JarheadBoom

FWIW... The show about AF1 I saw on the Discovery Channel not too long ago (I don't know how long the Presidential pilot tour is, but Col Tillman was the pilot, so it was made fairly recently) showed a LtCol at the Nav position on the flight deck, and they made a point of saying the VC-25 has a Nav due to the "unique mission". The show was pretty good, BTW. Much more access to the behind-the-scenes stuff than I would have ever thought they'd allow. Wish I could remember what it was called...

The AF base housing (Falcon Courts) is right under the visual pattern for 6/24. May not matter to you, but your family might not be crazy about -10s and -17s flying over all day long. It's also privatized. I haven't heard good or bad, but I'm AFRC and a homeowner in PA, so I don't really pay much attention to base housing issues. As far as home ownership goes - NJ officially became the highest-taxing state in the Union this year. When my wife worked in NJ, she had a couple co-workers who were paying 5-digit property tax bills on modest-sized homes (under $250K).

Our SARMS clerk (civ) compiles it all. Provides a currency hit-list to the CC, DO, and the Pilot, Engineer, and Boom training ARTs weekly. At that point, it's on us to get the tasks accomplished, or get special attention from above. I use it to keep up with my currencies (and to double-check the SARMS clerk). I KNOW (well, I hope...) there's more than just a few field-grades in the AF that feel this way - why can't Mother Blue find them and make them CC's, instead of the weak-ass suckups that many SQ's / WG's end up with?** **Rhetorical question - I know it's just the way the the system works.

Clears that up for me. Thanks. Guess I'll just save up for something AR-ish or Mossberg-ish...

Not much here, either... Great-grandfather (Mom's side) - US Army infantry, WWI Grandfather (Dad's side) - US Army draftsman, '46-'49, Germany. PPL in the mid-'70s (and a Cessna 172) until a heart attack in '80 grounded him. Uncle (Mom's side) - US Army infantry, Vietnam '69-'70 As far as aviation goes... there's a photo of a relative on my Mom's father's side who was in the Marines in WWII (enlisted aircrew), but since my grandfather died before the picture was found, no one seems to know who he is/was. Also on my Mom's father's side - Willy Messerschmitt is a distant relative. Looks like some of y'all are carrying on the family tradition in a big way!

Shotgun question, for something fresh... I'll be passing through Incirlik in the near future (for the first time). Is "the deal" on shotguns there still as good as it used to be? Nothing fancy, just a pump 12ga. Better to bring it back on the airplane, or do the shipping thing? Anyone actually do this at Incirlik before?

Funny you mentioned that - brought up a great memory of when I was in the Philly FSDO office a few years back getting signed-off for my A&P license testing. One of the inspectors was on the phone with someone and I could hear his end of the conversation pretty clearly. He was telling someone (apparently with far more money than brains) that he could NOT keep the cannons installed on his newly-imported MiG, and that he'd have to come up with a W&B sheet to reflect the removal, and so on. This continued for a good 10 minutes after I sat down at the desk with the mechanic inspector. The assclown on the other end of the phone apparently didn't want to give up the fight, so the inspector ended the call by threatening to call BATF and ICE, and revoking his "warbird waiver" letter and the airworthiness certs on his other imported aircraft. I never heard any more about it, so I assume the assclown figured out that it would be wise to remove the guns...

PirateAF: It doesn't take an EB/IB to se a receiver that is all over the place, while approaching the tanker in smooth air. It doesn't take an EB/IB to see the instruments fluctuating from one limit to the other while in contact. I'm gonna "agree to disagree" with you and quit this before it gets out of hand, or derails the topic any further. Out.

The scarf email was just an email (that, strangely enough, I didn't receive [and apparently doesn't apply to me anyway]). This is a no-shit multiple-slide PowerPoint "show". The file is too big to attach to a post - limit is 2MB, file is 2.4MB. This is the wrong thread for that anyway... I already started a thread about PT's at home station a while ago. Back to the "Urinary Olympics"...

That's a nice way of saying it... much better than what I can manage after that leadership-by-email PowerPoint about PT gear last week. Believe it - we see it all the time. Dunno if it's a pilot thing, or just the way the -17 handles behind the tanker (aerodynamically-speaking)... but a lot of C-17's I see in my window are exploring the limits of the AR envelope on every contact, regardless of Wx, ride conditions, or illumination. I understand the C-17 has powerful controls - I've seen the ATP-56B dot warning about it. I've ridden both Space-A and ACM on Barney, and after a yank-and-bank departure out of ETAR earlier this year (the ACM ride), I'm a believer in that warning. I see crews from various locations due to what I'm doing, so it's not a "Base X's Barney pilots suck" thing, either. Qualifications? As our usernames imply, Boom and I are boom operators - he's on the -135, I'm on the -10. We've got front-row seats for the show, and instruments that tell us just how much a receiver is moving the boom around.

A couple...

As I understan it, it's a FIVE HUNDRED PERCENT tax that Obama talked aboot when he was in the Ill. state senate. so your $100 box of ammo is now $600. sucks donky balls.. Bend over America, "change" is coming at your asss bigfred, didyou get my pm? nevermind.you did. ***drunk jarhed boom now, mak sense later............

The MCX at Camp Lejeune sells (or possibly sold - this was current as of late 2003 when I was last there - things could have changed since) guns, in what they call the Exchange Annex. You had to be stationed at Lejeune or New River, and have an approval-to-purchase-firearms letter signed by your CO (the actual, not someone with "by direction" authority), to purchase. From what I remember, their prices were pretty good. Elmendorf's prices looked pretty good, too, when I was there this past spring... On the topic of "What to do since the election?", I'm now thinking that if you've already got a couple guns, it's a better plan to start stocking up on ammo for what you've got, rather than buying more guns. A 500% tax on loaded ammunition and ammunition components (already an Obama proposal, IIRC) pretty much equates to "gun control", without the Second Amendment battles. An Executive Order would take care of that very quickly, with no opportunity for debate or review... and it's already rumored that he's planning to use Executive Orders to quickly "accomplish" (and I'm using that term very loosely) some key tasks early on. I think it's gonna be a painful 4 years for us gun enthusiasts...

Check your PM's...

Just watch out for the trips to the Godoria Range...

I've never fired an AR-15, so I can't speak for them... but the M-16A2's I shot in the Corps launched the brass up and way to the right. No chance of catching one on your own arm. I never saw a lefty have a problem firing the M-16A2. *** EDIT *** MD, I hope you and zookrider are right re: possible AWB-part-deux and the Heller case. I still don't have a good feeling about it...

Hmmmm...... Based on the results of tonight's activities - buy now, buy often... while you still can. I don't see a bright future for the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

Depends on what state you're in. My father-in-law recently had to fight off a legal attempt by his soon-to-be ex-wife to take half of HIS 401k, which she never contributed to. He countered with half of her 401k plus a couple other things (his had more $$)... she decided to let it go... but the demand was legal in PA. *** EDIT *** I just re-read what I wrote, and we're talking about two similar-but-different things, but the bottom line remains - check the laws in your state.

Yes... Really. You have no clue how much pain 13 well-trained Marines can dish out. They most certainly would NOT put Sergeant Schmuckatelli and 12 privates straight out of SOI on this multi-billion-$$ transport - more like Force Recon, scout-snipers, FAST teams, and other SOF-type Marines.

Good one... I'll go first - the first production model of either will NOT hit the flightline before 2012.

Wait.... Sex..., in the AOR?? That's unpossible! 2

That's one of the biggest obstacles to anything beyond a tech demo IMO - how do you resupply those Marines once they're in-country somewhere? Another Hot Eagle of ammo, water, and MRE's? How do you get the Hot Eagle (and more importantly, the Marines) back out-of-country when they're mission complete?

That problem's not unique to the AF - older Marine -53E's still have wiring installed for OMEGA nav gear and previous-generation radios that were removed in the mid-'90s, among other things. A USMC Huey avionics tech once told me they average 50lbs of unused, dead-weight wiring per airframe. Not good... especially when you've see a Huey with all the doors stripped off for weight do a hover check on the boat, then land so the crew can toss their helmet bags out onto the flight deck because they're too heavy to takeoff. I will say this, though... after having done it in my civ. job a few times, removing unused wiring from an aircraft after an avionics upgrade is a slow, labor-intensive process to do correctly. You can't just grab-pull-cut... you've gotta de-pin cannonplugs, de-clamp, de-bundle, re-bundle, and re-clamp harnesses... it's a pain in the ass. Plus, you invariably get to the end of the most-difficult bit of wiring to remove, and find that someone, at some point in the past, was lazy and spliced/tapped into it rather than running new wire like they should have, and now you get to run that new wire.

Tuesday night: Navy: "Annnnnd, Team xx, terminate underrun... or uhh overrun... uhhhhhhh....... yeah, terminate whatever it is we're doing wrong here" I've read about this one several times, but never heard it myself... until tonight. To set the scene - this particular Washington Center controller sounds like the automated ATIS broadcast voice (he's the only Wash. Center controller I've ever heard pronounce every syllable in "Washington" on every radio call)... and apparently Larry the Cable Guy flies for World in his spare time... Wash. Center: "World xxx, Washington Center, traffic at your 11 o'clock, 500ft above and climbing, opposite direction, an Airbus, report traffic in sight" World xxx: "Ahhh, roger that Center, we got 'im on the fishfinder"

It's FAR easier to drill sheetmetal. I HATE working with Kevlar/carbon fiber/fiberglass - 3 different techniques, 3 different drill bits, and the damn hole still might not end up round. Less work to get antennas to perform well on a metal airframe as well........ Gotta be an assload of work to take a functional KC-135R, disassemble it to skin-and-bones, and stuff all the shit required to turn it into an RC-135UK. Seems like a great opportunity to do a little more work, and throw new wing spars, CFM-56s, and PACER CRAG at the best 3 -135E's in AMARC, and keep the -135Rs.