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Subject: Re: astrocompass still in use
From: Paul Hirose (paulhirose@XXX.XXX)
Date: Thu Sep 26 2002 - 14:04:42 EDT
Robert Eno wrote:
>
> You worked on B-52's??? Now that is very interesting. Were you a pilot?
> Navigator? I would give anything to get a ride on one of those babies!
...
> I'd love to have a gander at the MD-1 Astrocompass. It sounds like a very
> interesting device.
I was in avionics maintenance in the USAF for many years, working on
the B-52, B-1, and B-2.
The MD-1 was part of the old ASQ-38 vacuum tube bomb-nav system on the
B-52. This Web page lists the four main subsystems:
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevon/baugher_us/b052-13.html
I worked in the Bomb-Nav shop. Our world was the last subsystem on the
list, the ASB-9A or ASB-16. The remaining ones belonged to other
shops. I think Instrument/Autopilot shop took care of the first two,
and Radar shop the last. It took a lot of different skills to keep
the ASQ-38 working!
My recollection (about 20 years old, and remember I didn't work on the
astrocompass) was that the MD-1 had a clock-like dial where you set
GHA Aries. I assume an internal clock on sidereal time kept it updated
after that. There were two pairs of counters like odometers where you
set the SHA and declination of two stars. The system could only track
one at a time but you could change stars at the flick of a switch.
There may have been an instrument to display azimuth or precise
heading, and there definitely was one for intercept.
There was no automatic way to shift the present position counters
based on the intercept from the astrocompass. You would have to
manually change them. That part I'm sure about, since it was what I
worked on.
Back in those days (early 80s) the B-52 carried a periscopic bubble
sextant too. You'd commonly see the Air Almanac and HO 249 stuffed
behind the nav's seat. I think the gunner normally operated the
sextant, calling his readings down to the nav.
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