BFM this

I've tried to exercise my right to STFU lately, but... Ok, anyone on the board had experience outside the military with operating (read: maintaining, care, feeding, piloting) airplanes? Anyone with mx background know what it costs to run these airframes? I ask because if you do, you know right out that this fuel conservation BS is someone's (very high up) OPR bullet, and that's it. Pulling the power back to and from the area saves gas, but spends 3 for every one fuel dollar on mx. Your most efficient profile is to set max continuous from gear up to FAF and get the DLOs met. What I do like about the current trend is that if there is no training to be had (PIREP 300 to the moon), we take the early land dev's or bag the whole go. A big improvement over "all Cat B's to the desk". The next step is to s#!+can the whole flying hour program (good luck, been in play since I started mil av 13yr ago-->just a rewrite of the VN tonnage doctrine).

in CFPS, establish a point by name, coords, drag drop in fvw, etc., within the description container type @###. @ being the function and ### being the three letter of the navaid. Works also with @XXXXX for intersections, or @KXXX for airfields... edit: (it appears that three X's in a row is naughty...)

its like a bad acid flashback...

Plagiarism.

To get from a relatively close, admin formation to a further spaced travel formation, lead flys s&l while the jet on the wing does a big barrel roll around lead, thereby flying a longer 'string' and ends up again co-altitude/airspeed, but much further aft, typically btw a 3-wood up to a mile if its done right.

I'm using Vonage from PACAF. It looks, acts, smells like a regular phone. I pick up the reciever and for all intents and purposes its a Tucson dial tone. Anyone calling me dials my Tucson area number. Signal quality is great to anywhere in the US. It falls off a little bit when I'm calling my buddy in his apartment right above mine (he's got packet-8, another provider). Then it's seems like we're throwing this signal to the states and back, but still very usable. The worst is when I try to make a call to, say, a cell phone that is local to where I'm at. Lots of delay, poor signal quality, I only do this when I've forgotten my cel phone at work. I don't have a local landline. It seems that around half the bros where I'm at have VOIP, mostly split btw Vonage or Packet-8.

I'm hoping, for what little faith I have left in my fellow officers' common sense, that noone expected this process to actually be productive or useful. That it (the process) would in any way be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, the turds from the punch, the weak swimmers from strong performers, the tools from the...whatever. I lost all hope when they said FY 02 and 03. I was OTS class 04-01. That's right: my senior class was three weeks inside the threat ring, and my class missed it by 4. I know in my heart of hearts that there were some awesome peeps in 03-14 that got the axe and some in my own class whose names I would gladly see submitted to the board and whom I'm sure to meet as a Capt or beyond someday. There was no way that this was going to be equitible or even, in pessimistic terms, in the best interest of the Air Force. No F'in way. Our best hope would have been to have the Office Space Bobs visit every base and pose the question to every LT: "So what is it, exactly, that ya do here?"

The oft asked question: What would happen if we did our job to their standards? Wouldn't be a pretty day for military aviation.

Sigh... Yep, might be...

WTF is it with the french airplane designers and their computer-love? Is it that the old simple gear lever is to prone to error from the monkey in the seat?

Great article, HDude. After reading that, I find a little pride for the decs that I was put in for that were not approved.

We called that the "firewatch ribbon" in boot camp (they still had the switch "on" at the time for DS) because that's all you had done to deserve it.

Often times, helmets do not last an entire flying career. Shortly after the individual gets fitted for their new helmet and its ready to fly, I've seen the old helmet perched atop thier locker, put there by the life support folks so that they can take it home.

two inches of electrical tape works better than any silencer I've run across. As far as wearing them, that habit was beaten into me long ago. So much so that I don't bother looking up regs, I just wear them. I figure it serves it's purpose: they'll be able to more readily identify my remains among all of the other cr...oh, wait, never mind.

Wow. That analogy just works so well...on so many levels.

No comments from the 'Died...

Probably so. Motorcycles statistically are on par with or just slightly more dangerous than light GA. Unless of course you're talking about a couple of UPT studs and their girlfriends out shining their asses at Lake Amistad. Then all bets are off. I was in the middle of digging up stats when it hit me that I really don't care that much. I just was wondering how draconian a commander can get before reg's or higher authority says BS. A commander could say: -no motorcycles, -no hard liquor, -noone outside a 25 mile radius unless on leave -and noone off base overnight. These are all legal orders and seems to me that they would all be in line with improving readiness and keeping airmen safe, right?

Again the question: then how far in trail is CC's prohibiting motorcycles? Nothing illegal with that order, right? I'm not advocating disobedience, I just think there's something else here.

I'd be interested to know the legalities either way on this one. Seems to me, if they could, most CC's would forbid all sorts of things, starting with motorcycles. There's a reason that they don't, and I'd be surprised if said commander wasn't just beating his chest about civil flying knowing that anyone who asked would be permitted. I'm really interested in this one...

AFTTP definition of C-17 formation: Same Way Same Day.

Behold SKYNET:

It depends. With a full-up HUD like the T-38C, I'd be as likely as not to forget to turn the MFD on during a given sortie. In the A-10, the HUD is still pretty damn useful, till you start flying instruments. Then you realize why it's not a primary reference: all the nav data is down on the panel. I had to break my HUD habit like the crack addict that I was. The most useful thing I've found about a HUD (aside from weapons delivery) is that you can nail level flight or desent angles (IE 3 degrees for a precision approach). Flying around VMC, I'll snap my scan to my HUD to get the vector back on the horizon--beats the hell out of scanning your VSI (lags), altimeter (also lags), etc... Oh, yeah, always recover on the round dials. (foot stomp) Esp at night. Y'know, incase they don't get that beaten into your cranium from the start. Life might suck for the moment or two that it takes for you to dig that nugget out of your clue bag. I'm just sayin...

HD, do you have one of these? GtG? I looked at it this morning but the auction's been closed out since then.

"To borrow from Winston Churchill, never have so many argued so long and so hard over so little. "-Rick Durden, similar AVWEB artical about debate over flaps

For all those that insist that this airplane cannot overcome the awesome force that this treadmill puts on an airplane, riddle me this: If the airplane isn't moving (hasn't achieved any forward vector), how fast is the conveyor moving? Airplane speed = 0 Conveyor speed = 0 Airplane speed = rotation speed in one direction Conveyor speed = rotation speed in the other direction. Wheels = rotation speed times 2 [ 29. November 2005, 21:10: Message edited by: BFM this ]