| This is a photo was not actually taken at Tinker when I was in
training, but much later when I was an aircraft commander. It seemed appropriate, though,
to place it here in the introduction to the aircraft. The pilots' instrumentation in this
aircraft was superb and is only now being equalled by the new "glass cockpit aircraft
(B757, B767, and others). Although I can't now remember exactly where this photo was
taken, a little can be gleaned from the instrument readings. The altitude can be seen in
the altimeter - the first two vertical guages from the right - at FL330 (33,000 feet above
the standard refrence plane established by setting the barometric compensation to a sea
level pressure of 29.92 inches of mercury. This altitude indicates that we were flying in
an Easterly direction. The next clue is the compass reading. The top half of the
Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI), containing the gyro compass indicator is visible at
the bottom of the picture. The heading shown is about 057 degrees. From those two facts, I
would guess that we were inbound to Elemendorf AFB, Alaska on a route called
"NOPAC1" (North Pacific 1) and that we were somewhere between Shemya Island and
landfall at Cape Newenham. The vertical guage at the far left is the Mach indicator and
just to the right of it is the Calibrated Airspeed. The horizontal white markers are set
manually as reminders of the correct Mach/Airspeed and Altitude. Although the nominal
cruise speed of the C-141A was .767 Mach, it was common to let the airspeed increase as
fuel was burned off. The black and yellow striped markers indicate the maximum safe
airframe speed for the pressure altitude. At a Mach number of about .791, we are well
under the maximum of .842. It can also be seen that we are just a little to the North of
track and we are correcting back with a barely perceptible right turn. |
