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I,m going to EAA on Friday ( I think air plane engines make my wife hot ) Is anyone else going to be there?
Rich

Wish I could Someday.

Being out in Tucson you get jets flying overhead all the time, Pima air museum, Titan museum, the plane grave yard. You have allot of cool stuff right in your backyard.
But it is cool to spend a week it the busiest airport in the world with hundreds of thousands of rubber necked spectators looking at some of the coolest stuff on earth.
Rich

OHHH man you are correct I love the stuff here in Tucson. The Pima Air and Space Museum just rolled out the re-assembled B-36 City of Ft Worth. One of my favorite cold war warriors .



Still someday I want to visit OshKosh by gosh. My youngest went as part of the Civil Air Patrol summer activity program and had an excellent time.

Have a great time and look for one of the R2800 engines that people are running on trailers I have seen them on Utube what a sound!!!

I worked with a guy that was a B 36 engine mechanic, the plane he flew on almost never carried bombs, but carried an equivilant load of spare parts, they almost never flew back to the same base they took off from, and often times not even U.S. bases.
One day I asked him if they were "pecking the lobe", I thought the poor guy was going to shit himself. Evidently that was a top secret term when he was in.
I miss that old timer, he told some of the best stories, and had even more he couldn't tell.
Rich

I love hearing stories like that, but what was pecking the lobe? I was reading Magnesium Overcast and missions of over 24 hrs were common and flying thousands of miles.

I learned of pecking the lobe from a documentary about the Falkland island war. Its how the Argentineans got in close enough to the british ships to inflict damage.
An aircraft flying at say 20,000 ft just before it comes over the horizon and is picked up by enemy radar will sense the week signal of the radar then drop down to say 15,000 ft and continue to do this and can fly almost right up to a radar without being seen, this is called pecking the lobe of the radar or "pecking the lobe", or it can be used to fly between enemy radars and penetrate all the way to say... Moscow, if that helps.
Rich

WOW never heard of this. Learn something new every day !!

Rich,
So you are saying that a plane flying at 15000 feet cant be seen by radar? We have all heard the expression "flying under the radar" but I thought it was a whole lot lower than that!
Tim

each time they get close to "radar lock" they dive down lower until they are at tree top level.
As I understand flying near but not into the radar lobe allows you to map the radars location, but more importantly if done right it allows you to find out where the enemy radars are not.
remember this is before stealth and ground hugging guidance systems for air craft.

My friend developed health issues and had to stop flying, so his next assignment was working in a vault at NORAD signing in and out photos.
The only thing he could tell me about that job was they sure didn't retire the SR71 without a replacement.

Don't ask me how a man with that high of security clearance wound up doing sheet metal at a hole in the wall heating outfit here in Wisconsin.
Or maybe thats why he wound up here.
Rich

Great stuff Rich. Interesting how you run into people. I once met a B24 pilot who was working in a factory and he also had great stories.

My 0.2, from talking with pilots of the Fuerza Aérea Argentina who actually flew on missions against the british fleet, I know that the only approach method they used was fly low at 10 to 15 meters above the sea in their A-4Bs/Cs, Mirage IIIEA, Mirage M5 Dagger.
Even the mighty C130 Hercules were forced to fly that low (25 meters) to avoid detection, at night without night vision devices, or ground reading systems.

The radar contact exploration that you are describing is not intended to penetrate the radar shield but to find its source, plot it's course and then attack it from a 35km range with a missile. That job was done by the Argentina Navy with it's Super Etendards equipped with Exocet missiles.
You fly low, below the horizon line, like you said, every 40km you climb, emit three seconds with your radar, dive and change course. That way you are plotting the target location.

Thank you Juan;
This is why I love this web sight, no matter what the subject there's someone here thats been there or done that.
As someone that should have joined the military but didn't, the cold war and the military are probably my two favorite subjects.

Rich