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ClearedHot

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Posts posted by ClearedHot

    TRUE UPT buffoonery

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    T-38 Buffoonery...

    1. The Hwy-90 Touch n Go Club...allegedly.

    2. Thunderbird Audition ride checklist;

    A. Start at 13,000’, select full blower, and unload to zero G.

    B. Kiss Mach one at 9,000’ and start a pull to the vertical.

    C. Once vertical, begin aileron roll record breaking attempt.

    D. Going through 15,000’ take a second to think…”This is cool”.

    E. Going through 20,000’ take a second to think… “Holy Crap, this thing is still going like a banshee”.

    F. Going through 21,000’ realize the top of the area is 23,000’, initiate panic checklist, and start pulling on the stick.

    G. Going through 23,000’ demonstrate only airmanship of the day by selecting Mode C OFF.

    H. Going through 24,000’ realize nose is not tracking and airspeed is decaying rapidly.

    I. Apogee at 26,000’ and initiate forbidden T-38 tail-slide maneuver.

    J. Falling through 25,000’ take a second to think “This is the stupidest thing I have ever done.”

    K. Falling through 24,000’ say silent prayer that nose is starting to track towards ground, follow up with no-spin prayer.

    L. Falling through 20,000’ see 100 knots on airspeed indicator, begin to think “I might actually live.”

    M. Recover at 14,000’, turn Mode C on and spend next 15 minutes flying straight and level.

    N. Tell no one.

    Price of Freedom

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Originally posted by JLUCB:

    Thanks for this information, Rainman. Sucks though, that the AF will be taking the biggest hit for personnel funding.

    A small bit of education. The Air Force is not "taking a hit for personnel funding". As a service we made a decision to trade people for new equipment. We all know systems like the F-22 are very expensive, but so are people. So we have decided to give up roughly 40,000 personnel and use that money to replace worn-out airplanes.

    In the 1990's we faced a similar situation and we did the same thing. The only career field the escaped the cut was of course pilots. We banked almost two thousand pilots of a four year period knowing that we would need them someday. We cut everyone else and we cut them all at once. I think the Navigator community got the worst of it. First we cut them, then a few years later we started begging for them to come back and offering bonuses to the same ones we cut.

    Other services have tried this strategy and failed for one simple reason, they were too good to their people. In order to make the most of cutting people you have to get rid of them all at once or in a short period of time. The Army cut a lot of people in the early 1990’s but they allowed them to leave slowly and basically through attrition. In other words they let a lot of them reach retirement which increased their end cost. There were some immediate cuts but the process was slow enough that it cost them more money over time. Oddly, the Army had to expand to some degree as a personnel centric force.

    Bottomline, when you see the budget as approved from Congress, realize the USAF made a conscious decision to accept cuts in people to recapitalize.

    Flight Gloves

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Originally posted by MD:

    Don't know why what I do in my own cockpit bothers you.

    Welcome to the Air Force, they are going to be in “your” cockpit from your first flight to your fini-flight, get used to it. It matters because the Air Force has invested a lot in you and if your hands are burned off, you will no longer be of use.

    Originally posted by Rainman A-10:

    Lots of terrible things can happen. I'm not sure how many of them will be mitigated by flight gloves. I couldn't think of any. The A-10 has never had a cockpit fire. Ever. I did my own ORM and started at the first step..."what is the probablility that the risk you are trying to mitigate will actually occur?" and decided in about 3 seconds that it wasn't a big deal.

    I understand Rainman’s rational and I thought that way until I had a fire in the cockpit back in 1999. A group of wires behind a panel over my ugly cranium caught fire and started shooting sparks and molten gunk at my face. We were doing transition work at the time and luckily I had my gloves on because out of pure instinct I put my paw up to protect my eyes, which it did. Certainly a rare occasion, and I was lucky as I normally take my gloves off once I get to attitude. In combat, I tended to wear my gloves all the time, not because of the fire protection, but because it gets cold in an unpressurized gunship above 10,000’.

    Bottomline, for the heavy guys there really is not a lot of choice, as wearing gloves is required by regulation during takeoff and landing and hard to hide with a plane full of other crewmembers. I don’t judge your decision during other periods of flight I just know what I do and what works for me.

    [ 14. August 2006, 12:24: Message edited by: ClearedHot ]

    Blood in stool

    in Aviation Medicine

    Posted

    Screw the docs, what is the worst that could happen?

    While on a flight you bust an anal grommet and briefly ended up sitting in a steaming pile of bloody butt mustard before passing out from the blood loss. Your airplane full of dependants slams into the ground in a fiery ball. Ultimately, they find your burnt carcass with your left hand stuck up anus in a valiant, although futile attempt to stop the bleeding.

    At least you got your wings…

    Last fighter/bomber death by enemy fire?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Originally posted by Steve Davies:

    CH

    From talking to a couple of guys on the raid who saw Karma 52 go down, and based on the autopsy reports of the one guy eventually repatriated, the general view is that it is more likely that they ejected following a SA-3 impact on the right side of the jet.

    Steve,

    I've heard that as well, but I also have a good friend who was on the raid, and to this day he believes they flew it into the ground.

    SUPT Journal flame-bait

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Originally posted by Rainman A-10:

    I know a guy who wrote a book after Kosonam.

    He was still on active duty when he did it.

    I've never read it but I have heard of some quotes from the book. Allegedly, he said some silly stuff like "I'm color blind so I could pick out a tank in the treeline from the bozoshpere."

    Huh?

    Rainman, You mean This one?

    Sorry could not resist. Everyone needs a good bedtime story.

    Good military/aviation books

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    A great work of fiction.

    Originally posted by M2:

    Both look like they will be interesting. Robin Moore's The Hunt for Bin Laden was also a good read, but I found the constant references to Jack Idema amausing considering his later fame.

    Slightly embellished...Don't believe everything you read.

    [ 01. June 2006, 07:38: Message edited by: ClearedHot ]

    Nose bleeds

    in Aviation Medicine

    Posted

    My wife had a problem when we were stationed at Moody. The Flight Doc told her about the saline solution which she used to no avail. About a year later she finally listened to me and got a referral to an ENT. He spotted the problem in 6.9 seconds. She had a small vein in her nasal passage that was right near the surface. The doctor cauterized the sucker right in his office and she has not had single nose bleed in the last 10 years. I am not saying that is what you have, but there can be many causes.

    Distinguished Graduate (DG) from ROTC

    in ROTC & OTS Lounge

    Posted

    If you are an ROTC DG, at some point while you are a captain or young major they will likely send you to AFIT or a civilian university to get a masters.

    There is no such thing as a guarentee (policies change all the time), but for the time being the USAF has commited to sending DGs to grad school.

    Here is what worked for me. I was NOT a DG out of SOS or ACSC. However, I have been a DG out of all flying training programs.

    Good military/aviation books

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Originally posted by slyny:

    "Unknown Rider" by Scott Anderson.

    Scott was an F-16 pilot at the 148th in Duluth, MN. He was also a test pilot for Cirrus Design. Unfortunately he was killed while testing a Cirrus back in 1999. Super guy that also accomplished many significant things outside of aviation. The book is a quick read, but very well written and will keep you engaged.

    Lando was a great guy, he was in my UPT class and some of those stories in the book are about stupid things I did. He used to walk around with a little notebook and write down all the funny crap that happened to us. Tragic story all around the way he died, not his fault. He never got to meet his son who was born a few months after he died. If you want to read another good book (albeit not about flying), try his first book “Distant Fires”.
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