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I get what you're saying, and I get what joe1234 is saying. I managed to do almost 22 years and never had a position that wasn't flying, instructing, or evaluating and my thoughts have been all over the map on this issue. There's always been the constants in the Squadron: A few stick and rudder guys that just nailed everything, few GK gurus, a couple deadbeats, and then... everyone in the middle. For whatever reason, I marked 2012 as the year when I saw a notable decline in the middle of the squadron's "give a shit" attitude and emphasis toward flying skills. That's also around the time I noticed a massive increase in complexity of simply being a pilot/member of the Air Force. It was around this time when the Great PC Witch Hunt occurred, more inspections, budget sequestrations/less flying, new finance policies, etc. After a while, every checkride/training folder began with conversations along the lines of "Hey, I'm just trying to get through this. I've been working on MICT checklists for the past month and have been cancelled for MX/WX/Ops six times." And they weren't lying. So then I go to the SQ/CC with my concerns and he says, "Yeah, I know what you mean. I just got back from a conference and had to jump on a line and seat swap with 2 other pilots last night to get my one to/app/landing for the month. Maybe we should schedule a GK/tactics briefing this week to up everyone's game." Surprise, no one dropped their deployment prep, CBTs, OPRs/EPRs, Wing staff circlejerks, training summary reports, FEF reviews, travel voucher puzzles so Petey Patchwearer could lecture everyone how to calculate a tactical descent profile into Baghdad international. So I would debrief the flight, I'd try to offer techniques, get in the weeds a little, and they'd rapidly nod while checking their watch. They all had to make slides for the next morning's staff meeting, send an email, meet some sort of deadline for more important matters. My point is it's a math problem. I don't think the quality/character of the average pilot of the squadron has declined. But if you increase the complexity of the job and therefore reduce the time available to dedicate to improving flying skills, the result is the result. On top of that, the Air Force doesn't require or reward you for being better than you were yesterday in your primary duty. I 100% agree that everyone should strive to be better than the minimum. Challenging oneself and being the best pilot you can be for your country and coworkers should be reward in itself, but it still competes with, and is secondary to, the other time and tasks the Air Force requires.

In Texas and Georgia there is no shortage (beyond the usual) of hospital beds, ventilators, or doctors. NYC is the exception, not the rule.

I'd add that if you go 15yr it's a mandatory payment that you could destroy your credit over or end up losing the house if any unexpected life event happened. It also drives up your debt-to-income ratio to a high level that could keep you from getting a loan on an investment property or second home if you ever go that direction. Seen a few guys not qualify for a new purchase because they had a 15yr. I have a 15yr on my house so I'm not anti 15yrs...just something to consider.

seriously. three weeks ago the surgeon general was telling us to NOT wear masks. faucci has been wrong multiple times in the last few months. not faulting those dudes for course correcting, but fucking spare me if i refuse to throw away the united states constitution because the "expert government people" are telling me to comply with a new directive. they'd have a lot more credibility if they refused THEIR paychecks until we open back up. Sure is easy to hide behind the government check cashing every two weeks...

Either way you look at it, our leaders better figure out their plan to deal with this when people start ignoring the stay at home orders, because that's going to happen and soon! If you're from the south, you many not understand how much we in the north value our summers. Yesterday was the first really nice day of the year (especially since the lockdown) and people were out in droves! Some were defying local orders and on the river fishing. The parks were full of people walking/running with their kids/pets. Ice cream shops were busy. On and on... No fuckin way way people will continue to entertain these stay at home orders as the weather gets nice. Especially as we get more and more testing and people really start to realize that many of us have already had it and are fine and/or to most people it's a minor nuisance.

Uh, have you ever met a nurse? Break break Are we ready to stop pretending like this thing is a threat to healthy people? We flattened the curve, forestalled the infections long enough to get ventilators and hospital beds ready. There's no cure or vaccine coming soon, so let's just stop pretending like the world stays paused for however long that will take. We are going to open up, and more old/unhealthy people are going to die. That was never, ever going to be avoided. We didn't flatten the curve to keep people from getting sick forever, we did it to make sure there would be a bed for them when it happened. We're there now, so let's stop ****ing around. The world doesn't stop just because a disease exists. We had to adapt our medical system to this new reality, and that required social distancing. We're close enough to go back to living again.

I’ve seen a few of those posts, as well. The big one is something about signing a document that says you won’t take medical treatment once you get it because you didn’t follow quarantine guidelines. I couldn’t help myself and asked the person if smokers, morbidly obese people, motorcyclists etc should all have similar documents since they’re knowingly putting their health at great risk. Imagine how that played out...

Here's a S. Korean surgical and cotton (not N95) mask effectiveness study to add some fuel to the fire. https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2764367/effectiveness-surgical-cotton-masks-blocking-sars-cov-2-controlled-comparison According to this, coughing with a surgical or cotton mask on when you got the 'rona is like farting with a flight suit on when you had a greasy chimichanga.

Not trying to counter your argument, because I agree with what you're highlighting here, but to make it a true apples-to-apples comparison you also have to consider that on the 15 year loan, once it's paid off, all of that monthly payment ($2100/month) would go into that same retirement account for the remainder of the 30 year time period you're discussing. Given the same assumptions of 6%, contributing $2100/month for the final 15 years of the 30 year time period would equal $610,000. Still less than the $664,000 you accrue doing the 30 yr mortgage, but it's a pretty narrow margin that may swing some people's peace-of-mind value toward the 15 yr.

I'm not so sure they did. I was really expecting to see some move to surge the number of healthcare workers, and it doesn't seem like that's happened. I think New York let NYU's graduating medical school class practice a few months early, but otherwise nothing. It's too bad a big portion of the stimulus wasn't a "How to be a COVID-19 healthcare support worker" program for newly unemployed people, maybe with the course counting for credit towards an RN after the emergency is over.

Glad we got you hooked up again! Thanks for all the repeat business! All great points about a 30yr vs 15yr. Thanks for trusting us over your current servicer with the refi! Only one investor in the country allows escrow waivers on VA loans. Unfortunately their rates/pricing are terrible right now so we're not using them, but when they come back its a great option. A lot of people have terrible stories about their escrow account being either underfunded or overfunded. Lots of escrow drama out there. It'd be awesome if more investors got on board and allowed VA escrow waivers. Jon

Really? CNN?

I understand your point, but this is exactly how regular flu deaths are counted as well.. the flu doesn't usually kill young, healthy people either. If you want an apples to apples comparison you can't ignore pre-existing condition cases for covid, while including them in the normal flu death rate. And when you do that comparison you find that covid19 has killed as many Americans in April as a mid range annual flu deaths estimate. Coronavirus: ~35k deaths since the end of March. Flu: annual estimates range from 12k-61k deaths And that's with the entire country being shut down and almost all of our medical capacity converted to combat this one virus.

I mean I get what you're saying, but if someone is a stage 4 cancer patient with weeks to live and you put a bullet in their head, what is their cause of death? Are you charged with a crime? No different here. Your 82 year old hospice patient died unnecessarily early due to a virus rather than cancer; the cause of death is the virus. Not the same number of QALYs lost as the virus killing a young healthy person, but it's still a loss.

Getting the public to trust the decisions being made would be a helluva lot easier if our elites hadn't totally thrown their credibility in the toilet long before. We now live in a world where there is no penalty for failing or being wrong if you are in the elite class. Yet they expect us to do as they say without question....

Some data from Texas. A huge chunk of the state pretty much never even went into social distancing if you ask me. I never stopped heading into work, the highways and everything were bustling everyday. Grocery stores ran like normal. Gas stations full of people. Customers certainly were dying to come to our business, frustrated with the quarantine. People were on the trail running every morning (definitely within 6 ft) etc etc. If I somehow avoided the news completely (and man I tried) I would've have never known anything had changed. Anyways from my little slice of the world, like @SocialD said, this shit show won't last the end of the month in Texas. Not here to argue the validity of these choices by any means, just spread some perspective from the good ole lone star state.

Almost every politician has been a panicky shit sandwich. Organizations have twisted the truth (with good intentions in their hearts) in an attempt at modifying people's behavior, but it's still bullshit. The media is behaving like a cat chasing a laser pointer, knowing they want to craft a narrative but can't figure out what it should be other than A: Trump is evil and Fox News sucks or B: Trump is awesome and CNN is evil. The people need to be told the truth, then allowed to make decisions. If the people can't be trusted to act responsibly of their own free will, what's the point of having a free society? Yes, I realize that statement is lacking in a lot of the nuance that is actually necessary in making a functional government. Then again, telling people who lost their jobs because the government shut down their employer to just fucking stay at home and stop bitching is pretty fucking obtuse. The reality is this will continue in waves until a vaccine is developed or the pandemic has run it's course, either way ending in herd immunity or a virus mutated for lower mortality that we just learn to live with.

Negative. Those documents are what your MAJCOM demands of you, and the distinction is important. Are we to seriously believe that AMC is on the cutting edge of organizing, equipping, and...to the point, training its people? There is significant empirical data that shows AMC crews are not up to standard. Performance in exercises and downrange for one, or the MAJCOM’s love affair with the Q-3 another. I think it’s quite apparent we do have a training problem in the MAF, despite “meeting the minimums.” As IPs, we have the choice. Accept what the bobs have written down as gospel. Or we can look at it, acknowledge the rules are for what they are, and still make the choice to be better. I’d also argue that pursuing excellence is procedure and not a technique, as you seem to imply. But i’ll spare the philosophical for now. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

careful with this one. "USO's Benchmark is the near month crude oil futures contract traded on the NYMEX. If the near month futures contract is within two weeks of expiration, the Benchmark will be the next month contract to expire. The crude oil contract is WTI light, sweet crude oil delivered to Cushing, Oklahoma. USO invests primarily in listed crude oil futures contracts and other oil-related futures contracts, and may invest in forwards and swap contracts. These investments will be collateralized by cash, cash equivalents, and US government obligations with remaining maturities of two years or less." -http://www.uscfinvestments.com/uso "Since all futures contracts have an expiration date, the United States Oil Fund must actively roll its front-month futures contract to the WTI crude oil futures contract expiring in the next month to avoid taking delivery of the commodity. The fund primarily holds front-month futures contracts on crude oil and has to roll over its futures contracts every month. For example, if it holds WTI crude oil futures contracts that expire in September 2020, it must roll over its contracts and purchase those that expire in October 2020." https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/081116/uso-good-way-invest-oil-uso.asp full disclosure i've lost about 2k on this fund cause my dumbass threw in a bunch of money at "oil" in march. guys on cnbc have warned against retail investors jumping into USO....basically said it's a fund for more advanced institutional investors from FORBES: "The solution here is for USO’s fund administrators to dissolve it, as happened with XIV. Those administrators made a minute change in the fund’s composition last week—shifting holdings to the second- and third-month contracts instead of fully rolling over from the front-month contract to the second-month contract two weeks prior to expiration——but that was merely the proverbial shifting of the deck chairs on the Titanic. USO has outlived its usefulness, if it ever had any." https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimcollins/2020/04/20/the-us-oil-etf-uso-is-the-culprit-behind-oils-massive-plunge/#2de48ed524e8

When it comes to nurses & some of the protests to open things back up, I think we need to show some compassion. 5% toward those protesting because freedom of association and movement and work are important, and 95% to frontline healthcare workers who are going through hell right now. The endgame solution is a balance...feel free to pick from the above options and call your Congressman. Back to nurses and the (joke) cards running around for people to sign away their right to healthcare if they get the Rona: how many random soldiers recommended glassing the entire Middle East after seeing their buddies get killed or maimed in Iraq/Afghanistan/et al? I know more than a few personally and I also know there are several examples I could pull from this august body of spear-throwers. Nurses and doctors likely feel about the same right now toward people they see as making the their jobs harder. If I were them I'd be pretty damn angry too; hell, I can get angry at people not doing the right thing and I'm just sitting on my couch. In other news, get off my lawn. I have great certainty that 99.9% of healthcare workers would treat any patient rolling through the door with COVID-19 regardless of the circumstances, just like 99.9% of soldiers wouldn't murder innocent civilians on the battlefield.

That’s a good point. I think the majority have done a good job, there are whackos everywhere and they don’t represent the majority. But an alarming trend is the false dichotomy so many people appear to be clutching - if you don’t blindly support total destruction of liberties or policy making based on unreliable data, then you 100% don’t give a fuck about health or safety and are a window-licking idiot dumber than the dirt on my boots. What if there’s a middle ground where people do care about health/safety, liberty, and don’t want decisions made based on knee jerk data, but instead acknowledge there is a moderate approach to problem solving. All three of those areas of concern can reside in one person, but the far left/right zombies following their “leaders” and wielding online pitchforks refuse to acknowledge it. The “my way is the only way” crowd needs to pull their heads out of their asses.

I think @matmacwc would have liked this bit of history, this is something that was right about the AF: The Army’s only air to air kill since WWII was done with a .50 cal in Vietnam From the article and showing the best traditions of the Air Force: However, two legends of USAF combat aviation in Vietnam were more than happy to initiate him- then-Colonels Robin Olds and Daniel “Chappie” James, known affectionately as “Blackman and Robin.” “I actually knew both of them,” Lee recalled warmly. “Colonel Olds would meet me on the flight line and pick me, and only me, up and take me up to the debrief room. He would have a case of Bud iced down and I would give him targets that I had been working on in Laos the week before. So he was not a stranger. He was a very warm and personable man. I respected him and he knew it. I was not afraid to just sit and talk to him.” Upon hearing of Lee’s hushed victory, the two Colonels demanded a celebration.

You went from making a reasonable point to saying religious people should all get together and give themselves coronovirus because they’re stupid. Not sure why or how you made this leap, but maybe you could try to bury your religious bigotry while you’re making your point.

Given that Harvard helped facilitate grant money for viral research in Wuhan, please forgive me if I’m unconvinced at their authority and judgement on this subject. Were these the experts who said wearing a mask was useless, or the ones who recommended criminal penalties for not wearing one? Out of curiosity, am I more likely to catch the rona at a mosque or standing in line to buy rum tonight? Because one is allowed but the other isn’t, and the logical inconsistency is confusing. And just to go full Godwins Law... Expert medical advice in 1939 was that Jews should be herded into ghettos for “public health.” But let’s all laugh at history and play funny videos of retreaded internet preachers, we’ve evolved past government abuses nowadays!

no it's not "The logic goes something like this: any and all measures we take to prevent community transmission are justifiable because they will prevent infections and therefore prevent deaths among these vulnerable groups. In a medical sense this is irrefutable, but the underlying assumption of this logic is that the onus on the individual to protect themselves should be almost totally removed in favor of controlling the behavior of everyone, no matter how susceptible they may be. Some unsavory individuals [POOTER] prefer to make it personal and equate any resistance to an indefinite period of social isolation as wishing death upon those who are least likely to be able to fight the virus." BINGO! https://spectator.us/coronavirus-lockdowns-cowardice/

What JBueno said, though the only orders that I've ever had extended to take leave were deployment orders. I've never had a training, tdy, etc... order extended for leave. Brabus...simply put, if we both make 10k on a month on orders and you take your 2.5 days of leave in there, you still only make 10k. If I sell my leave back, I get 10k + 2.5 days of pay (base pay only). Now, what value you put on your time off, is a whole other thing. I'll say that I never had an issue with use/lose when I was full time because I always use lots of leave...they don't call it stay. I never really held leave back just to make a little extra coin as I enjoy time off too much. Though when I do alert orders, we have a dang good schedule and not much leave is needed unless I'm leaving town. But your comment seems to be a common misconception I've heard throughout my entire career.

Owning an airplane (bought my first one 11 years ago) is a heartbreaking yet awesome experience. If you have the means, go do it - you only live once. I had a Glasair 1 that I used to fly to work everyday for 2 years. After my Mc-dozen deployment and AD jettison to the ANG, I bought a Bonanza 36 and have had that for 8.5 years. We flew it a ton for a while, then had good years and slow years. My kid is 2 now and she loves flying which is awesome. It's been a total gamechanger for the extended family visits; even before the kid but now it really is. I honestly didn't think I'd ever sell this one. I'm thinking about selling. But just to buy something else. I'm retiring this year and moving back to Idaho next spring and want something a little more back country friendly. 180/185 is the goal, but I'm kicking around all kinds of options. Financially it'll never make sense in the long run; do it because you want to be an airplane family. Drop the cash, don't ever keep track of what it's costing you and go fly every time you feel like it. (My .02 )

I'll be calling HindSight when I get a little closer to pulling the trigger. Today, I went out to fly the Cub... my first flight since 7 March... and after I flew, I was walking around the ramp with a good bud (who owns the Cub, a Stearman, and a PT-22 and has a ton of GA experience), and we saw a nice Swift taxi out. I say "You've flown the Swift. What did you think?" He says "Good... but you can get in an RV-?, go faster, have better support, do it for cheaper, and have more fun." One data point. For you U-2 guys that know Mountain, we saw him land just a few minutes after that in his RV-6, and went and looked it over. His was finished in '92 (IIRC), and it was a beautiful airplane. He's had it two years, it is is first airplane, and he is a very happy owner. FWIW, we have quite a few U-2 Drivers with airplanes in the Beale area at this time.

I built my RV-10, so I have the Repairman’s certificate. With that said, anyone can do maintenance on any EAB aircraft like a RV. You only need an A&P for the Condition Inspection if you don’t have the Repairman’s certificate. mine has been flying for seven years. Oil changes and brake pads have been my primary maintenance expense. Mine has been pretty maintenance free.

How many people are you going to fly with 75% of the time? I know a few air force pilot's with Mooneys and they enjoy them (economical for a certified retract, long legs, good TAS cruise). I have a RV-6 and RVs are some of the best flying and cost economical airplanes ever. The best part about the RV is there are so many of them you can easily find someone that is an expert nearby. Like hindsight was saying, the experimental world has all of the benefits right now with little drawbacks (Eg. you cant use an experimental for hire/compensation) but you can change just about whatever you want. Want all glass or an autopilot? it's "cheap" and you can do it yourself. If you make a major change like a different propeller the FSDO just signs off on it and you fly a few hours of test flying. PM me if you have any questions but www.vansairforce.com forums is your friend.

You're looking at early model 35s like that orphaned K model, but think/ponder/worry an all-metal riveted fixed gear Lycoming powered experimental rules 2-seater is gonna represent an inflection point on a mx and qualified mx-personnel accessibility basis? You got it backwards.

Personally, I’m a fan of the “sweet and sour sickin’”

Just finished reading "The Dream Machine" by Richard Whittle. Covers the development, marketing, and integration of the V-22. Provides an interesting look at a machine that could still revolutionize air travel....