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Accessorize your War Wagon

By Bill on April 9, 2006 | | Comments (9)

Ever drive down the road and mentally blow the driver in front of you to kingdom come with a minigun? It may not have been a completely satisfactory experience if you didn't have the ancilliary switches 'n' stuff to complete your "willing suspension of disbelief."

With a couple of switches and some sheet metal you can pick up for a song at the neighborhood Property Disposal Office (although you may have to submit a sealed bid on a B-52 just to get the switches), you can accessorize your four-wheeled gunship with your very own OH-6A XM-27 armament panel.

XM-27 Armament Panel - Side View

Vwalla! Fiddly bits exposéd! Couple o' wires, a toggle and a rotary switch -- what could be simpler? And you can assemble the whole thing with a pair of needle-nosers.

*not*

But if you're less mechanically-inclined than Bad Cat Robot, you can just cut out the top view

XM-27 Armament Panel - Top View

and paste it on your console. Armed/Safe switch to Armed (wait for the light to come on), Master switch to Fire Norm (nothing personal, Norm. Really) and you're ready to squeeze the trigger and send hot, screaming, imaginary leaden death up Slowpoke's exhaust stack.

Ummmmm -- actually, you might want to *print* the pic in lieu of peeling it right off the monitor...

Drive a lot at night? Don't forget to flip the NVG filters over the lights

XM-27 Armament Panel - NVG Filters Down

before you goggle-up.

By the way, congratulations. You've just seen a couple of things that only Little Bird pilots and crewchiefs have seen. Oh, yeah -- *and* the Crash Investigation Teams...

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9 Comments

By John of Argghhh! on April 9, 2006 7:13 AM
Ah, kewl. Now I have to post the gunsight...
 
By Outlaw13 on April 9, 2006 10:23 AM
Gunsight...FEH...just put a mark with a grease pencil on the windshield! Wasn't that switch also used on a OH-58A/C when they actually thought about strapping on the mini-gun? I was in the field when you posted the picture of the torque meter/ water pressure guage...if I'm not mistaken didn't they also use that on a Cobra?
 
By Bad Cat Robot on April 9, 2006 11:02 AM
Kewl! Thanks for showing the *interesting* side (the one with all the wires and such ...) A new sideline for BCR Labs, automotive upgrades. This could be fuuuuun ....
 
By J.M. Heinrichs on April 9, 2006 12:12 PM
With this, and few other easy-to-obtain spare parts, you too can assemble your very own working OH-6A. Cheers JMH
 
By John of Argghhh! on April 9, 2006 2:12 PM
Outlaw - back in my Aerial Observer days, the Crew Chief used to get right pissy with me for grease penciling the inside of his windshield...
 
By cw4(ret)billt on April 9, 2006 3:30 PM
Don' need no steenkeeng sights--just adjust from the fire stream (hopefully before you run out of ammo). John, the idea was to wipe the grease pencil off *before* you landed. With the *clean* handerchief... Outlaw 13 - Yup, in the OH-58A -- and as soon as they found out the thing couldn't get off the ground with gun, ammo, fuel and pilot, they put out an MIM restricting the gun from being installed. They kept the panel for a while, just to maintain the fiction that the OH-58A could be armed. Heh. That was about the time they first started denying that the -58A had a major problem with its tail rotor, too -- I figure it took about thirty Class A accidents and twenty-five fatalities before the Army admitted that LTE existed and held Bell's feet to the fire to install the mod that had been standard on the JetRanger for five years -- and the OH-58A became the OH-58A/C. But the -58A/C is the only Bell product I've ever flown that I wasn't real happy with... As far as the gauge on the Cobra goes, only the Corpus reworked -G models that later were rebuilt into -S(Mod)s had them; the ECAS and the -F torquemeters were in percentage. One of the Maryland Cav guys was lifting an -F out of a FAARP--downwind--and got it to 115% before he realized he'd overtorqued the daylights out of it. Heh. Shut the FAARP down for two days. Oooops--sorry, guys. FAARP = Forward Area Arming and Refuel Point. Translation: a fuel truck, a fueler and a driver in one corner of a clearing and a Conex of goodies in the other...
 
By John of Argghhh! on April 9, 2006 4:17 PM
Oh, the *clean* one. Gottit.
 
By V29 on April 9, 2006 4:51 PM
Shucks Bill. We didn't have any switches for our mini.... Well, unless me telling the C/E to have the gunner fire. Wait, I guess the C/E slapping the gunner upside the head with a spare 60 barrel, counts as a switch?
 
By cw4(ret)billt on April 10, 2006 12:51 AM
I guess the C/E slapping the gunner upside the head with a spare 60 barrel, counts as a switch? No, it would be a switch if the gunner smacked the crewchief on the noggin with the spare -60 barrel. Gotta love the ol' flight helmet...