When we first started the missions the equipment set-up was a diaster waiting to happen. They first tried to place the pick-up tubes in the chin bubbles of the ship. There was a drain hole for water that they tried taping over. Like Dave said all it did was get in the pilot's way. There was no place or way to mount the main unit in the ship. Most of the time we used seat belts tied from the back of the pilot's seat and wrapped around it to hold it in place. Then in the beginning most ships had just four intercom cords. So during the first missions either the crewchief or door gunner would have to give up his cord so the operator could be in contact with the cover ship. That worked great until we started taking fire and it always seemed to be the one who didn't have a cord was the one who spotted the trouble so the rest of us didn't receive a warning until they returned fire. So like any military operations after a couple of times the guys figured out ways to improve the set-up. We had them mount brackets on the outside of the unit so we could place a seatbelt through the brackets to hold the unit in place. We placed the tubes outside of the ship and duct taped them to the supports of the skids. We made doubles up so you could plug two helmets into one intercom cord. They started planning mission better and we started to use landmarks as point of reference more. They started using three ships on the missions at the end. Maybe because we were catching so much fire at the end of tour with the "Snifer" Got to go will finish later.