China to acquire Backfires?

They told us that the computer just plain couldn't hold a load - Mid-east
heat,
cat strokes, 18 year old maintainers, it all takes its toll...

Makes sense. We rarely had problems with our ASW avionics package not
performing in the same Mid-East heat and 18 year-old maintainers
(although minus the cat shots). Any ideas why the VS community didn't
scrap what they had and go with something which actually worked?

Beats me - I'm just "a knuckle-dragging stupid SAR swimmer, without the brains
necessary to be an Acoustic AW". Heh.

That computer dump problem was a part of S-3 ASW throughout its career - its
interesting that no Viking guys have stepped forward to say, "Hey, our
computers worked GREAT!" - we both know they crapped at the worst possible
time.

At a time when everyone else on the planet realizes that personal vehicles
need
to be as small and efficient as possible in urban environments, we get to
deal
with the new Mercury Leviathans and Cadillac Pachyderms. It seems silly
that
so many folks are willing to pour that much of their gas money down the
drain.

And even more silly is a current government which falls over itself to
give them tax breaks for buying such gas guzzlers and which does
everything it can to stymie alternative energy research.

That is my #1 frustration - I think if we can ween ourselves from 25' long
personal vehicles dependent on gas, we've got the terrorist countries half
beat.

Every port we ever went to where we needed
to go ashore via boat, the boats were always of the local chartered
ilk...and not always seemingly seaworthy.

Singapore had good harbor transport

We were screwed out of Singapore. Our ship took some sort of E-7 an
above vote on whether to give up an Australia port of call for two Asian
ports (Thailand and Singapore). Much to the vast majority of the ship's
disappointment...the vote passed. Of course, we ended up not getting
those two ports either.

That _blows_.

We got gyped out of Australia twice, HK once, and Mombasa ... oh, who cares
about THAT sewer. Did you ever make it into Oz? We pulled into Freemantle
while the Midway scored Perth, but I am willing to bet we had more fun!

v/r
Gordon