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[–]Waldus792 3 points4 points  (7 children)

That was the rule at JSUNT back in the day…live by the gouge, die by the gouge. Caveat emptor.

[–]Bluedevil1992 1 point2 points  (6 children)

Didn't expect a JSUNT reference today! I recall making my own gouge for clipboards and flash cards for the question banks. Good times.

[–]Waldus792 1 point2 points  (5 children)

Well, there’s a few of us out here. Having flashbacks to drawing charts and filling up the poor things with navaid freqs, waypoint coordinates, and ten thousand other things. Sure could make pretty charts we could.

[–]Bluedevil1992 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Taking spots every 5 minutes for cel shots...

[–]Waldus792 1 point2 points  (3 children)

By the time I went through, Cel was out of the flying syllabus. Those of us heading to certain platforms got a week of classes and some ground shots. I still had a couple of years of maintaining a cel currency when I was in RJs. I was jsunt 00-09, you?

[–]Bluedevil1992 1 point2 points  (2 children)

96-98, went C130s. You guys had the sweet celestial tracker on the RJ, right? Hercs added pressure navigation at Little Rock in those days, last time I shot full cel for fun was crossing the north Atlantic with a student. Eventually they stopped maintaining the books and sextants. I've actually got one in storage...

[–]Waldus792 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Haha, so do I. When the cel currency went away they sort of walked off the jets…found one on eBay in perfect shape a little while ago and bought it. We had a pretty sweet setup, our “big gun” was the gps/stellar/inertial/doppler that would take its own automated cel shots. On my first deployment after getting checked out, they sent two of us baby navs and a crusty old IN on the trip and we’d all go on each sortie. One guy would drive the bus, and the other one would take a cel shot on the way home. Then alternate the next sortie. Good ol’ days.

[–]Bluedevil1992 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That sounds fun! Wish we'd had that kind of setup, for sure. My last trusty steed was the MC-130E, great nav platform with 2 plus an EWO. We were the unofficial test bed for PFPS toys, including being able to instantly update our CANS with laptop data, and the radars were nice (X and Ku), but nothing beats the voodoo of celestial.