THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 29, 1994 TAG: 9408290057
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DENNIS JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
Once he climbs aboard, it usually takes Dave Moore just a couple of minutes to feel at home in the cockpit of the F-14 Tomcat he pilots - the stick and throttle, the array of controls for weapons and communications.
That's because he has grown used to flying every day.
``It's like our office,'' said Moore, a 26-year-old lieutenant junior grade with Fighter Squadron 103 at Oceana Naval Air Station.
This summer, the Navy locked the door on Moore's office. For a month he couldn't get in because the money his bosses spend to keep him at his desk had to go for expenses they hadn't anticipated - a stepped-up trade embargo in Haiti, the threat of nuclear proliferation in Korea.
This month, Moore and others who were locked out with him - those who work with the 72 planes assigned to the aircraft carrier Enterprise - are being let back in a few hours at a time so they won't forget how to do their jobs. The Navy has promised that all will return to normal in a few weeks.
With defense dollars dear, none of the grounded crews begrudge their money going to colleagues on the front lines of international hot spots. And none of the Enterprise pilots are in danger of losing certification, which generally requires 10 hours of flying and five takeoffs and landings every 90 days.
But there is a limit, they say, and Oct. 1 may be it. That's when new funds are expected to flow with the start of the federal fiscal year.
``Of course no one's happy,'' Moore said. ``I'm here to fly.''
As a junior pilot, he can ill afford not to, says Capt. Bob Davis, who is in charge of the Enterprise's planes as commander of Air Wing 17 at Oceana.
``He needs each and every one of those flights,'' Davis said. ``This isn't Star Wars. We haven't reached the point yet where the equipment can do the job by itself.''
With 2,500 hours in an F-14, Davis said, he himself can adjust fairly quickly to an extended period away from the cockpit. With 310 hours, Moore has a harder time of it.
``When you get back in it, it's something you have to touch and feel,'' Davis said. ``You say to yourself, `Gosh, I'm so slow.' ''
Most of his pilots are getting flight time once a week or so now, Davis said.
So no one hurries Moore as he familiarizes himself with the cockpit, cross-checking systems that enable him to make the $38 million aircraft take off, fly, maneuver, fight other planes, attack ground targets and land.
The dangers pilots face are clear. As Moore talked Friday, looking over his squadron's planes at Oceana, an F-14 from just down the tarmac crashed during a training flight in North Carolina's Pamlico Sound. The two-member crew, from a squadron whose training wasn't curtailed, ejected safely.
Is Moore worried he may lose his edge?
``No one is worried or scared,'' he said. ``The only word I can use is `comfortable.' And comfortable is a word we don't like to use in this business. It's like `proficient,' `good enough.' We want to be the best.''
``Extremely confident'' is the level where he would like to be, and where he was until June 23 when he came off the frenzied pace of carrier operations in areas like Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The pace has slowed since that deployment for the people of Fighter Squadron 103, but not for the few F-14s they've been able to put back in the air.
The squadron usually has as many as 14 of the two-seat jets for 36 people to train in - pilots and radar intercept officers. With Navy approval to put 25 percent of the wing back in the air this month, those crews now compete for time aboard just four planes.
Many of the other aircraft are in preservation - their cockpit windows and fuselage openings covered in foil and black tape, their fuel lines filled to prevent condensation. They could fly tomorrow in an emergency, but normal procedure calls for three to eight days of inspections first.
The air wing spent its last deployment aboard the Saratoga. Two Pacific Fleet air wings also just back from deployment - those assigned to the Nimitz and the Carl Vinson - were grounded, too, in a move expected to save about $44 million. Keeping just one Navy combat jet in the air costs about $1,500 to $2,500 an hour.
The Saratoga was decommissioned Aug. 20 in Florida. When Davis' air wing begins working with its new ship, he said, the Enterprise will find his squadrons ready - the Tomcats from Oceana, the E-2C Hawkeyes from Norfolk, the F/A-18 Hornets and helicopter crews from Florida, and the EA-6B Prowlers from Washington.
He expects to have 50 percent of them back in the air next week.
What are his crews doing in the meantime?
Moore is keeping his mind on the Tomcat, but in the classroom rather in the cockpit, he said.
``I've been in lectures 18 of the last 25 days.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photo by JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI
Without regular practice, ``when you get back in it, it's something
you have to touch and feel,'' Capt. Bob Davis said.
Black & White photo by JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI/
An F-14 flies over Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach as
other F-14s are grounded because a military budget stretched thin
cannot afford to put them in the air.
by CNB