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Glad to see my airline/union assisting UPS/IPA in their time of mourning and assist bringing Captain Diamond home to rest.

Hard to believe this was 12 years ago. For all of you out there deployed or remote standing watch...you are not alone, you are NOT forgotten. I am grateful for each and everyone of you. God Bless

a bit generous referring to them as people 😁

i totally agree that UPT cuts are seriously degrading the quality of the product. But don't conflate the UPT syllabus cuts with a need to create a new ACE program: even with a robust UPT syllabus like I went through many moons ago, the ACE Program was extremely beneficial for the new co-pilots. Story time: I remember back in the 2005-2006 time frame, there was a Langley F-22 at Hill AFB whose crew chief lost control of the landing gear pin during ground ops, and the pin got sucked down an engine. IIRC $6.8M in damage. That year, at Beale, our T-38 CT Program was run on a budget of around $6M for ~3700 hours of flying time. Think about that. That's around 3,000 SORTIES in a T-38... for $800,000 less than the cost of a single Raptor FOD incident. My experience in the Beale T-38 CT Program has made me such a better U-2 pilot and overall aviator than I would ever be without it. A magnitude better. There is so much that could be done to make our USAF aviators "that much better"... but the AF leadership will simply not invest the pennies... and I do mean "pennies"... to make it happen. It's no longer a priority. I hope I am proved wrong on my last statement.

It's more likely that he was here under a different username. That seems to be another Hallmark of his type. They say enough stupid things they no longer want to be associated with, so they hit the reset button. It's ironic, because they just end up posting the same stupid shit anyways. 🤷🏻‍♂️

UPDATE (6 Nov 25 / 1230 CST): Since I haven't heard from lilyelliott4, and his profile is suspect (IP addresses), Ihe's been banned. ADMIN NOTE: Thanks, I wasn't tracking until you mentioned it; then I looked at his posts and all followed the same style. I admit I use AI to grab info, but all of his responses look like they are completely AI generated. lilyelliott4, your account is locked. PM me if you aren't a bot and I will consider unlocking it. Otherwise, it'll be deleted shortly. p.s., I also removed the Thai fitness webpage link. Sorry guys, but there wasn't anything interesting on there! I had to check for the good of BaseOps! 😁😁

Nothing that can't be fixed by another "Back to Basics" read file

I have never seen such an absolutely despicable and disgraceful posturing from any government official. Mark Kelly has been a disappointment for a long time, and this has put him squarely in the category of irredeemable.

Took my wife to the shooting range in Conecuh Alabama yesterday, as we were wrapping up we had a very unexpected flyover. I thought it might be @Hacker in FiFi but after checking the schedule online I am guessing it was Doc returning home after cancelling the rest of their season for an engine change in Panama City. Must have been a sight to see the sky filled with these beautiful birds. The sound was incredible.

Engines are numbered left to right... for those unaware like I was at one point. Brabus... In the Viper or F-35, that would be "#1".

Addressing the OP: If you thought the USAF screwed you over, just wait until you experience an airline during contract negotiations. It sounds like outside influences have been crafted your outlook for you. It may be completely true that you were actively screwed by the system, but getting bitter only means you're letting the system win. The airlines will happily assume the role of screwing you over if you let them. I can show you a large collection of 30-year widebody captains making millions of dollars who are thoroughly convinced they've been screwed by the system. They are no fun to be around. It's all perspective. Pick your's with care. Choose gratitude instead of trying to pinpoint who's screwing you over. The answer to that question will always be "someone and/or everyone". Conversely, if you focus on what you're grateful for, you'll find a lot of good things in life. Pick one, you can't focus on both. I punched at 17 years and joined the reserves for 3 years. Now I'm at a major airline. In all three of those locations it is VERY easy to look around and wonder why the grass isn't as green as advertised. Reality is that the grass on the other side is just a different kind of grass. Once you get into a new organization, you'll see all the warts. You get to decide if it's good or bad, but if you let the system decide, it'll definitely suck. Truths: The system (usaf or corporate) doesn't owe you anything. Your hard work will be overlooked, but it will craft your reputation among your peers. Once you're gone, the system won't care. Maximize your personal gain without screwing others over, ignore the BS, do your work will, keep your integrity in tact, find a niche you can enjoy. Focus on good things, and your next career will be great. Focus on the hate, and you'll hate it. It's a DAILY choice.

Negative, that’s just the strawman thrown out by Putin simps to argue that the current Russian state poses no concern at all to Eastern Europe. Riga/Tallinn ≠ Paris. Trump is right that this is a European problem and NATO has atrophied. Europe needs to contribute more and some are starting, but one major weakness of the West is the DIB. We can’t print F-35s or munitions overnight. Our DIB is slow and obsessed with high end. Boeing is a shitshow. While we try to dig out of that hole, we shouldn’t just about-face and leave our NATO partners in the dust. Trump’s approach is anti-Teddy. Instead of speaking softly and carrying a big stick, Trump runs his mouth and serves up TACOs. Maybe it will work. Regardless of his style, appeasing totalitarian heads of state has proven to be as effective as pissing into hurricane-force winds.

All things being equal, I'd rather have the gas.

God damn that's delicious.

A buddy who is a long time captain at Delta posted today basically saying through no fault of your own sometimes your luck just runs out. I know they will find the cause and I seriously doubt there was thing anyone of these guys could have done. Same for the people on the ground including a baby from reporting. Rest in peace.

Socialism is merely a stepping stone to communism, Marx said that (paraphrasing). Yeah they’re technically different in some ways, but they’re also very intertwined. Frankly who gives a shit, they’re both bad - people try to use the technical distinctions as a “look how smart I am/dumb you are,” but reality is they’re not that smart and “you” aren’t that dumb. Bottom line - both bad, capitalism better (despite the problems that capitalism has), history has proven that for 100% of the earth’s existence since these systems originated.

I learned in a Supercub that had a 135HP Lycoming...it was a beast and I thought normal ops for a Cub. There is NOTHING like slipping a Cub (or other taildragger), over the tree to a greaser one wheel landing on the grass....best if done at Sunset. I am currently shopping airpark runway options. I looked at a 5280' grass strip on 80 acres two weeks ago. Looking at 361 acres this week.

One of the better uses of AI I have seen to date. Imagining the old lady as Congress. https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1DAuJ7XTnC/

Dibs

I know, and am friends with, several great dudes who are WSOs. They’re also smart and very capable human beings. That said, get rid of their positions in totality as aircraft advancements allow. There’s good reason we don’t have FEs on airliners anymore or navs on almost all aircraft models. There was absolutely a time and place, but those days are long gone. Stop trying to force a square peg into a round hole. They all need to accept this fact and move on… retire/get out early and transition to civ employment Shift to a different AFSC USAF reduce WSO production commensurate with current WSO-required aircraft retirements Stop trying to stupidly argue WSOs are required on new aircraft

Go all in and put two WSOs in it.

To whom it may concern. Will the person at the O-club Friday night who drew dick pics in our flight caps please provide new hats. Sincerely, Col. Harry Balzac & Col. Hugh P. Ness

I think this about the 5th cycle of colored shirts and name tags in my career. Thankfully I’ve been able to mostly ignore all of the knee jerk decisions and keep doing the right thing: morale shirts and call sign name tags (and no hat/sunglasses on head), as God intended.

Be more like Boyd... https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/advice/john-boyds-roll-call-do-you-want-to-be-someone-or-do-something/

My only comparison to heavies is the airlines, which I know isn’t apples to apples, but I don’t think it’s far off much of the time. These styles of flying allow for significant decay of stick/rudder skills and dealing with EPs/abnormals/unintended events that require them (vs. manipulating automation/simply pushing buttons). It is a disservice to young pilots especially not having ACE - the mil is holding them back on advancing their skills/maintaining solid proficiency. There’s a lot of airline pilots who could really use some GA time for this reason, and the ones who don’t care and rest on their 6900 airline hours don’t seem to realize they don’t really have 6900 hrs of flying, they have 6900 hrs of managing computers and rinse/repeating the same taxi flows/departures/arrivals (over generalization a bit, but point remains).

I bet those T-37 hours were probably 10% the cost of -135 hours and at that point in your flying career twice as valuable in building airmanship. Resurrect ACE, fly COs after UPT thru a solid 300 hour min program. Give the new ACE program T-6s from AETC (after an avionics update) then recapitalize UPT with PC-21s, T-6Cs or M-345s… or this training aircraft offered by Grob https://gaf-aerospace.com/tpx-cobra-en.html#:~:text=The TPX is a low-wing%2C side-by-side%2C two-seater,turboprop engine with 750 HP%2C 7-blade propeller. One more thing, ACE was unfortunately before my day but I believe it was there to give COs flying hours they weren’t getting sitting alert to assure pilot development and to aid the development and timing of Aircraft Commander eligible (by hours) pilots of whatever aircraft they were assigned. Good for the pilot and good for the Air Force. ACE 2.0 would serve the same / similar rationale, cheaper flight hours developing Aircraft Commander eligible pilots sooner, less expensive and less wear and tear on an already well utilized fleet of aircraft

I've gotta go dig in my tubs of ol' USAF shit to find my "WSO Hater Union" card I was once presented at a roll call. Looks like I have others to pass that along to here. Wish I could remember the occasion for which I was awarded it.

The best graphical depiction I have seen so far...

This. https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/pe-ch40.htm "Communist society passes through two phases of development: the lower phase known as Socialism, and the higher phase known as Communism." That's from the writings of the Economics Institute of the USSR. As Brabus said, it's merely a pit stop on the way to a communist society. Even Marx and Engels didn't really distinguish between Socialism and Communism in their writings. To them, it was all part of the same project. I'm not even convinced anymore that the Left thinks it's a good, workable economic system. I think that's a mask they use to hide envy and a misanthropic desire to destroy things that they can't have or otherwise haven't achieved. It's a hope, desire, and bet on future Schadenfreude.

Access is all that matters, which might come back to bite them in the long run.

Well, looks you got your answer.

Correction: ACE did not end when SAC went away. It remained within the newly-formed ACC until summer 1994 (maybe '95) when General Loh cancelled the program literally overnight. In my opinion, this was one more indicator of the lack of understanding that officers like Loh and many of the other ACC generals with fighter backgrounds had WRT to the non-fighter platforms under their command. Although I was never in ACE, I have many friends and classmates that flew as ACE co-pilots, or that were assigned to ACE as instructor pilots. I have a lot of experience with the CT Program at Beale, which ran in conjunction with ACE until the ACE portion was killed. You pose a number of questions, Clark. Bottom line: the ACE Program was a cost effective and solid aviation method for getting low-time co-pilots some much-needed quality flying experience. Not to mention, it made pilots very happy that they were able to fly... actually fly anywhere they wanted to go, and work on developing their new aviation skill sets. Imagine that... happy pilots working to better their fundamental aviation skills. For a brief period of time, Beale RQ-4 pilots were flying Beale aero club aircraft in an ACE-like program. Pennies on the dollar. Of course, it was cancelled. But it showed that with a tiny bit of thought and effort... and not much money... something positive could be done. The short-sightedness of Gen Loh and his staff was very unfortunate. Bringing back an even better version of the ACE Program should be done today. In both ACC and AMC.

The putin simps like bashi are confused because they got played. They thought they were voting for an idea (pro-putin) but now they realize their idol’s hurt feelings and chase for a Nobel prize are way more important.

Unfortuantely, there are experience and recency blind spots no matter where you find yourself in the aviation industry. When bringing guys in to fly the B-24 and B-29, I am looking for a mix of: - Multi-pilot, multiengine, "professional" flying - Day/VFR GA flying - Tailwheel experience There are a lot of other desirable traits, but these are the ones that keep the airplanes from getting wrecked.

If you give the government the power to feed you then you give the government the power to starve you.

So he can’t influence vendors to charge less for a beer at the dude’s own event…but…come Jan 1st he’ll be able to influence property owners to reduce/stop increases when it comes to charging rent.

Yall were enjoying it too much.....cancel that shit now!

The only applicability of “democratic” in that sense is they were all stupid enough to vote for it via a democratic process, and ironically that currently valid democratic process would soon disappear entirely if their ill-informed plan actually played out fully.

I will be completely stunned if anything in the report suggests an alternative outcome. It's hard enough to deal with an engine failure during takeoff, but when the engine completely explodes, to expect someone to analyze that in seconds is already a heavy lift. It's what we're trained to do, but that doesn't mean it's easy. But to then have to analyze a second engine starting to fail? No way. And all for what? Based on where the plane was on the runway in the videos we've seen, there was no stopping, and there was no going. At that point you're just arguing over where to put the fireball. I sincerely hope for the sake of the maintainers who were working on that engine over the past couple months that they too are the victims of Fate, and not something that's going to make them feel like murderers for the rest of their lives.

Could be worse, could have been Slife.

As I expected…

Sorry about the FB link https://www.facebook.com/reel/1331132237948069

I am a weather geek and always wondered what it would be like to be a Hurricane Hunter. For those who followed Hurricane Melissa which is the third strongest hurricane on record (892MB and still intensifying at landfall), the NOAA and USAFR Hurricane Hunters had a constant presence as the storm built and hit Jamaica and Cuba. USAFR flies a fleet of 10 WC-130Js and NOAA operates two PC-3's. One of the P-3s (named Kermit), was flying a mission during the rapid intensification. As they departed the eye and flew into the eyewall they encountered what looks to me like extreme turbulence. Ultimately they elected to depart the storm because of the turbulence ..something that rarely happens. Video below shows what must have been a tense ride. Note the engineer working the throttles...or trying to while getting tossed around. AQP1zLdnXrSgI_2_OBE_F0hhLxJeGO4jFK1eae_iKwtS_ust8aU-GrgMjUvsO9FJVYVRDFgG7Q7fe2AYKxCS-1egSOsuHaBH7rl8OO9TGvWqRQ.mp4

Too much effort is spent justifying upholding the law. Just call them criminals and keep arresting them. The people who don't want us to follow the laws are never going to be convinced no matter how many high-level whatevers you catch, and the people who are already supporters are just going to be turned off if you're caught in a lie. There's never going to be an administration in the history of the country that loses an election for upholding immigration laws. Plenty have lost elections for over-promising and under-delivering.

So let me get this straight, 20 million illegal immigrants coming into the country is better than a small number of constitutional violations that are being resolved in the courts? That's the math. I don't work in the Congress, so I don't get to pick a made-up third option where the border is closed and there are no violations of constitutional rights. I have a choice between a candidate that made everything worse, dramatically, and a candidate who single-handedly reduced illegal immigration to near zero, while fucking up in some edge cases. That's pretty easy math to me. No one is denying the constitutional violations, though I suspect you would view far more of the deportation activity as a violation than I would. But even if I agreed with you on every single case, the alternative was a slow rolling catastrophe for my country and the country my children will inherit. Caveats are part of living in the real world. I will be very black and white in this point. If this is a literal statement, then you are a hack. And while I could put together a rather extensive list of individual things he has done that are quite easy for me or any other conservative-minded person to support, and I can even make a smaller list of things that any fair-minded liberal would support, if you can't do that on your own, then you are simply beyond any position that is worth engaging with. In that case, TDS is a fair label.