"Sunset Strip"

Most folks around here know "Sunset Strip' as that last stretch of old Highway 30 between town and Exit 90. To ME, "Sunset Strip" was the flightline on base here, as the "sun" began to "set." on my active duty military career. I was assigned once again to Blue Section, but THIS time under "A" Flight Chief Gary Foreman. Dean Federhart was the E-9 in charge of Blue.

I was assigned as Crew Chief on tail # 074, that I nicknamed "Little Orphan Annie." "074" had been caught in a multitude of re-arrangement shuffles between the squadrons. Once in awhile, a plane would crash, or it might catch fire and burn to the ground........sometimes they'd get shipped-off to Depot, etc. And so to keep the inventories "balanced" with roughly the same number of aircraft, they'd transfer a bird or two from one squadron to the other.

"074" was a bird that got transferred so often, it never really had a "permanent home" to speak of, so I nicknamed it "Little Orphan Annie." (When I retired in '88, "Annie" was STILL assigned to Blue Section).......probably the longest stretch of time it had ever been ANYWHERE!

The "Owyhee Roundup" of '85 was my first clue that this was going to be my last tour ANYWHERE. It was going to be a bombing competition between a half dozen OTHER bases and myself. Mountain Home would enter 5 Aardvarks, including 2 from Blue. I was chosen to crew one of them because of my experience, although my own airplane wasn't chosen to be one of the tail numbers, because of the avionics problems that it was often plagued with. Mechanically, it was a much better flyer than most, but not all that accurate as a bomber.

I didn't want to go, because I didn't want to leave my airplane into the hands of "whoever was free that day." It would be cluttered with unfixed write-ups when I got back two weeks later. But "Blue" was adament about it, so I had to spend those two "competition weeks" down at Red Section, taking care of "067" (which resides today in the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson).

From Blue, we had an E-8 and a WAF Lieutenant in charge of this "goat rope", which is exactly what it turned out to be. Neither knew ANYTHING about F-111's. It would waste valuable time, and create a lot of ill will.

The "Bobbsy-twins" as we called them, wanted to SHOWCASE everything, and have all five of us Crew Chiefs do these "Thunderbird Launches.", as they'd seen the Air Force Thunderbirds do. Everything was to be "orchestrated", with some guy from the Records Section standing atop a 55-gallon drum and act as the "Maestro." We'd stand well to the front of our aircraft while they were running, and two OTHER guys would stand at "parade rest" under the wingtips, while the aircrew would be going through their flight control checks and such.

This was not only unnecessary and stupid....but potentially dangerous as well.

The Air Force Thunderbirds were flying brand new F-16's, smaller and easier to see than 79 feet of fuel & hydraulic-leaking 20-year old Aardvarks. Standing 15 feet from the FRONT of the plane, a crew chief could NOT check the stabilator controls for "oscillation", ONE HUNDRED FEET AWAY! Neither could you catch any leaks in the main wheel wells, while the hydraulics were warming up.

The Aardvarks were notorious for leaks, even when new. During normal launch, the crew chief is steadily walking around the plane and under the main wheel well, periodically looking at EVERYTHING as the airplane is warming up, checking for leaks and shutting the plane DOWN if NEED be. You can't see "jack-bo-diddly" when they've got you out there looking like part of some "drill team."

The Lieutenant and E-8 (whose names both escape me now-----which is just as well) were DEDICATED to this stupidity, and we almost threatened a WALK-OUT before they finally dropped that idea. Competition would be starting in a couple of days, so they left us alone to do our JOBS.

We got a PRE-look at our visiting teams, including an F-16 team from Luke. Each of us got a copy of the rosters, and heading the Luke list, was that old E-9 I'd known just MONTHS ago in Suwon..........CMSgt Ron Davies.........Mr "Purty" himself!

The "Bobbsy-Twins" had replaced the "Thunderbird" concept with the spraypaint-armorall-"rub-a-dub-dub" routine.........

Maintenance time was long enough as it WAS, without THIS too. All five birds had previously been repainted and re-decaled just for this "flying pimp show," and the "Bobbsy-Twins" thought we had nothing better to do than carry spraypaint around with us, touching-up everything, in-between flights. Except for a guy named Dart from Yellow Section, the rest of us just went through the motions and did the work we were SUPPOSED to do.

I'd already TOLD the "Twins" they weren't going to win any "best looking aircraft of the competition." awards-----------not with "Earl Scheib Davies" up here! Those F-16's of HIS might not win any bombing comp, or sortie production, but whatever they DID manage to accomplish-------they'd sure as heck look GOOD doing it! The F-111's were also by far the LARGEST airplanes in the competition, and had the most square-footage of skin surface to "primp."

It was stupid. But we flew the competition, then everybody else went home and I went back to Blue. There was my own "074." My Assistant Crew Chief, Jeff Smith was a sharp young guy and took pretty good care of "The Orphan" while I was gone, but one guy can't work 24/7, and sure enough, there was a different guy covering MY half, almost everyday, so there was some "catch-up" to do.

They'd given those of us who worked on the "great goat-rope" a big real fancy competition patch for the "Owyhee Round-up" that we could wear for one month if we chose to. Instead, I gave MINE to Scrubby for his patch collection.

It would be an indication of things to come. There WAS a highlight though, we got a new OIC, Captain Del Parker, who would later make major. He was a great officer and all of us liked him. Parker was a straight-up, heads-up officer. He was one of those few who had also been a former ENLISTED man......so if you went to HIM with some kind of problem, Parker knew EXACTLY what you were talking about, and where you were coming from. There aren't many of those guys around. A few years after I retired, I heard he had died from cancer..........the good ones always seem to leave early..........

But life for me, got back to normal once again (whatever "normal" was). We flew airplanes all summer long. There was a special ride for me to take, deer to hunt, and a "local legend" to be born.