Lord Ratner

It's more likely that he was here under a different username. That seems to be another Hallmark of his type. They say enough stupid things they no longer want to be associated with, so they hit the reset button. It's ironic, because they just end up posting the same stupid shit anyways. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Wait a sec, did you find some posts from people here supporting the removal of the filibuster? Or are you just doing that stupid thing where you assume everybody agrees with every Donald Trump quote?

Okie doke, I can now say definitively that anyone here who has been shooting at paper or cardboard at the range needs to invest in some steel targets. These things were an absolute hoot. Especially for CCW practice, the instant feedback changes the way you train. I know a lot of you know this, and I did too, but for whatever reason I just never considered buying my own steel targets. And if you're looking for a dueling tree, the one I linked above is *fantastic.* I think we'll get a Texas Star next to add to the challenge.

You can see what looks like compressor stalls on the number 2 engine right at the beginning of the video. Number 1 exploded and FOD'd out the tail engine, which explains the lack of climb. 180k lbs of fuel. There was nothing the crew could do. So fucking sad.

Guys... First rule of not falling for internet nonsense. Always ask why the camera was rolling recording in the first place, and who was doing the recording. Within the first 3 seconds of the video there are onlookers shouting, a horn blaring, and a vehicle accelerating into another vehicle. Whatever led up to this video, it wasn't just a woman driving to work when an ice vehicle just smashed into her car and arrested her. Also, am I the only person who would just get out of the car if a mini SWAT team surrounded my vehicle?

I heard he bit Hitler's penis.

I did the interview, didn't get picked up. I think if I had interviewed after flying the KC-135 I would have done better, but I wasn't getting the plane perfectly aligned with the centerline with a crosswind. I'm eventually going to build our house on an airpark, and I'm really looking forward to learning to fly a tail dragger. I got to once and it was a hoot. Oh we both know we could... But no one ever wants to spend the money on training. 🤷🏻‍♂️

U-2, as far as I know. I only flew it three times, but holy shit, it's... different. On the KC it was the combination of low engines, fast approach speeds, and the cable driven ailerons and elevators delaying all the inputs. Then you had a huge hydraulic rudder that would throw the plane around much faster than the cable driven surfaces. It had so much inertia that if you didn't pull the power at the right point, you couldn't slow down. If I remember correctly we went to idle at 200-300 feet for the flaps 30 (engine out) approach when heavy. I also can't compare it to the fighters that were around in your day, because they only keep the planes, not the pilots in the museums 😂🤣. I suspect some of those rocket ships with stubby little wings were an absolute monster to fly, but everything we have now is so much more advanced. The difference between the U2 and the kc-135 was not close, I don't want to make it sound like the kc-135 was unmanageable. After all, many of the world pilot training students flew it just fine. But when I talked to pilots who had flown both fighter aircraft and the kc-135, the raw stick and rudder of the kc-135 was more to manage. It was just really sloppy. You made up for it with probably the easiest combat mission in the AF. I taught many many KC135 pilots that were barely able to fly the plane, much less handle a more complicated mission. Honestly the biggest argument I have in support of the kc-135 being harder to land than a fighter is that the fighters weren't doing touch and gos when I was in. That blew my mind. There's no way you could get proficient at flying the kc-135 without doing pattern only flights. But you also have the better pilot factor to deal with, for whatever that equalizes.

That's what makes the most sense to me. We need a higher standard than what the T-1 offered, but we don't need refueling pilots (like I was) proficient in 4ship. Dump that stuff into IFF. I was a KC-135 instructor for a bit and the irony of that plane was that it was probably the second hardest plane in the AF to fly (stick and rudder, not mission execution obviously), yet it got mostly bottom-half UPT graduates because it was old and had bad CONUS bases. And it flies a lot of formation. Not fingertip at 90° of bank, but the same principals made you a good platform for the receivers. A student with solid formation work and more high-speed non-autopilot flying would absolutely benefit even the most herbivorific planes. And the weak swimmers can't hide behind their flying partner like they could in the T-1.

Yeah, absolutely. I did the IFT replacement at the Air Force academy when they had gotten rid of IFT (or whatever the program was pre-2006). It was like half of a PPL course, taught by civilians, and had basically no standards. I learned practically nothing. Then it was over 2 years before I started upt, so I had long since brain dumped everything from that course. The T-6 is perfectly suitable to be the first airplane and Air Force pilot touches. Edit: agreed with the above however, 45 hours would be wholly insufficient. 100 hours is probably The Sweet spot before going to an intermediate or advanced trainer. If we're going to transition back to everybody flies the T-38 (replacement) then we probably need more like 150 hours in something like the T-6. At least back when I was a FAIP, The limited t38 slots meant that only your best students were going to it, so you could get away with much less training.

Too much effort is spent justifying upholding the law. Just call them criminals and keep arresting them. The people who don't want us to follow the laws are never going to be convinced no matter how many high-level whatevers you catch, and the people who are already supporters are just going to be turned off if you're caught in a lie. There's never going to be an administration in the history of the country that loses an election for upholding immigration laws. Plenty have lost elections for over-promising and under-delivering.

Doesn't look extreme to me. Mmayyybeee definitely severe though. That wasn't the type of turbulence that turns flight attendants and beverage carts into missiles. Or, conversely, the inescapable gravitational pull between the Earth and that crew's gigantic nuts was keeping them from being affected by the turbulence as much.

Loyalty is everything to him, and he seems to be addicted to trolling. Trump is also hypersensitive to any suggestion of political witch hunts now. Couldn't even make it a year. Pity.

We got a good example of "Bad Trump" recently. Really I'd say 90% of his actions towards Canada have been bad, but throwing a tariff on them because you don't like an ad run by a provincial government is particularly stupid. One tragedy of Trump v2 is going to be that we finally have a president who uses tariffs, which are a phenomenal tool, but he's using them like a distracted child, and he's going to end up discrediting them for another few decades.

I agree with that specific question, but that doesn't actually matter to anybody. What matters are the favorability ratings of the various players, in particular Trump, which will play into the midterms. Not to mention six points isn't enough to get anybody excited. And since we just happen to have a president who presided over another shutdown during his first term, where his favorability ratings did drop, it's a pretty apples apples to comparison... It was either yesterday or the day before I saw on MSNBC them talking about Trump gaining a point in favorability. That doesn't indicate any real consequences from the shutdown. The other dirty little secret is that no one really gives a shit about this anymore. There are so many carve outs for what government activity continues despite a shutdown that the average American isn't being impacted.