[?] My wife seems to think that they were used to stop static elictricty while fueling on ground. I really have no idea what they were used for but I’m sure one or a bunch of you modern plane modelers know the answer. Tks for any help.[4:-)]
They are used to secure arming devices, flight controls and other pieces so they are not damaged or accidentally activated. You’ll find them on bombs, missiles, control systems, ejection seats and many other interesting areas.
Thanks Swanny. I had that suspicion myself. Enjoy seeing your work and hints. In fact, will be using the salt routine on my next Japanese plane. Thanks again and keep up the nice work.
Tugcap,
Well the Remove Before Flight tags/ribbons, are actually attached to either a safetying pin or cover, on modern fighters they are used to safe the weapons systems, like Bombs, Missles, Guns, and weapons pylons (also Bomb racks) by inserting a pin into a switch that completes a electrical path for the system to operate, on bombs it generally stops the fuses from setting into it’s armed position, for missles they are atteched to warhead covers, and tracking head covers to prevent the seeker or warhead from being damaged by ground maintainers when preforming maintenance on the plane, the RBF tags/ribbons are also attached to the safetying equipment for the ejection seats, and throttle grip covers, and on engine plugs (intake & exhaust), also you’ll find then on Landing Gear strut lock arms, actuators, door equipment keep then from actuating while maintenance is being done in those areas, if you have a chance try to go to an Open House at a local AFB (Air Force Base), NAS Naval Air Station), MCAS (Marine Corp Air Station), this summer and get up close and personal with the planes and talk to some of their maintainers, if you have any questions I may help I’ve worked A-7’s, A-10’s, C-130’s, F-16’s, KC-135’s, & T-33’s in the 23+ years with the USAF & USAF Reserves
Having a wife I know exactly what she’ll say: “See? The safety pins just rerout the static electricity making it all safer. See? I was right.”
At least that’s what mine would say. Then she’d leave me all flustered and not able to mount a come-back because there is no defeating female logic! LOL!
Eric
Thanks Guys…Great pile of good info. Now I know and so does the old lady who also thanks you.
As stated above, the RBF flag is a readily visible indicator that a safety pin or cover of some type is in place and needs to be removed before the aircraft takes off. The pin is what prevents the movement of the mechanical “thingie” and the flag is just there to tell the maintenance folks to get it out of there before flight. Many of the photos in books such as In Action, Walk Around, Detail and Scale, etc show exactly where these pins/flags are located.
Darwin, O.F. [alien]
here’s what I said to my friend when he asked me the same question
“the remove befor flight tags are there so some stupid idiot won’t set off the bomb when the aircraft’s on the ground, and it’s red because red stands out against the background colors so some stupid idiot won’t forget to take those off before flight, making 2million dollar bombs (hyperbole-exageration) frikin’ duds”
[:D]
I’m not very fond of real life frineds, because of their stupidity… but on the net, people are always smart![:D]
I’m not calling anyone stupid idiots.
grounding pins are something else, but they are almost always apparent on a/c parked for a period of time and ANY time they are fueling. essentially, it looks like a large sized stereo headphone plug on a long cable clamped to the ground with what looks like a welding clamp.
There is a ritual tactical aircraft go through which I have witnessed a number of times on my hops as a civilian observer. Flying in, say, an F-4 (I’m dating myself) or an F-15 (see, I’m not that old), on a mission where you are, say, going to the range for a little bombing and strafing practice, or even on air-to-air missions, before you take your place at the end of the runway, you taxi up to a section of tarmac called “Last Chance.” It is here that the techies run around under the aircraft pulling the pins on the end of the flags (Hence “Remove Before Flight”) from the armament and whatever else, and then you pull your last pin from your ejection seat. You and your pilot, while these external pins are being pulled, must hold your hands outside the airplane in plain sight so that the crew can see that these same hands aren’t accidentally pulling the gear lever and dropping the airplane on top of them, or pickling off the bombs on their heads.
Then the ground crew lines up and they hold all the flags up so the flight crew can see that they have all been pulled. Then you hold up your last ejection seat pin (in many seats, but not all) before stowing it in the leg pocket of your G-suit. After this ritual, everyone (except me, the civilian) salutes, you hit the down lever on your canopy (the pilot, of course, does this in the F-15 and you do it yourself in the F-4 and F-104) and taxi to the end of the runway and watch that magical throttle to your left go forward, knowing that its twin in the front seat is slowly heading toward the little label that says “Afterburner.”
And then, my friends, the fun begins!
Oh, and then, after you return, you must remember to pull that pin and flag out of your G-suit pocket and safe your seat again before the aircraft is parked, or you look like a silly sack of civilian sheep $#@%^/.
TOM
On a lighter note re. RBF: Last month while visiting the Naval Air Museum at Pensacola I spotted a red T-Shirt with the “Remove Before Flight” lettering in white on the front. Couldn’t resist and bought one for the wife. Now I’m just waiting for her to wear it to the airport!
Dick McC
hey sharkskin;
the “Last Chance” is accually called “EOR” or End Of Runway, that’s when the weapons crews arm the weapons and the crew cheif checks for any RBF tags that where missed at the chocks, so the A/C could do it’s mission or sortie
Cuda:
Thanks. I’ve never heard any other term but “Last Chance,” but then, I was only a civilian observer and not in the thick of it like you. I was always nervous during the times when we had to have our arms extended over the canopy sills, because I could just imagine that 200-pound canopy, with it’s safety pin removed by now, suddenly losing pressure all of a sudden and crashing down on both my arms, which I could just imagine tumbling to the tarmac without me attached to them. But I can certainly understand why you guys wanted our hands where you could see 'em. Having a full 600-gallon belly tank fall on you because some idiot accidentally punched the “panic button” (the switch which jettisons all the external stores at once in an emergency) would be a real day-ruiner.
I also remember something else about safing the seat: On the Phantom’s MB Mk. VII seat, besides the pins, you also had a cover over the ejection handle located on the front of the seat between your legs (this is the one they always recommended for use if we had to punch out, instead of the face curtain. Can someone out there tell me the reason? Notice that new seats, like the ACES II series, don’t even have face curtains.) Anyway, besides remembering to remove the pin on takeoff and putting it back as you taxied in, you had to remember to push the cover for that seat handle back to the safe position, from it’s armed position to the left. The cover prevents you from catching the toe of your boot in that loop while entering and exiting the a/c.
When detailing a Phantom seat, this is usually left off by even the pickiest modelers, even though it’s quite conspicuous. It’s shaped like an inverted triangle, made from a thin piece of aluminum that covers that yellow loop handle that’s mounted in the cutout in the seat cushion. In any parked F-4 it would be covering that yellow loop. This safety cover is painted a metallic lavender red and I always make one from .010 sheet styrene and add it to those Mk. VII seats because it shows up nicely. (These seats are also found in late F-8 Crusaders and, if I’m not mistaken, perhaps some late German F-104’s.) Paint the cover with Testors metallic red in the little bottles. For some reason, this is lighter than the automotive colors in the large bottles and matches pretty well.
TOM
When I was in the airforce here in Canada, I knew this one airforce girl who wore a red t shirt to the pool all the time with “remove before flight” written on it… Also, we used to use the same tags with “loaded” on them for our guns on F-5’s and F-18’s. Guys used to wonder around the tarmac at christmas parties with those tags around their necks…
I almost forgot: Years and years ago, there was a derilict RB-47E out in the boneyard at the Confederate Air Force’s home field, at the time in Harlingen, TX, where I worked in various departments on my off hours from the local newspaper. Well, I was the unofficial “curator” of the old cold warriors that the CAF had taken on loan from the Air Force Museum, and then allowed to rot and, as I’ve stated several times on this site, which the CAF used as a source of sheet metal and other parts for their WW II restorations.
It made me furious, and even moreso when I ratted them out to the AF Museum’s commander, and he didn’t seem to care. To the CAF, the B-47, F-89, F-102, F-94, C-124, RB-57A and a couple of others I forget now, had no historical significance whatsoever. So year after year the metal was stripped away, the planes corroded. Birds nested there. So I began taking tiny little mementos, since I knew the planes would soon be going to the scrapyard. They were not worth restoration, since they were not from any “real” war.
First, I took an ejection seat safety pin from the B-57 and made a key ring out of it. Then, I was fooling around one day inside my “baby”, the B-47, when I found one of the old-fashioned canvass RBF flags hanging from a FOD cover up in the bomb bay. Since it had to hang all the way down from the “roof” of the bomb bay, it was about seven feet long. Well, I had a guitar strap made out of it. I didn’t play guitar, but it just seemed the perfect thing to do with it. It was the ideal width and tough as buffalo hide, bright red with “Remove Before Flight” stenciled in white paint about three times in a row on it.
I gave it to a guitarist friend of mine, who thought it was the coolest thing he’d seen since his 1957 Les Paul, which he hung from this unique strap. I hope he’s using it to this day.
TOM