Clayton Bigsby

Got to look at this one a bit at the Chino airshow earlier this year, and it looked great. Great progress from a just year previously, I remembered seeing the freshly-arrived and distinctively Bronco parts piled up at Aero Trader. Now it's flying all over the place.

lol Not for UTAs, my friend...in my experience, orders with travel were only available for Annual Tour, or for any missions that had the funding. But drill weekend? That was on me to get there. I did the non-rev thing as a ground guy. For the most part, it worked. To the OP, what you may run into is needle-dick airline personnel who don't understand what you're doing, and may try to claim that you're using your travel benefits for financial gain. If and when that happens, nuke that shit from orbit, behead the remains. I'm getting all triggered internet tough-guy over this as I ran into that exact situation and I played it soft, thinking I have to get along with my boss/employer and besides the airline making this claim wasn't even my own, it was a partner airline at my airport (on whom I was non-reving for UTA, their flights served my destination direct while mine required 1-2 connections). But the takeaway was that I wished later on that I had been much firmer and put the two station managers in touch with USERRA as mentioned above, as well as with their leadership further up the chain, airlines have extensive participation in the reserve components and some education being dropped from the executive/flying side of things would have made life much easier for me and for any other guardsmen/reservists who happened to work there later on. Meanwhile one of my jackass coworkers was non-reving up to Alaska to do commercial fishing. Okay...

Apparently there was a lot more AF-oriented scenes that were cut to prioritize the comic story. Hopefully the blu-ray release has more content. But it's Disney, who knows, they'll probably make you wait after it's been in the vault for 20 years to get that.

It's back up here.

First Command still exists, I bank with them and they extended us two full paychecks during the gov shutdown, when USAA comparatively did not for my coworkers. Yeah, we got savings, but I was still working every day and having some funds available and not just raiding the emergency fund was nice (especially when the emergency is fucking ridiculous in the first place). We insure with USAA, one place where they really shone with us was moving HHGs from Hawaii, nobody else would. I've also heard they're good for financing overseas direct vehicle purchases, most banks are leery of extending funds for a vehicle whose VIN doesn't exist yet at the time of purchase. But yeah, I definitely agree, USAA has gone way way downhill. They were next to useless for our VA home buying experience - they call you 'pre-qualified' and won't run any actual numbers until after you've made an offer and have it accepted, leaving the potential to lose earnest money if there are any snags. Navy Fed was way better!

The 0.32 BAC is a rumored number floating around (I also read 0.34). Again, rumors of termination, resignation, and suspension (which in reality would be administrative leave). I believe the incident occurred last thursday, right? I heard about it friday...and immediate administrative action is certainly unlikely over a 3-day weekend (which most admin stretches into a 4-day'er). But I'm guessing we'll see it on all the national news media very soon.

We'll see if it's an actual termination. Seems very very fast for that. A resignation, maybe...and that's been rumored. Lots of rumor out there and little factual info.

Wasn't the rescue coordination center at Tyndall? If so, I assume that capability has been transferred elsewhere?

Understood, but the E-3 is kinda key to everything we do. The other bases are way more limited in terms of fleet dispersal - what, 3 at Kadena, 3 at Elmo? Less? One at Boeing Field? Whatever's TDY to Nellis or overseas? Tornado hits Dyess, there's still Ellsworth plus whatever's at Eglin, Edwards, Nellis, and deployed. A little more redundancy. Then there's also the other bombers that can pick up the slack if need be. Other than grabbing the NATO AWACS, I'm not sure what else you could do in the case of the E-3 fleet. Yes, natural disasters can take out any base, it's just in the post-BRAC era it's surprising how much less redundancy there is in certain places. Whiteman, Offut and Tinker all come to mind. Unrelated - would building HASes like at USAFE fighter bases be more storm-proof-ish? And oh, God, the tornados can have Altus! haha

Air Force Magazine (AFA one) article I read this morning said 'over a dozen F-22s' left behind, some 'damaged beyond repair'. Damn.

Always wondered how the USAF justifies basing just about all of the E-3 fleet in the heart of tornado alley. All it takes is one bad afternoon... ...granted half the fleet is deployed or TDY somewhere, but still.

I know anyone else can look this up pretty easily, but Runway Information Runway 8/26 Dimensions: 4504 x 75 ft. / 1373 x 23 m Surface: asphalt, in good condition Weight bearing capacity: Single wheel: 12.5 Runway edge lights: medium intensity RUNWAY 8 RUNWAY 26 Latitude: 34-05.113665N 34-05.118037N Longitude: 117-09.228998W 117-08.336917W Elevation: 1471.7 ft. 1574.4 ft. Gradient: 2.1% 2.1% Traffic pattern: left right Runway heading: 076 magnetic, 090 true 256 magnetic, 270 true Markings: basic, in good condition basic, in fair condition Visual slope indicator: 2-light PAPI on left (3.00 degrees glide path) Runway end identifier lights: yes yes Touchdown point: yes, no lights yes, no lights Obstructions: 4 ft. fence, 300 ft. from runway, 125 ft. left of centerline, 25:1 slope to clear 60 ft. trees, 1500 ft. from runway, 120 ft. left of centerline, 22:1 slope to clear https://www.airnav.com/airport/KREI I think the limiting factor would probably be taxiway widths, obstructions and exits from the runway. But what do I know, I was a sweaty, not the driver. Personally I think it'd be really cool to have a C-17 on the ground for this one Huggy if it's even possible, but I'm biased cuz I was a -17 guy. At the very least, could there be some sort of aerial demo, and not just the one pass by the March guys there was last year?

Talking about capacities...you do know LM builds/built the -22s and -35s at different locations, right? F-22s in Marrieta GA, F-35s in Ft Worth. Not sure capacity is an issue.

Wish I could make it. Minimum staffed at the tower, so no leave. Sorry!

Worth it! Although you can usually get it for 20-ish at BevMo or Total Wine. They usually release around the holidays, that's when all the breweries here release their top-shelf imperial barrel-aged stuff. $35 was what I saw Ballast Point charging for theirs, but they charge $15 for a 6-pack...