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It varies from 10 min turns to up to an hour or more depending on how far the incident is from the nearest base. In the S-2, the basic pilot math is 1/3 the distance in minutes each way, so 30 miles away is 10 min or about 25 min turns including ground time. For state incidents, it's usually no more than 30 min due to the location of our bases, but for federal incidents the times can go way up if they are remote. Especially anything on the east side of the Sierras (i.e. Owens Valley) since we have to cross the Sierras for each trip. We had a couple fast moving fires within 5 miles of the base this year where it was straight up 10 min turn arounds including the 3 minutes to load. Think I did 19 drops in about 3.5 on the Hobbs. We had five S-2s on the first fire and pounded the shit out of it that afternoon. Next day, same thing on the second fire. Kept them both to reasonable size and they were done by the morning. We prefer to keep them under 10 acres, but sometimes that's just not in the cards, so beating them in one day with minimal structure loss is a win too. Now, the Scooper aircraft that use lakes can have extremely short turns if there's a useable water body nearby. But that's another subject... This pic is the first fire after only 20-25 minutes after initial report...explosive to say the least. Terrain and up canyon winds were fueling it. We held it on the ridge to the left and stopped it in the small valley center-right of the pic. View is basically from downwind leg at the airport. It's a fun and rewarding job when you get to make an impact and see results!

I do not think I’m smarter than the medical professionals, rather thinking that the many medical professional who are against a mandatory vaccine, yet are being hushed by big pharma, media, and CDC, are probably smarter than those desk types at the CDC and big pharma. The drs at the CDC and big pharma are just politicians and pawns now...and dont have our true best interest in mind.

Yeah cause the PHd and “experts” have done SO well! last I checked the constitution didn’t have a clause for PHD’s and non elected officials (looking at you CDC director) to mandate taking away peoples freedom of choice or freedom to make individual choices about their own level of risk tolerance.

Comments like this invariably need to take a long hard look in the mirror.

It’s never too early to start. There are several different options for work in the industry, such as being a Fed Lead Plane or Smokejumper pilot, Large Air Tanker companies, SEATs, and Air Attack. Flying for CalFire is just one part of this industry and honestly doesn’t work for everyone. When I retired early (15 years) I worked for a Pt 135 company flying Air Attack and charter for 3 years before I got on with CalFire. I learned a lot during those 3 years doing Air Attack about where I wanted to be long term.

For comparison's sake, in Texas (where I could find numbers), COVID has "killed" approximately 2200 vaccinated individuals from Jan to Oct this year (https://www.dshs.texas.gov/immunize/covid19/data/cases-and-deaths-by-vaccination-status-11082021.pdf). In 2019 (in Texas), the flu/pneumonia killed ~3100 people (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/flu_pneumonia_mortality/flu_pneumonia.htm). There's your numbers. Get the vaccine or don't. It's your choice. I don't care. The pandemic is over. I'm going back to normal.

Very odd.

Out of genuine curiosity: what is the framework for the religious exemption request, that doesn't apply to any of the other required vaccines? I legitimately want to learn more, I don't feel like I have a good understanding of how important this is to some people.

One of the most frequent posters to this site, an admin, is a retired intel officer.

https://www.defensetravel.dod.mil/Docs/perdiem/browse/Allowances/BAH/PDF/2022/2022-With-Dependents-BAH-Rates.pdf https://www.defensetravel.dod.mil/site/bahCalc.cfm By the way the search function is INOP I literally searched for BAH which is in the thread title and got nothing. Cheers to Washington DC going up!

The Navy's on board... Navy to Start Separating Unvaccinated Sailors The Navy will start processing unvaccinated active-duty sailors for separation under a new policy guidance released Wednesday. Thousands of sailors risk ending their career’s early and repaying bonuses and education fees for failing to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus by the end of November. “We want every sailor to receive the vaccine and stay Navy. And if a sailor gets their shot, we will honor that and make every effort to retain them,” Rear Adm. James Waters, the Navy’s director of military personnel plans and policy, told reporters. “On the other hand, those who continue to refuse the vaccine will be required to leave the Navy.” Wednesday’s guidance comes two weeks after the Navy’s COVID-19 vaccine deadline for active-duty sailors. As of Dec. 9, the Navy has 5,731 sailors who remain unvaccinated, representing 1.65 percent of the active-duty force. Of the unvaccinated, 326 have temporary medical exemptions and seven have a permanent medical exemption. The service received 2,705 religious accommodation requests but has not approved any of them... (full story at title link)

Shaft is the only person I know that got to "real world drop live" on his old AFB. Pretty cool. I tee'd it up for Beale Public Affairs to run a good story on it... but nothing was ever done.

The order is in direct conflict with science, and only serves to further support the narrative that government policies are unfair and unscientific.

A couple things. First, society is in a constant state of creative destruction, and that has to be guarded against at all times, and in all places. If you think any previous epoch in history achieved "stasis" I think you need to pick up a history book. Which is to say this, if you think mandating people to do things - any things - against their will is going to lead to a more stable society, I think you need to re-evaluate some assumptions about people. And second, yes, all golden ages have had their contrarians, and they tend to be the people who are most celebrated in our history books: Plato, Galileo, Copernicus, Gandhi, Jesus. I guarantee you, guarantee you, most people had the opinion that those people were assholes. And don't forget the most important, and underlying, point: a dynamic society - a society that is capable of inventing vaccines like the ones we have - enables assholes, tolerates assholes, and makes room for assholes. In fact, it's a lot of these assholes who are responsible for some of the greatest things we have in our lives. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Certain people will always be stupid and will make stupid decisions - let them. This is a can of worms, but in short, I would say that COVID was a "contributing factor" in that approximate number of deaths. The root cause? I don't buy that for one second. Remember, the medical establishment is a self-interested bureaucracy just like any other. For instance, see how skin biopsies and excisions from medicare fee-for-service recipients doubled over the 13 year period from 2004 to 2017, with the death rate remaining constant (hint: over-diagnosis for $$$)...which leads me back to my fundamental point - you should be the one choosing what goes in your body, not anyone else. I'm baffled by how that has somehow become a controversial statement. What we have successfully done, is miss an opportunity to honestly address the ongoing health crisis in this country with respect to obesity and our collective lifestyles. Voices early on in the pandemic were identifying obesity as a major co-morbidity with this disease, but no one wanted to hear that. Now, lo and behold, we see articles that are saying exactly that - fat tissue is targeted by the virus. Look at the morbidity of places like Japan, where obesity is not a thing - waaaaaaaay less. So I would invite you to peel back the onion beyond the one thin layer you seem content with and get closer to the root causes of this crisis.

I know you, specifically, want COVID to be over. You can tell by how every about 3 weeks you post that you personally are over it. Cool. But you lack ability to provide a coherent fact based argument or use statistics, which significantly hurts your point. If 1 out of 100 people die in a population die due to a disease it is not a 1% death rate. It would only be 1% if 100% of the population got the disease. Currently, they’re estimating that only about 50-100M people in the US (15-35% of the population) have had COVID, which means it is more like a 3-7% death rate in that population. Incoming “Doesn’t change anything.” Tell me, what sort of mortality or long term effect is worth vaccinating society? I’d like to set the stage, before you answer. Polio has about a 1 in 200 chance of causing paralysis. In those cases 5-20% of the population dies. So the overall mortality risk for polio is less than 0.1%. Also, you probably know, we are approaching double the total casualties of WWII. Same comment. Your statistics are intentionally misleading and wrong. There’s about 212M folks in the 0-49 age range. There have been 52.8k deaths. That right there is a .024% chance of death. Oh wait, not everyone was infected, as previously talked about, so in reality it’s closer to .075-.15% chance of death. I can still buy that maybe that’s acceptable, but we’re talking you being off by a factor of at least 100. For those 50-64, there’s about 62M people. There have been 145k deaths. That is 0.2% of the population. Which means a CFR on the order of 0.6-1.2%. Population size source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the-us-by-sex-and-age/ COVID deaths source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ All of your guys’ analysis also conveniently ignores the fact that over 80% of those infected by the disease have a long term symptom or side effect: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95565-8 I am all for having a debate about whether blanket vaccine mandates are useful, or what the cutoff is. But I am not at all interested in BS statistics, lies, or just plain feelings, which is what significantly reduces both the effectiveness and credibility of the anti vaccine side’s arguments.

The California Fire Pilots Association (CFPA) has created an updated website with much more information than previously available. Some of which is the path to a career in fire aviation. Here is a link to the careers page: Careers | California Fire Pilots Association (calfirepilots.com) Also, this season a couple of our pilots participated in an episode of the Pilot to Pilot podcast. There is a wealth of knowledge for anyone interested in the topic. CalFire- Fighting Wild Fires by Air by Pilot to Pilot - Aviation Podcast (anchor.fm) Here's a badass photo of my fellow Columbia Air Attack Base tanker pilot Ken, saving some structures near Clear Lake last summer...

You're failing to look at the numbers. Unbridled libertarianism implies that if only three people out of 300 million want it, then they should get it. This issue is nowhere near that imbalance. You have a pretty even split across the country of people who are pro-mandates and people who are against. Even if that split was only 33/66, you would not be anywhere near approaching the threshold for "unbridled." In the case of a pandemic, an easy threshold to use would be what people are doing on their own. People didn't need to be harassed to stay at home and wear masks back in March of 2020. The streets were empty and the masks were sold out. Yeah, you had a fringe element that had no interest in participating in any measures, but that was not representative of any meaningful portion of the population. Two weeks to stop the spread had wide bipartisan buy-in. There's your threshold for a mandate. Now, many months after those two agreed upon weeks, we have a very different debate with a very different split. Again, you are falling into the trap of choosing your belief and interpreting it was "right." Our system is designed to take these controversial topics with no clear majority (and thus no "right" answer) and put them into stasis until the natural process of societal evolution determines and outcome. Relying on the power of the state to predetermine society's decision is, and always will be, a recipe for disaster. In fact there are very few cases that call for such measures, and one could argue that the abolition of slavery might have been the only one in American history. Even then, there's a compelling argument that the tide was already turning in a very dramatic fashion, and hundreds of thousands of lives and many decades of strife could have been avoided with a little bit of patience. The obvious and understandable counter to that is one cannot have patience in regards to a matter as morally abhorrent as slavery. I lean towards the latter, but I understand the former. But the civil rights movement, women's right to vote, and gay rights in America were all politically fought well after the public perception had changed. 1% of the population that was already well within the acceptable range for "dying of old age" is not by any stretch of the imagination ad issue comparable to slavery, so no, it is absolutely not worth sacrificing liberty for those deaths. Call me when it's a bunch of kids dying.

No. Now that it has been adequately shown that vaccination does not meaningfully impact transmission, no mandates of any kind are justified in my opinion. Private organizations are free to do as they see fit, and to a lesser extent so are states, but the federal government should excuse themselves from any further decision making.

Says a dude on who has never flown a military aircraft posting on a military aviation site. 😆

You know how everyone here laments reporters with no aviation experience critiquing aircraft mishaps? Try applying some of that same logic to other areas of your life.