JS

The only part of your post I really agree with (and Toro's post) is about protecting privilege. I think we all see the benefits and appreciate the process that achieves that. However, the rest of the system is, more or less, horribly ineffective in terms of getting important stuff to the guys who need it. Again, I am not blaming you, Toro, Huey, or any other safety officers for this buffoonery. Like most stupid things, it comes from above and is sanctioned from above. But all you guys are doing is regurgitating the company line about how important privilege is and how the process works. I think we all know how the process works, or shall I say doesn't work. And all the 'need to know' shit just comes off as the safety culture in the USAF as one big game of I Have a Secret. I think that instead of just reading everyone the standard lines that are taught in ASPM, we need to think outside the box and try to change some of the ways we communicate this, and hopefully people like Liquid can help achieve this. If 90% of the guys on this thread think the current system is inefficient and crappy, that should say something.

Very solid beer - especially for the winter. I also think Founder's Porter is probably the best porter out there as well. And their Centennial IPA is very good too.

^^^Bingo

Bingo. I think that is the problem. Speaking of which, I have bitched about the crappy safety system/culture in a few posts but haven't made any constructive suggestions, so here goes: 1. Get something out to the community in a timely freaking manner. The DVR/DFD are decoded pretty quickly, and we generally have a good idea of what the hell happened within 48 hours or so. Isn't there a preliminary safety message put out that soon anyway? The NTSB gets a basic report out pretty early, and it is usually about 95% accurate after the final report comes out. And before anyone says "things can change," then I say so what. Then we can change what we learned if the final report is that much different from the initial one. It juts chaps my ass that I know a guy who got in theater after Independence 08 happened, and now that he is back stateside in his old airframe, he still had no clue as to what happened, primarily because the SIB/AIB came out after he freaking tour was over. How does a guy complete an entire tour in an airframe and not have access to the lessons learned from a series of fatal crashes from before his tour??? Major fail on timeliness in the safety community. 2. Give everyone with access to the portal access to safety reports. Maybe a semi-sanitized version. I should be able to access these lessons from my hotel room, downrange, or wherever. I shouldn't have to go back to my home unit and then beg and plead with the safety office, only to be denied about 50% of the time anyway by the "I have a secret" weenies. I just don't get how it will somehow hurt operations, safety, or privilege by allowing the broader community to have access to safety reports. NTSB reports are not only open to the flying community, but they are open to anyone with an internet connection. 3. As I mentioned before, have a condensed, user friendly document, PPT, and animation on said safety portal, available to anyone with a CAC card. Someone mentioned how the C-5 animation was leaked out and how bad that was, and how we have to be careful with "raw data" like that without the safety guys there to "interpret" it for us. I don't know about you guys, but seeing that stand-alone "raw data," is enough to put the fear of CRM-God into any dude with a set of wings on his chest. No interpretation from the "I have a secret" guys is necessary there.

Lowes and Home Depot offer 10% every day, year round. At least at all of my local ones in town here. Also, there is a program called "Blue Star Museums" that offers substantial discounts for most of the summer. Although the website says the season is officially over now, many of these places still honor the same discount year round. Some of these museums can be ungodly expensive. I want to say that when I visited Thomas Jefferson's house a few years ago (very cool, by the way), the regular price was something like $24 or so. And I think, depending on the museum, this program will allow you to get additional family members in for free as well. I seem to remember getting 4 or 5 free tickets to see TJ's house that day, thus saving my family about $100.

I think this ethnic food lineup with pictures is fucking awesome. And by the way, explain to me how this even remotely constitutes "racism."

Well, I think your post sums up what is wrong with the Safety culture and the entire Safety process in the AF. Not blaming you, but the system is broke if all you can give a dude access to is a 69 96 page rambling report riddled with so much minutiae that it totally defeats the purpose of stopping by the safety office to learn from the accident in the first place. A nice product to give the average dude would be a very condensed version of the SIB, along with videos/animations/PPTs, etc. But obviously that takes an act of God, and thus the ignorance of other's accidents will continue, along with the future preventable fatal accidents.

Amen. I was talking to a guy in the squadron the other day and we had to scour the internet for articles on the accident to get a feel for what happened and how to prevent future incidents. Oh, and he happened to have been an MC-12 guy who was there when this accident happened, and he had no clue with regards to the SIB information that came out recently.

I was just listening to Clark Howard the other day and he was talking about this. He says that Utah has the most phenomenal plan in the country, and as others compete and get better/cheaper fees, Utah's only gets better. At a glance, it looks like the management fees are about 1/3 or less than my current USAA plans. I am going to process the rollover paperwork next week. http://www.clarkhoward.com/news/clark-howard/education/clarks-529-guide/nFZS/ Not sure about your state, but I am in a low income tax state, and when I calculated the state taxes I would save by deducting my 529 contributions, it came to something like $40. I would much rather shave off almost 1% of management fees, which really adds up, especially when the accounts grow to the tens of thousands of dollars.

No. Why the fuck would our safety shop show us stuff related to flying safety? I get the same looks that other guys here do when I ask the safety office for the low down / video / report on one of these accidents. It's like I just asked a CIA officer to show me his Rolodex or something.

I recaged the attitude indicator in the tweet (VFR only maneuver) during my instrument check ride while under the hood. Not sure what I was thinking at the time, but I seem to recall there being some kind of check you did before going home, and one of the items was to recage the attitude indicator, because it was usually all out of whack from doing maneuvers, etc. I guess it never really occurred to me that you cant' do that if you are in simulated IMC.

OEM copies are still not that cheap. Looks like you can get Windows 7 for around $80 on Amazon. Also note, and not a lot of people understand this, that Microsoft charges only for the product code, not the actual CD/DVD or the software itself. Matter of fact, you can download Windows 7 or 8 from Microsoft's website and make your own bootable DVD, you just need a valid product code to use it. In other words, you can use the same DVD on multiple computers, as long as they each have a unique product key to be legal. So, if you have an old Windows 7 or 8 computer (that you are not using anymore) with a good product key, you can just download the windows 7 DVD and use that product key. If it has been used before, then you will have to call Microsoft when you activate it, and they will ask you one and only one question - how many computers is this product installed on. It takes about 5 minutes. It's illegal to use a product key for Windows on more than one machine, but if you are no longer using that old computer with that old product code...... http://lifehacker.com/how-to-create-a-windows-8-installation-dvd-or-usb-drive-505769939 http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool

You think he would have signed that memo banning "so to speaks" and use of the number 69? Godspeed to another old school warrior who hadn't lost focus of what's important.

Very valid opinion there. Couldn't agree more.

Good reply, Huey. Saved me the trouble of saying the same things. The FE doesn't have to monitor all those systems because they are automatic. Plus, in this accident, the pilots had the correct TOLD target speed and the airplane's actual airspeed staring them right in the fucking face through their HUDs. This accident is a case study of bad decision making, not of a FE not being there to manually work the automatic systems or to read off a correct airspeed number to the pilots that they already knew about and could see in their HUDs.

Good advice, and thanks for the clarification. On your side note about cops reading you your rights - be careful what you say before being read your rights too. They can ask you whatever the fuck they want in their initial investigation of a possible crime. Unless you are talking your way out of a speeding ticket, I would pretty much not answer anything a cop asked me - pre or post being read my rights. Like you said, there is a reason they are questioning you. In my only non-speeding ticket run in with the law, back when I was 16, a cop called the house and asked if I was at a party that night because he took down my plate. Like an idiot, I said yes and mentioned that I drank "a beer." Yes, extremely dumb to say that, but I only said it because two dudes who were at the party told the cops they only drank a beer, and the cops let them go for being "honest." But the cops wanted to know who bought the keg, and I told them I didn't know. A week later, I have an underage drinking ticket in the mail due to that phone conversation of admitting one beer. Of course, I was never read my rights or ever even saw the cop. Lesson learned, don't drink at age 16 don't give cops any evidence in their initial investigation, because they don't have to remind you that you have the right to remain silent during that initial investigation.

But it sounds like you just have a personal investment account (I do too, but more for fun, not as my primary nest egg). The big problem with that is you get no tax benefits at all, correct? In other words, you paid taxes on the dough you put in, and you get the privilege of paying taxes on any profit that you might eek out. I know we have bashed it to fucking death, but the Roth is good because you don't pay taxes on those returns, and the 401K/IRA is good because at least you get a nice tax break on the money going in. We do both in our family - 401K up to the max the wife's company matches, and the rest in Roths for the time being with my having tax-free income from the military.

How do you "build" this porfolio? Do you do recurring monthly investments in your hand-picked basket of stocks, or do you grab a few ETFs? Or are you dumping huge chunks of money in quarterly or something? I ask because if you buy a bunch of stocks/ETFs monthly, the transaction costs will eat your ass alive. Buying stocks/ETFs is more economical when only doing a few purchases a year. The alternative is to invest in a mutual fund that fits your parameters (there are many). You can do the monthly/bi-monthly, etc. deposits without incurring any transaction fees of commission costs. The downside is the management fee, which you have to strive to keep at a minimum. Either way, the man is going to take a good slice of your hard earned money, whether or not you make money, and whether or not you do all the legwork and research yourself.

Good post, and good points. I guess I just keep thinking of a legal analogy. If a jury finds you not guilty of manslaughter, the case does not automatically go to a single judge for review, who then sentences you to 20 years in prison for manslaughter. I realize this is admin versus a legal case, but the whole thing still scares me. Good advice on asking for a lawyer. So my next question - are you normally read your rights at the beginning of a safety investigation, or were you just talking about other legal stuff in general? As far as a SIB - do they just start asking questions, or do they specifically say this part is under immunity while this part is not?

I was told that the FMS/mission computer is "closed" off after it is compiled. Then it is tested by Lockheed (or Honeywell) for weeks/months in every possible scenario to make it is airworthy before being given to the FAA to do similar testing and get recertified. This, sources tell me, costs $1-3 million. So whether it is a block upgrade or changing a + sign to a - sign, they still have to get the entire computer tested and certified again (to include flight testing) before it can be put back on the road again. That's why they won't fix small things like that.

Herk Driver, Day Man said there was no AIB. So, the big thing I would like to hear everyone's opinion on, is what you would tell any type of investigator if, God forbid, you were involved in any kind of incident/accident and lived to talk about it. In reading Huey's post (and others), and seeing the way Day Man was treated, if I was involved in an incident where I thought the crew could potentially get hanged, I would not give them any information at all with regards to what might have caused the incident. I would probably want to talk to a lawyer first, given that privileged information is apparently not privileged, and that AMC safety investigators are only "investigating" for things to hang the crew with. What the fuck?

Ha. One of the funnier things I have read on here in a while. Are these the same engineers who subtracted 200 feet from the TOLD data in the computer of the C-130J instead of adding 200 feet, thus causing the community to have to do some roundabout, ass-backwards addition/subtraction if/when they determine the computer is lying to them about TOLD data? Or the engineers who designed the WX radar on the C-17? Most of the engineers who designed these planes are not pilots, and most of the pilots who fly them do indeed know more about a lot of systems compared to the guys who designed them. At least the practical stuff like limitations and when a certain system can kill you. All I consistently tell my guys is to always use judgement, especially when performing boldface items. And always keep the "non-boldface" boldface items (the ones the engineers/lawyers/program managers forgot to make boldface) memorized as if your life depended on it. You know, non-boldface boldface items like 4-engine flameout in the C-130J? Matter of fact, 50% of the boldface items in the C-130J have the old "if required" attached to them, which obviously is flight manual/lawyer code for "use your fucking head when applying this so we are not held responsible." And for the other 50% of the boldface items, I can personally think of several instances where blindly running those boldface items would have made extremely minor situations a hell of a lot worse had a touch of systems knowledge, SA, and judgement not been used beforehand. And yes, I am talking about the fact that if someone burns a paper/foil wrapped burger in the microwave, it would probably cause more problems than it is worth to get the oxygen masks on.

So the big thing I am trying to take away from this is whether or not to give anyone any possibly incriminating evidence if, God forbid, something like this happened to me or someone I know. In reading the above posted AFI on the confidentiality statement with regards to safety information, it appears that safety privileged information is indeed required to be kept separate from decisions reflecting discipline, FEBs, etc. So it's not about being naive and mixing the two, it's about following regulations, due process, confidentially statements, and the freaking law, in my opinion. Correct, I was not in the room, but there seems to be a pretty big shitload of evidence here, a lot of it first hand, as to what happened. And it sure as hell appears to me that the AMC guy was wrong to carry over privileged information into a discipline/judiciary hearing. Which is not good in any way, shape, or form. Regardless of who was right, what fuck-ups were made, which boldface items were not completed, and how much other armchair quarterbacking was done. What's at stake here is a loss of confidence in, and a breakdown of the safety-privilege system. Quite honestly, as a safety officer, I would not blame my guys one iota if they chose to not give a single piece of information to the safety investigators if something like this were to happen to them. I have very little confidence left in this system, given what was said here. Was this the same penis-head who required that anyone who had any kind of taxi incident be flown to AMC headquarters to get bitched out by him? I remember having a small plastic light cover on a wingtip light being broken at a certain less than adequate landing zone in Afghanistan. If the story I head was correct, the aircraft commander had to be sent to the States just to meet with this guy before being sent back over. All the while, aside from wasting thousands of my tax dollars in travel, we had to double our efforts, and pull staff guys to fly the lines that this guy was missing.

Well, that's different.

Yeah, that's what we heard too. One of our guys, after seeing the jaded CRM brief in the sim, said how dumb the crew was because "they knowingly and intentionally flew straight through magenta." And he implied that such a single, bad decision was what caused the whole thing. Does the radar in the C-17 have an automatic mode, or do you have to fuck with the gain after every pitch and altitude change? Did you see the magenta that you "intentionally flew straight through" like this guy said, or was it not up?