunches were in order, 3 or 4
hour cycles were the norm (I even flew once with Charlie James refueling
from A-4 tankers for eight hours.) We'd estimate surface winds by
checking the sea, and we even did pressure pattern navigation out to
Bermuda.

What's all this about gyros and other gizmos? (OK, Whidbey started
getting ASB-7 c. 1961 while we on the east coast stuck with the modified
Norden ASB-1a bombing system.)
Joel McEachen VAH-5 (Mushmouths)

Pressure! Navigation by altimeter! When they taught us that at Nav
School (Mather AFB, CA, T-43s, 1977) I thought it was a joke! But
damned if it didn't work. But I was determined to get into the back
seat of an F-4 so all I cared about was looking out the window, with
an occasional TACAN cut - and that worked for me (It helped that I had
been flying for 9 years heh heh).

Then, a few years later, I was in the PI flying (surprise) F-4s when
we got the magic ARN-101 system - fancy INS/LORAN gizmo, lots of
buttons, lots of ways to screw up and get lost... On one deployment to
the Kun in the winter the winds were so strong that we couldn't get
the INS platforms to align as the jets were rocking; tried everything
including putting down the hook and having crewchiefs (preferable big,
well-fed ones) hang on the wingtips - anything to damp the motion.
Only solution was to park the jets in revets that blocked the wind -
which wasn't all of them! Soon after, a software upgrade "fixed" the
problem.

Kirk
Old F-4 IWSO