My 2 cents,,,basically the same as Larry's,,,on the Big 'E' IO in '84
and the Connie IO in '85 we had SINS cable inputs sometimes available
for our US-3's, (Miss Piggy), . Otherwise we would Link with our
ASW-25 (UHF) to get CAINS updated Lat/Longs for the LTN-72's.... our
CODS only had gyros and AHRS (Attitude Heading Reference System),
although we could hook up a RO-RO LTN-72, and an internal 500 gallon
fuel tank for long haul repo flights. (Had a very uneasy feeling
sitting in the cargo compartment with a frickin leaking JP-5 fuel
cell, on numerous flights from PI to Singapore to Diego Garcia, etc.)
I still believe the most cost effective system is a dual AHRS combined
with GPS for the best representation of SA and Navigating. This type
of setup would cost less than a quarter of the over redundant and way
too expensive Ring Laser Gyro INS (over 150,000 per unit) and GPS
sysytems that are predominant in the newer Hornets, Orions and
Prowlers.

On Sat, 1 Nov 2003 20:39:18 -0800, "Mike Kanze"
wrote:

The shipboard alignments require Ship Inertial Navigation System (SINS)
data via either a cable or from an RF data link. This gives a fairly high
quality alignment--it even worked well on the A-6's IMU/INS.

In the days of the A-6A and its AN/ASN-31 inertial, shipboard alignments
were sometimes colorful and problematic affairs. There were none of the
goodies like RF links or GPS for us to play with.

Mini-sea story #1: On CORAL MARU's 1973 cruise, we (VA-95) found that (1)
most of the SINS cables were beat to hell and wouldn't work because (2) our
predecessor A-6 squadron in CVW-15 - VMA(AW)-224 - didn't know what
alignments were. It took us most of the cruise to weed out and survey the
hopelessly irrepairable cables and gradually accumulate a set of reliable
and maintainable ones.

Mini-sea story #2: On 95's 1975 cruise (still with CVW-15 / CORAL MARU), an
A-6 launched off Taiwan for a penetration flight to exercise ROC air
defenses. The crew obtained an normal SINS alignment, launched (this time
without the all-too-common inertial dump on the cat stroke) and commenced
the penetration. The crew became quite concerned however when the CIP did
not appear at all at the time and configuration briefed. Quickly - and
correctly - determining that they were actually headed for the friendly
shores of the Peoples Republic, they 180ed and bustered back to Mother.
Cause of problem? SINS posit was 40 nm (yes, 40 nm!) in error.

(There is a lot more to this second story than just the above.)

Prurient trivia item #436: The control panel for the AN/ASN-31 is described
in the NATOPS manual as the "Erection Controller Panel".

Owl sends.