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Showing content with the highest reputation on 03/13/2013 in all areas

  1. I've been studying slim, hot lesbians for many years now. I wonder if I could get a grant.
    3 points
  2. Look at that baller in the Packers jacket at 1:10! There's not much snow left in my yard; I'm getting ready to give up coffee again for Spring.
    2 points
  3. How about Enlisted who were obtaining degrees?
    2 points
  4. Sorry pal, but I too think you are off the mark on this one. I have an autistic son, does that mean the government has a right to determine if I should be able to possess firearms? No. Plus, such measures rarely stop intended individuals from carrying out their deeds. Like most firearms legislation, it only hampers the law-abiding citizen, a fact that liberals conveniently and continually seem to ignore. I was just having this discussion with a cop buddy last night (well, after we got done talking about his new duty S&W M&P .40). He isn't a "gun guy," other than his duty weapon he has a small Glock for home defense but he (and every other LEO I know in this great state) is adamantly in favor of armed, law-abiding citizens. He likes the fact that there are individuals like myself who are probably more proficient and train more than he does also out on the street willing to help intervene to save the lives of others. It helps keep society even safer. No, registration and confiscation are the actions of the Nazis, Soviets and other suppressed societies; there are some risks involved in living in a free and armed society and given that the benefits are far greater I (and most people) am willing to accept them for a better life for all. As I always say, the answer is not less guns but more. If that were the case in Colorado, Connecticut and other areas where these mass shootings occur, there would at least be a deterrent to them. Disarming people is not going to prevent such tragedies from happening, it will only up the body count...
    2 points
  5. FIFY Confiscating personal owned firearms from diagnosed or court determined mentally incompetent people, while it has the ability to become more doesn't bother me all that much. However, confiscating someones guns because someone's grandmother lives with them is off her rocker more than Nsplyr, or their kid has anger issues it absolutely ridiculous. As for the mental health issues, I think to be able to confiscate weapons there needs to be a judicial or legal review process before the police can confiscate.
    2 points
  6. Way overpriced man--like most of Bud's items since the scare began, much worse than other online firearms dealers. And this is coming from someone who has given Buds a lot of business in the past. I was able to get these cans for $135 from Sportsmans Guide before the scare and even AimSurplus has had them for $170-180 the last 1-2 months. Obviously if you need/want the 5.45 go for it as it's in stock. Just trying to add some perspective.
    2 points
  7. Yes, I have heard of this happening. However the way you want to go about it is not going to help. The best way to do it is to go to the guys that hired you and tell them heavies suck ass and anyone that flies them them is not a real American. Then tell them you are a stone cold killer and want to fly fighters like the best pilots in the Air Force. Trust me, they will fear and respect you for your honesty. Soon they will find you an appropriate fighter unit to join. Good luck, you are in this for all the right reasons.
    2 points
  8. I'm not sure what it is, but I get the impression you may be a bit biased in this discussion.
    2 points
  9. Neither. When you make the choice to be a felon, you give up certain rights. That's when confiscation should happen. That's who should be on a list. I have also, unfortunately, lost all my firearms in a tragic boating incident on lake mead so none of this really applies to me ....
    2 points
  10. After a hard days sitting on the sidewalk, there is nothing better than retiring to my tent, heating up a cup of snow, propping my feet up on my dead friend in a blue body bag, and chowing down to a tasty meal of bird. Just living the American dream.
    1 point
  11. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/alleged-north-korean-propaganda-video-americans-live-today-215322616.html North Korean Propaganda video showing how Americans live.
    1 point
  12. I just did this recently and all you do is suspend your account, you have 39 months to reactivate and keep your number. After 39 months you can still reactivate but you just lose your number. Even if there's no phone service your wifi will work perfectly (it's basically an iPod touch now) they don't have to do anything special to it. Super easy, there's no reason to pay a phone bill while you're gone
    1 point
  13. Any platform? Uh huh, right.
    1 point
  14. This is not true. Do not take this bad advice. The last thing you want to do is burn bridges at you new "old" unit. The best way to get hired by a better unit is to start a facebook page to market your abilities. Post the link here. If you were good enough to get hired by a heavy unit, and you can put your quals on a facebook page and get it out there, the fighter units will be banging down your door to get you to cross over. This forum is a really good avenue for that kind of self promotion. Nobody's going to get you hired but you!
    1 point
  15. Depends. Do you plan to fly it into combat? A-29 Do you plan to fly from dirt runways? A-29 Do you prefer built-in guns over gun pods? A-29 Do you prefer a proven platform over a prototype design? A-29 Do you want something that's easy for T-6 FAIPs to transition to? AT-6 Are you a congressman who wants to funnel money to Beechcraft? AT-6 BL: The A-29 is a proven aircraft designed for light strike that you can do training in. The AT-6 is a developmental aircraft designed for training that you can do some light strike in. ETA: There's a 19 page thread on this topic.
    1 point
  16. We'll have to take your word for it. Navs seem to know a lot about stool and ass.
    1 point
  17. 1 point
  18. Fini Flight. You either know it will be your fini flight or you don’t. I had mine planed out for months. “Viper 2, traffic eleven o’clock , 3 miles slightly high. Slow mover.” “2’s tally” That is the first thing he has said in the last 30 minutes. Right after taking the runway I checked him in on the departure frequency and he had not said another word since. Radio discipline is absolutely necessary in our job, something I did not realize fully until flying over the skies of Iraq. Working with JTAC’s, air controllers other flights, predators, helicopters and humvees all on the same frequency - there is no time for small talk. Every word needs to have a meaning. Brevity. There are no umms or aahhhs – nothing extraneous. Think about what you are going to say and find the 3-1 term to say it. A book a thousand pages long with a chapter specifically written on how to say things. Every flight in the last five years we have debriefed to it and so far this flight is going well. An HH-60 Blackhawk helicopter passes motionless a thousand feet above our flight, the workhorse taxi of Iraq. The doors are open and a few dudes are sitting on the edge with their boots hanging into the air. One gives a hang loose sign as we rocket past at 500 knots. Our flight is at 500 feet and 500 knots, hugging the trees, weaving and bobbing in and out of the valleys. Nap of the earth flying using the terrain to hide from the SAM threats that abound around us. The General Electric I am strapped to is not even sweating. It will still give me 300 more knots with a 2 inch flick of the throttle. I am covering a mile every 6 seconds but it is comfortable now. I have time to check out houses and notice fisherman in the lakes. What was a blur a few years ago has slowed down immensely and given me time to think well ahead of the jet. I have a map in my left hand and a photo of the target along with the attack we will be using strapped to my knee. A quick study of the terrain we will see will pay huge dividends in about 5 minutes. I have my pen handy to jot down any notes the ground controller will give me when we check in. All this with a 2 second time to impact the earth with any wrong moves. The laws about texting and driving always crack me up – we are on a different level. I was 3 seconds late on my last turn point and need to push it up a little to get there on time. I have a two minute window to deliver, but bombs on target on time to the second is the goal. This will be the lat time I drop bombs for a long time and I want to shack the SA-6 site on the first run attack. The next plane I fly won’t do low levels and I know I am going to miss the Viper. I have had an outstanding time with my squadron the last few years and have been mentored by some of the finest pilots in the Air force. My final flight won’t be without some tears, I’ll be leaving some great friends and my first love – the F-16. The plan is a 10 LAT, Rip 6, 1 pass and haul ass. 1 shot with no re-attacks. Nothing worse than stirring up the hornets nest with the sound of a NASCAR race and going through dry. A re-attack with an aware enemy is much more risky. The element of surprise is a tactic that worked for Ghengas Kaahn and a flight of fighters alike. The initial point looks exactly as briefed, a small bridge over the creek at a low point in the valley. We are going to egress back over the mountains and be gone and out of sight just as quick as we arrived. Ghosts of destruction. 5 miles out, we still cannot see the target at these low altitudes. Viper 2 checks 45 degrees to the right. I immediately check 30 and climb 15 degrees nose high. Things are starting to happen fast. Off the left is an opening in the road and as I climb, an SA-6 is just becoming visible through the trees. His radar just woke up to the fact that I was there, the operator woken up by an alarm and the computer asking for consent to fire. Off my right, Viper 2 squares up to the target on a simultaneous attack. He needs to pickle before my bombs impact so he can see where to drop. I roll inverted and point. 10 degrees low, target just below the nose. Track. Small adjustment left. Wait. I am only 1000 feet above the ground with the target rapidly approaching. These are dumb bombs. Old school. They go where you pickle and if you miss you miss. No fancy lasers or GPS to put them back on track. The sport of kings and a skill the CAF is rapidly losing with less flying and the adaptation of high tech guided weapons. I have less than 5 seconds to figure all this out. 520 knots, heading down hill. Watch the throttle. Aim. Put the thing on the thing. Let the green stuff do its magic, the hamsters working overtime to calculate it out. Warheads on foreheads. Whatever. The pipper tracks right over the center. Pickle. Hold. Track. The death dot passes squarely across the target and is moving rapidly. In milliseconds, 6 bombs ripple off the jet in quick succession. 2 lofts his bombs in from a mile out so he doesn’t get nailed by the frag of mine. We both pull 5 g’s in an aggressive left hand turn, back to formation, back down low and back out of sight. Gone. Blue Death. 12 BDU bombs leaving a pile of hair, teeth and eyeballs in our wake…. A perfect training mission and a perfect way to end my career in the plane I have come to love. The end of the Fini Flight is usually met with the same enthusiasm on the ramp. It is traditional for friends and family along with the entire squadron to meet the jet as it taxis in. Long over are the days of multiple burner low approaches inches over the squadron building but there still is some unique style to ending ones career in a particular fighter. I have seen guys taxi back with gorilla masks on, blow up dolls fully inflated and my personal favorite – helmet removed and replaced with one of those beer caps, 2 Bud Lights strapped to the sides of a yellow plastic ball cap with a straw going to both. The canopy opened on his jet and he tossed a dozen empties over the side. “Thank God he didn’t crash” is all the commander could say. “Could you imagine the accident report on that one with a case of beer in the wreckage.” It is not over with the landing, as the pilot takes his last step off the ladder it begins. Some try to run but most know to stay put. My squadron gets one of the cops to handcuff pilots to the tie down rings on the ramp just to make sure they don’t go anywhere. Kids get the small fire extinguishers, and mom gets the hose from the fire truck to soak the pilot down. This is a fantastic exercise when snow is on the ground – as it turns out, the rubber, watertight dry suit we wear during the winter months is also fantastic at holding water on the inside. Often times, someone will unzip the dry suit, shove the fire hose in, sts, fill it up with water and zip it back closed. Probably 50 gallons or so get trapped and freezing temperatures offer no reprieve. This much water weight will pin the pilot to the ground until the water drains out of his sleeves. A bottle of champagne is shared by the bros, we call the pilot a quitter and generally throw a big party in the bar that evening. Tradition, and something every fighter pilot should have. I had flown that same flight a hundred times but my planned fini flight in the Viper did not happen that way. None of it. Not even close. Back in November of 2009, my buddy Monty had his fini flight as well but he didn’t know it. A few days after his last flight, on an off day, he was out in his front yard doing a little lawn maintenance when a Pontiac GTO went out of control and jumped the curb up into his yard killing him instantly. He died trimming his trees on a day off. Unbelievable. Fighter pilots know exactly how they will part the surly bonds of earth. It happens one of two ways. You die telling stories of your past glory at a relatively young old age from liver complications from the whiskey you drank to help make those stories entertaining – OR – you plow in at tremendous speed, out of control and on fire, completely content in the fact that you just took 5 flankers with you. A national frickin hero. A decorated combat veteran and one of the finest fighter pilots this world has ever known did not go down in a blaze of glory with his hair on fire. He was not slain by AAA even though it had been aimed at him. He was not damaged by SAM’s even though they were trained on his jet. He has had countless emergencies and brushes with death over his decade and a half flying fighters and he came out unscathed. He was a phenomenal fighter pilot, well respected in the community, and unfortunately he did not go out on his own terms. Monty was the kind of pilot that everyone wanted to follow into battle. As one of my early F-16 instructors, he was unanimously voted as one of the best. He had an easy going personality combined with an unbelievable knowledge of tactics and golden hands that made him an extremely talented aviator. He was also a good friend and mentor and played a tremendous part in my follow on assignment. I had dinner with he and his wife just a week earlier. 3 years later and I still have trouble making sense of the way he parted this earth. Tragic. Monty grew up in Ohio and Ohio is where he wanted to be buried. We flew jets out to Selfridge Michigan the next weekend to honor him with a missing man fly over of his funeral. Unfortunately, just after we landed, the storm of the year started to pass through. Detroit and Chicago O’Hare shut down and the entire country was being crippled by a massive front. Snow had just started falling when we landed, the forecast was getting worse and it looked as if there would be absolutely no way to get airborne the next day. We chatted with the crew at base ops regarding the next day’s flight and they were determined to do whatever it took to make it happen. They knew of the accident and knew what it would mean to Monty to get us airborne. We passed 2 dozen accidents on the way to the hotel that night, the snow had turned to freezing rain. Hell really had frozen over, there was no chance the flyover would happen. We met Monty’s family that evening and they were just as good of people as he was. I had been on a fishing trip with Monty and his dad down in Florida a few months prior and his old man was devastated. They were true friends. His wife was also a good friend of the squadron. A fantastic woman, also an Air Force pilot, who lost her husband far to early in their marriage. There was nothing to say so we talked about all the good times. They had all thanked us for bringing the jets out and understood that we wouldn’t be able to fly. The next morning we pressed out to the airport anyways. The storm had been devastating, cars had been in the ditch all night from sliding on the black ice and power outages were widespread from iced over trees falling on power lines. It dumped another 1.5 feet of snow on top of the ice over the night. The weather was still a few hundred feet overcast with freezing fog and mist. 45mph is all we dared to go but we had to at least try and make it happen. When we pulled up to the airport we were amazed at the sight of several snowplows already hard at work. The base ops manager said they called in extra employees and came in early. If the weather cleared, the runway would be ready. I have never seen an F-16 iced up as badly as these jets were. They looked pathetic and crippled with hundreds of ice sickles jetting off every point that water ran off. The wings were covered in snow and under that was a layer of frozen ice. The manager said the de-ice truck was ready when we were. We made the call to fire the jets up. There was no chance the weather would clear, but we felt we owed it to Monty to try. The truck de-iced us and we hobbled our way out to the runway single file. The cleared area was barely wide enough for an F-16 to sneak through. At the end of the runway we waited. And waited. We were all watching our watches, waiting for the no later time knowing the funeral had already started. We had about a half hour to go until it would be too late. None of us said a word. At the 29 minute point, tower called and said we had the absolute minimum weather we needed to lift off. “1’s Ready.” “2’s Ready.” “3’s Ready.” “Tower, Viper flight ready” “Good luck boys, cleared for takeoff.” The tower controllers knew the importance of this flight as well. It was dark, gray and dreary. Absolutely miserable out. Off we went a minute later and immediately into the weather. A few minutes into the climb, lead broke the silence. “Well fellas, here we go.” We were in the weather forever. If the ceiling was the same over the cemetery, there was no way we would be able to do the flyover. We pressed on anyways. Passing through 25,000 feet we finally broke through the clouds. The misery and dreariness of the weather below was left behind and we broke out into a crystal clear blue sky above. It was a beautiful sight to see the sun, but a white blanket of thick clouds stretched out as far as we could see. The satellite image showed it stretched for a thousand miles. 100 miles to go and there was no hole in site. There was no chance this was going to happen but we owed it to Monty to press on anyways. A check of the weather with the center controller said the clouds in the area were overcast from 400-800 feet with 1-2 miles of visibility. “Viper flight, cleared to descend to 1500’. Good luck fellas.” The center controller knew how important this flight was as well. Down we went, back into the black abyss. The blue sky disappeared and the gentle white clouds quickly turned grey and then black. The weather sucked but we pressed down anyways. “Viper flight, cleared to 1000’” On the AUX radio, lead called our buddy with a handheld on the ground. “It doesn’t look good fellas, I’d estimate a few hundred feet at best.” 1000’ was the minimum vectoring altitude in the area and as low as we are legally allowed to go. If the clouds were at 800’ we would have to call it a day. Miraculously, and against all odds, we broke out of the weather at 1500’. We were in a radar trail formation with 2 miles between each jet. One by one we popped out of the weather and slowly joined up. We had 5 minutes of loiter time and we were holding about 20 miles away. There was still a wall of weather between us and where we were going. We were in a sucker hole, just wide enough for us to fumble around and wait. It was still a long shot even though we were so close. At the 4th minute, the weather parted and a rainbow appeared right above the cemetery. “You see that Rainbow?” “Yep. This is meant to happen” The rainbow, no kidding ended right on the mark point for the cemetery. Viper 2 was on the left wing, I was on the right. In between lead and myself was an empty space for another Viper. Where Monty’s jet belonged. The missing man. We flew slowly over his funeral during taps. His broken wings put back together and placed on his chest in the coffin. His body was on the ground but there is absolutely no doubt that we were actually flying on his wing that chilly morning. There is no way that flyover should have happened, but somehow it did. Monty was watching over us and he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. After we flew over, the clouds closed up and we were again swallowed by the weather. Our good buddy was laid to rest with a proper send off. He dedicated his life to the service of our country, it is the least we could do to pay him back. We had a few more beers that night and reminisced more about our friend. Old Monty stories turned up from other squadrons that we had never heard. Different time, different place, but same old Monty. What a great guy. The next afternoon the weather finally broke. I led the lonely flight home and landed at night. A handful of pilots met me at the jet, the rest were still in transit from Ohio. There was no ceremony, no fire hose, no pictures, or Champaign. A simple handshake to a few of my good friends to commemorate my fini flight in the F-16 was all I needed. That long flight home was my last in the mighty Viper. “Here’s To Monty” we all said in unison. I rubbed my hand down the nose of the jet for the last time and took my gear inside. I cut my teeth on the Viper, and Monty was a big part of that. Not by any means what I planned for a fini, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I miss that bird, but I miss my friend more. I’ll see him again the next time I fly. Here’s To Monty.
    1 point
  19. You didn't answer his question. At what point does magazine capacity limitations infringe upon our right to bear arms? You don't think 30 is the limit. What about 10? What about 7? What about limits on semi-automatic weapons that even have a detachable magazine? You started this discussion with an immature ranting paragraph about how no one is coming to take our guns.... Etc. Some people feel otherwise based on existing and proposed laws which render, in our opinion, the 2A impotent; want to discuss that? Answer the questions posed on the actual topic- attempting to equate magazine limitations you view as reasonable with limitations on private ownership of A10s is intellecually dishonest; no one feels infringed by not owning one. If your argument hinges on the phrase "common sense" then you need to define what exactly you mean by that. If you want to have a grown up talk, why don't you answer the actual questions posed to you? Your opinion on what you need for self defense is utterly irrelevant to the discussion. Where does it say i don't? You think these limits are acceptable, I disagree with you; why is your opinion any more valid than mine? And what about a 7 round limitation? 5? What about no detachable magazine? Should the federal government ban pistol grips and barrel shrouds? How about we call your 12 gauge an assault weapon and restrict everyone to double barrel shotguns? What is reasonable, and what do you mean by common sense regulations? Personally I think the NFA is reasonable and existing controls on automatic weapons are reasonable. Why don't we start from there and drop the whole "you want an A10 and Patriot missile battery" bullshit? Ultimately the courts will have to provide some more specific guidance. Until then, you are incorrect in thinking there aren't legislators out there who want confiscation and a total ban. I'm glad you feel comfortable sheepishly laying down your rights to use standard capacity, 30 rounds magazines. While you are free to give up your own rights, you aren't free to fuck with mine.
    1 point
  20. 1 point
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