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Met Huggy for the first time at Oshkosh today. Here he is enthusiastically holding court and patiently answering all questions from the audience in the dreadful heat. Came back an hour later and was still at it. Great rep for the retiring U-2 program.

looks like the same hat from oshkosh 2003!

BFM's drinks

My personal bottle-to-throttle is about double the FOM standard. Just too much money in the pot to call that hand. That said, if I ever do get into widebody international again, I will go full Quaker from CONUS coast-out to clearing US customs. Happy to go hit Oktoberfest or a bottle of wine with dinner up the Italian coast...but only on vacation.

Gay

Is the seagull going to be okay?

If you do international, layovers are long enough to still comply with your double bottle-to-throttle standard. I've stuck with 12 hours and the only problem I've had was when I was reassigned domestically after hitting an Irish Pub in NY and I told the scheduler I wouldn't accept the trip because it is inside my 12 hour rule. Scheduler goes nuts screaming its legal so a Chief pilot calls. He asks if my 12 hour apples to sign in or push. I tell him I'll accept push time and the flight gets slipped. You are right, money is too good to be stupid.

Great! We will be on the south end of Boeing Plaza with you. The Deuce now arrives Sunday ~1230, after a drop in to the Milwaukee Airshow. The guy flying it is from Fond du Lac.

SIG came in WAY under what the other test submissions offered. It also offered the modular functionality that the others didn't.

Sounds to me like the military took a high quality product, demanded it be changed to suit the idiocy of some of our members who should never touch a gun in the first place, then were surprised that the product doesn't function like the OTS product. SiG makes excellent firearms. So does Glock. We should have just picked an OTS product and bought it outright instead demanding it have an extra safety, which is what I understood happened. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Everyone call/email your reps. Unlikely to pass with GOP control, but still a huge threat to constitutional rights. The Dems yet again show their desires to completely unravel the constitution and turn us into a one party-rule, socialist shithole.

In other news from the Communist...I mean Democratic Party. Democrats have put forth an amendment to the Appropriations Bill to raise the NFA tax to $4709.

Breathalyzers are notoriously prone to false positives. The reason the US uses the .08 standard isn't because we're okay with people driving around buzzed, it's because if you arrest everyone you test who has a .02 you're going to be arresting a ton of people who are stone cold sober. Blood tests are what have actual evidentiary value.

Real airline pilot talk! This pilot is junior to me so no gain for this guy. 🤣

I see the gofundme for his sunglasses failed, but at least there’s a hat this time. Small wins.

While I understand the sentiment, there's no realistic scenario where you have two drinks, stop for 8 hours, and still have a high BAC. And I have yet to see a single incident of a pilot who drank responsibly, then tested positive the next day. You've never in your life smelled like booze 8 hours after having two drinks. Now, if a pilot is one of the types who has a tendency to turn two drinks into 10 drinks, then absolutely go full Mormon on every layover. But these incidents aren't bad luck or strange biology. Every time it's someone getting hammered on the layover, and not having the sense to call in sick the next day. It's just like credit cards. Some people can use them everyday for every expense because it's an easy way to get 2% of your expenditures back. Other people touch the plastic and find themselves on an all-day spending binge. Know thyself and act accordingly.

He wanted everyone to know he saved them from certain death. I use a modified version of "Never talk to the media" with pax because in essence, they are all now "the media."

He had to do one EVM and almost shit his pants. Diarrhea of the mouth ensued.

Between the accounts of cops and competitive shooters having discharges in holsters, and the way Sig has handled it. Fuck that gun

Uh, there were at least two on that flight deck.

The Marine Corps instills from the start that you are a Marine first, and your MOS is secondary. Personally all I wanted to do was fly, so I was jealous of Air Force and Navy fighter pilots who had more time to focus their efforts on their primary duty - Flying. With my social science degree the Air Force would've never accepted me for a pilot contract, plus I had 20/400 vision and only qualified with the Marine Corps' soft contact lens waiver. "Every Marine a rifleman, every Marine officer a provisional rifle platoon commander." We all have to go through six months of TBS where we train to lead our peers in various positions of leadership - Squad, Platoon, and Company level. After about two years in my first gun squadron I was offered the opportunity to be the Airframes OIC which put me in charge of about 45 Marines aged 19-52 while simultaneously my Division Lead qualification. It was rough balancing all of it and being responsible for people you didn't raise both CONUS and OCONUS. I had phone calls in the middle of the night about suicidal ideations, alcohol incidents, among others. I don't regret it but I wouldn't want to do it again. That's probably a bad attitude for a Marine officer but that's just my perspective.

My backyard...he was in full grunt. Local photographer got some great snaps.

We are still sorting out some mx squawks that are grounding even as of today. Full thrash mode. Still planning right now on making it for static on the Plaza starting Monday and flying the show on Wed night.

Found a recent picture of M2 - looks like he can only afford beans for dinner.

When I was deployed to Balad in 2005 soldiers would pull the charging handle back on an M-16 and then just pull the trigger when at the clearing barrel. I saw them put a round through the clearing barrel on two separate occasions. The airmen were the ones that were locking the bolt back and visually inspecting the chamber to clear it.