Okayyyy--

--looks like I've got to re-evaluate my definition of "a lead pipe cinch." Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce

Now, you may have heard rollicking, primordial laughter emanating from somewhere south of the Delaware Water Gap every time you thought "rockets" about this critter.

That was me.

Four measley toggle switches, four cheap plastic rotary ID switches -- for *rockets*?

*grin*

This is what a Rocket Management System looks like. Eat yer heart out, Lex.

Okay, back to Smokey Joe. Sometime during the late seventies, some brainiac realized that sending OH-58As out looking for the Soviet 357th Motorized Rifle Horde when the balloon went up was just going to crank up the US casualty list that much sooner. So, he decided that, since the Cobras were going there *anyway*, they might as well have the capability to mark their own targets before they engaged them.

Yeah, that was our reaction, too.

But, the result was the M118. Remember what I said about how a malfunction would ruin your whole day? Take a peek at the functional test. If the clamps failed to extend, the smoke popped while it was still hung up in the ejector. Try evading some clown in a MiG-23 while you're dragging a red smoke cloud through the woods...

Meantime, brags go to Trias for sorta-kinda pretty much nailing it, albeit squishily; to Nicholas and wolfwalker for figgering out the color aspect; and to Eric for twigging to the color knobs having an identification, rather than a selector, function. Oh, and to John, for spelling intervalometer correctly.

And, if you really, *really* have to see where this thing got squeezed into the cockpit, drop in at the AirCav site -- it's an interactive hotmap, so rather than use up gobs of John's bandwidth, just copy 'n' paste

to your browser window, then you can play with it all you want. Lotta neat stuff to get your eyeballs crossed (visualize John actually *sitting* in the seat). And working with all that arcane avionics aeronautica was a *lot* more fun than trying to get an aiming circle needle to hold still...