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Blue Angels epically trolled the nitwit in Cali who is suing them.

Really? Most of us aren’t total fanboys of trump, but calling him a pedo? Really?

1 Aug 1955... 70 years ago today... A team of folks was on a secret lakebed with a new, unflown airplane. The pilot, Tony Levier, was going to do the first round of taxi tests. After a 2+ mile taxi run with speeds up to 55 mph, Tony turned around and headed back south for another run. Accelerating to 80 mph in about 1/4 mile, he pulled the power to idle... only to realize he was airborne! Because of the featureless lakebed, he wasn't sure of his height, and came down hard from about 35 feet, left wing low, then bounced back again. Finally getting back in control, he got the plane stopped, with the main wheels on fire. And that, ladies and gentlemen, marked the first flight for the U-2... on Groom Lake, later named Area 51. By 18 October, they were flying the aircraft in excess of 70,000 feet. Ironically, 22 years later to the day... 1 Aug 1977... Francis Gary Powers died in a helicopter mishap. Hail Dragons.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DMvkYxBymK1/?img_index=4&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== https://www.garysinisefoundation.org/snowball-express Lt Dan is the Man!

I'd be fine with cameras if there is no private money involved. It always goes wrong when it's for profit. Everywhere its been tried. The UK has been at it for decades. Last time I left they had placed average speed cameras on the motorways. Plate is logged going through checkpoints. If you make it through in less time than standard, you were speeding at some point. The mobile units were the most effective at generating revenue though. They'd pop up and generate a couple hundred tickets in the span of a few hours. I just looked and its estimated that the UK has 7,000+ traffic enforcement cameras. A giant chunk of those aren't operational and they still get people to slow down unless you're aware and gambling that 'this one hasn't flashed in months' so i'll risk it.

Florida is crazy with them. But set reasonable specs that are codified in state law so municipalities can't play loose with the system. I believe Floriday did pass a law a couple years ago to reign them in.

As we further democratize participation in the lower tier of airspace (which is growing exponentially in users thanks to sUAS) we’re gonna have to accept that basing air traffic control off methods developed in the 60s are no longer optimal. I say that kind of stuff out loud in a room full of dinosaurs to blank stares because in their minds voice comms are perfect and nobody has ever had to miss/wait on critical information passed via a single comm exchange while things are moving at a minimum 35-50 meters/second. Dynamic airspace management, digital predictive modeling, and visualization changes are the only way we really move this forward. Anything else is a bandaid at this point. There are company’s out there that have already demonstrated the capability to be expanded, but it’s stuck in program management hell of convincing some GS civilian who hasn’t been in air traffic control for over 15 years that technology (like radar did before) will change the way we safely manage airspace, only if we invest in it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Heard that same thing back in 2021...

Are you suggesting the beer, the gun, or both would be required to engage in such behavior with the aforementioned educator? Admittedly, a lot of coercion would be required.

I went over to Warbirds Registration, and signed up our Deuce for warbird judging. We did pretty well! JUDGES CHOICE ACTIVE MILITARY RECONNAISSANCE Hahaha!! Hail Dragons!

Slippery slope...DC went from Red Light cameras to speed cameras...all in the name of safety right...wrong. The "rules" say a sworn police officer has to review each picture and swear an affidavit that states the violation is legit and all parameters are met (radar was certified, car in the picture is in the frame, no other cars....etc). During my last hostage tour int he five sided building my wife and I were going up to Dewey Beach for a long weekend with the family. We were in two separate cars because I was coming back a day early to go to work. A couple weeks later a photo speed ticket shows up in the mail with my name and my wife's car in the picture. I knew exactly where it happened and I was behind her....we were not speeding. I took a closer look and there was another car in the frame with her in the other lane and it was passing her, but she got the ticket. I took it to court and won in .69 seconds. The court story is actually funny, I spent an entire day building a slide presentation with my radar theory book form Weapons School. I calculated the beam with and was ready to conduct a master class in court. Day of court arrives and there are two case in front of me. Judge calls the first guy and he is there with his wife. Judge says "Mr Smith you got two tickets in 20 minutes, how do you plead?" He replies "innocent your honor." Judge brings the picture up on the big screen and says "what is your defense?" The dude launches into a story about going to help his handicapped grandchildren. At first the judge rolls her eyes then she notices something on the ticket, "Mr so and so there appears to be a problem with the affidavit and jurisdiction on these tickets." The dude keeps blathering on but his wife is standing there with him, she figures it out and elbows him in the side to shut up. A few seconds later judge says "Yup these are invalid, both tickets are dismissed" The judge calls the next case and it is this much older woman. Judge says "Mrs smith and so how do you plead?" She replies "innocent your honor." Judge brings the picture up on the big screen and says "what is your defense?" The lady then replies "well your honor, I didn't have my references." Everyone is puzzled....Judge says "Ma'am....your references?" She replies "Yes ma'am, they are doing construction and I didn't have my references to know where the speed camera was" Everyone laughs, .69 seconds later..."Guilty, $100 fine." Now I am up Judge says "Mr bag of donuts how do you plead?" I reply "innocent your honor." Judge brings the picture up on the big screen and says "what is your defense?" I said "clearly looking a the picture your honor you can see there are two cars in the radar beam." I take a breath and start to pull out my slide presentation when the judge says "You are right, case dismissed." But but your honor, I have a presentation, I want to be more right! At the end of the day I won the case because I was right, but the lesson here is 3 of the 4 tickets were incorrect and they are putting the onus on the citizen to prove their innocence. Cameras are a powerful tool but it opens the aperture to so many other questionable things.

Word on the street is they miss you too. They miss you long time.

You go ahead and try to get it outlawed, and I'll try to get it so that we at least get some sort of benefit out of what's already happening. There is no putting this genie back in the bottle. But hopefully it can at least be harnessed and controlled. Plus I'm not sure I'm particularly concerned about the freedom to commit traffic violations, and I don't suspect the founders were either.

Are you guys high? You trust the government to handle that kind of power over us? I want to completely outlaw any and all spy type equipment (sounds like y’all want the patriot act on steroids) used to monitor us.

Poor quality parts and QA in the last ten years or so. Things like cracking slides, burrs/shitty machining on name-your-part, etc. Sounds similar to when Remington bought Marlin and quality went down the shitter (but has since shot up since Ruger took over). Now maybe most of these gripes are because they are shooting way more than the average guy/care about shit to the max OCD level. I’ve personally never had a bad sig experience, but I’m also not a pro. None of them use Sig weapons, and I suppose that says something (also, they mentioned how dudes from their communities who have poor bro reps are the ones pushing Sig in the market, obviously big bucks motivation). Im not personally shitting on Sigs, just found it interesting coming from those dudes.

No need to say anymore - root cause of 99% of our problems identified.

You lost me, what's that in freedom units?

Completely on board, but locking onto a red hering like ADS-B accomplishes nothing. Completely revamping technology and how ATC executes in the NAS - well now we’re onto something.

I agree. It's a dumb to fly under landing traffic. Especially with no safe separation provided for both aircraft. They should have not been cleared to continue on route four via visual separation at night with an aircraft circling to land 33. They used to not clear you to continue on route four via visual separation with landing traffic to 33. They would have you hold over Haines Point or something similar.

Easy fix: Don't clear someone for visual separation on route four if there's an aircraft on short final to 33. Complacency from both Tower and the Helo caused this.

If you fly at or below (not above) the required altitude for that route, the helicopter route worked. Also, if you hear any aircraft cleared to land on the runway that crosses said route, use your hands and maneuver the helicopter out of the path of said runway. If you're cleared to maintain visual separation, you need to do so.

I gotta call BS. Maybe a good on-the-fly excuse to his leadership and a face saving option for media consumption. Sure. But if anyone in the business actually thinks that abortion of a maneuver and near destruction of beach side property and potential death of numerous innocent beach goers is a better alternative to taking a bird or two, they’re not playing with a full deck. He wasn’t even going that fast. The canopy is easily rated to take that and if an engine gets involved, well he’s got another. UFB.

So congress is addressing something that had zero to do with the accident - “look, we’re doing something everybody!” Or, maybe you change the procedures, which actually will make a difference. Idiots.

Got my optics squared away on my MPX. Large Field of View Green Dot with a fold away 3 X Magnifier.

Tell me you know nothing about military flying and you have never done a flyover at Arlington without telling me.

*yawn* more sophistry. I'm already on record, I only timestamp these rants on the interboobs so the forensics can go back in 10 years and go "yep, we knew". We've been through this all the way back to 2018 fam; it is a dilution of quality, definitionally. Tell your bosses to put down the hopium pipe and grow a back bone, and tell their SES overlords at the Puzzle palace to tell SecAf no buck no buck rogers. Kids need new MILITARY trainers and hours with their brain behind their ass at .7M+ and no automation, herbie drivers too. I was a CFII before I touched a single military airplane, let alone instructed in one; I can speak 61/141/135/121/one-WGAF. I was also in academia before the military; I know ballwash pseudointellectual fodder for paper degree issuance when I read it. Hell, I used to teach it! 😄 To the degree which civ-only folks don't understand the historical rigor behind undegraduate USN/USAF military aviator accessions and initial traning, it is also true that many mil-only folks really don't understand the quality control morass that is 141 (forget 61). I won't rehash the dissertation on here, the BLUF is that abrogating our military pilot accessions to 141 is to admit defeat. Considering the US record as a combat operational loss leader for the past 50 years, I guess losing at pilot training is par for the course too. Empire in decay, happens to the best of 'em I guess. Honestly, I'd be more on board if they just cut the shit and 1) admitted they can't effectively lobby Congress for more cowbell for the UPT enterprise, and 2) admitted they have to send it to the civilian prop schools just to pad the logbook with negative transfer hours of little import. Heck, by that cockeyed COA's order of merit alone, again just cut the shit and go full up MPL (Euro standard, sim only) for your copilots (3/4 of pilot accessions for the USAF) and put their money where their mouth is. Padding the 141 with excess federal pork is the only thing this will accomplish anyways. Excess crew deaths down the line in grey jet initial/continuation training are on them though, not on us dinosaurs "getting in the way".

I guess I mostly agree. I really wish they would bring red light cameras back. Maybe one of the best pieces of public safety on the roads, but of course governments wanted to do it cheap, so instead of buying the technology or even leasing it, they get it for "free" by giving the operator of the technology a cut of the tickets, thus creating a negative incentive, and inevitably resulting in the yellow light duration being lowered. Which is absolute bullshit. I forget where it was but when the local legislative body increased the yellow light times back to where they were, it was immediately no longer economically feasible for the company, and away went the cameras. Install the cameras, increase the duration of the yellow light by one second, and give be ruthless in enforcement. The cost is made up by fewer accidents. Get a bonus feature where DHS gets brought into the loop for traffic violations and you'd see Texas jump from the worst to the best state to drive in overnight 🤣😂

Agreed. I also would like to see some sort of AI detection of dick bag drivers. Speeding cameras should only apply to crazy speeding. Going the speed limit is for suckers. Also, those limits are set knowing people will speed by 10mph.

I think cameras should just be installed on public roads and if a vehicle is recorded illegally/dangerously passing, speeding more than X over, etc. the registered owner gets a $1000 fine in the mail (or whatever amount with graduated cost vs. incident numbers). Copy camera can’t prove the owner was driving, but doesn’t matter because it’s their vehicle and they control who drives it. No need for cops wasting time at speed traps, expensive UAS, etc. Also to be clear, big proponent of privacy and limited gov, but there is no right to privacy in public spaces. And I have zero tolerance for self-absorbed asshole drivers.

don't worry...pedophile/grifter in chief is on it! https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/01/trump-russia-nuclear-submarines.html