F-4G Wild Weasel Story, Part 1: Birth of the F-4G Wild Weasel. 

TFYS (thanks for your service). Man, I feel for ya! I was based at Nellis and would head out to George to visit a buddy stationed there. He was avionics. I just remember thinking, this base sucks! lol... then I went to Edwards. lol

@@jcost0099 Thank you right back! I am proud to have served and would do it all over again. I turned down a slot at both Edwards and based out of Nellis (You know the one....) (extended at Kadena to get married) and got George instead :).

Thanks, Steve. You MX guys are definitely the unsung force of nature that makes the whole shebang possible.

Thank you for the comment. Got to love the smokey old J-79!

We'll talk HTS in the next episode. Hope it continues to engage you.

Thanks, Tom. What was the kit like to work on?

The F4G in during the gulf war to me was the pinnacle of the phantom and she had the best look of them all. That hill gray scheme really makes that F4 look mean.

@@10percenttrue It was interesting. Receivers were in the nose and on top of the tail fin. The WASP was Heavy, ~50-ish lbs, and wasn't super easy to pull from the "rack" where it was hung. PAHIC and PPIAC were neat to play with, and we'd use "squirt boxes" (threat simulators) to test them. Each receiver had a mylar 5-hole punch tape that had its calibration files. Any time a receiver or WASP was changed out, we had to reload all those, along with the latest OFP. There were a series of self tests you could run on the system that would tell you what it *thought* was wrong (if anything). There was misinformation spread by the instructors that the aft receiver didn't matter, but they had it all wrong - they took the wrong take-away from a piece of information about it. During the Gulf War, we had some factory techs come out to help us troubleshoot a recurring "Hang fire" problem we had with the HARMs - it was fixed in software. I talked to them for probably a solid 2 or 3 hours about the system, and they said the trainer's take-away was completely wrong (which is kinda what I thought) There were something like 52 antennas, and a *lot* of miles of wiring in there. My unit also worked ALQ-131 ECM pods, and kept the chaff & flares working. We cross-trained on a bunch of other stuff, too. I got out in 92, and went back to school as an Electronics Engineer - I've been working for defense contractors ever since.

P. S. Also have a few photos of both the Thuds and F-4's strafing with their 20mm. Also a couple night missions using dropped para-flares. Always loved working up at the Cudd!!!

Cheers, Marco!

Thanks for listening and commenting, Biggles.

That's a very interesting insight.

Cheers, Blair. Hope life downunder is opening up a little.

I think that they'd have got there sooner if I was a little more technically minded.

Thank, Jimmy.

Coming soon!

Thank you!

Thanks, Jonathan. Part 2 already recorded. Will be out in two weeks' time (or so).

Thanks, George. Anyone of the guests in particular?

Win!

I think the best chance of success would be a FOIA for the classified -34 and 3-1 manuals, but I suspect that they have been long destroyed and that none were preserved for prosperity.

@@10percenttrue That is why these interviews with "old gentle men" are so important, non of this was written down AND stored for public access. Historians don't care about technology.

@@10percenttrue Hard to find anything nowadays because there is so much garbage. www.cia.gov has it's own search function. Much was declassified 2 July 96, but not about US equipment.

Some of the tactics and techniques haven't changed a lot and so are still secret. I'm sure the bad guys have a good idea but no need to confirm it for them. Also, after the classified networks came along most of the hard copy stuff got purged quickly as it was extra work to safeguard and track it. I think I remember some digital documents for the F-4G but most of those are probably gone too.