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busdriver

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Posts posted by busdriver

  1. Not married myself, but here's another option: Do the justice of the peace thing, then move to where you need to go, bring the new spouse. Once you get settled, plan the grand ceremony and do it right. It gives you the advantage of staying together and getting your new family on uncle sugar's books while giving you time to plan.

  2. For those of you who haven't seen a PMAG, the follower is designed so that it cannot tilt and the plastic feed lips are very strong. I haven't had the chance to test this myself, but I read an internet test report from a guy who left one loaded his entire deployment (army style) only unloading it by shooting and it fed perfectly the entire year. This was a pre-production example as well.

    EDIT: I have a few, but only had 2 trips to the range to test them. So my personal experience isn't enough to go on.

  3. Look up the ADC piston system. The initial test guy put something like 5000 rounds through it without cleaning, no FTF or FTE ever. The AR still has small parts/springs that make it prone to failure. However, a piston system while easier to clean also heats the BCG less (very little actually) so those little springs (extractor) are less prone to failure. Will the AR DESIGN be as reliable as the AK DESIGN with the addition of the piston? Probably not. The AK was designed so that inferior craftsmanship would affect it less. Also, many AR problems are due to magazines. EVERY AR failure I've ever had was due to a GI mag, PMAGs do wonders.

    That said, AKs are not immune to problems. A friend was involved in Iraqi advising, training helo guys. They would receive shipments of AKs and he said they often had to combine 2 or 3 AKs to make one good reliable weapon. Granted some of this was piss poor quality control that sometimes meant missing parts!

    But for an equal quality AR, an AK will always be less expensive. On the other hand, if you deploy with an AR, you should probably train with one.

    EDIT for spelling

  4. My contention was with the "Nonpecuniary Considerations Affecting Air Force Pilot Retention." Specifically the points that increasing the number of pilots to reduce ops tempo would adversely affect readiness, proficiency and capability. In the final portion of that section you make the point that a longer commitment helps create a more stable force, yet we've only just started into the gap between 8 year and 10 year opportunity to get out.

    Based purely on the original purpose of ACP, you're right the Airlines aren't the great deal they once were and ACP isn't really needed. On the other hand, we don't really know what the effects of broader ops tempo increases AF wide will be until 2010. The brunt of extended deployment burden is being born by pilots not yet eligible to get out. But based on the hit the heavy community took from VSP, there is plenty of discontent to go around.

  5. His first proposition is probably correct, there is not a large threat of the airlines pulling away fixed wing pilots. That said, AFPC's VSP bungle hemorrhaged mid level IP types from multiple heavy communities. So we might have a new gap in experience.

    That said he makes the claim that two policies have resulted in a more stable pilot force:

    More pilots produced out of UPT

    -So this may help deployment rates, except out commitments have gone up since the plus up occurred in 2000.

    -On the topic of more pilots to reduced ops tempo, we shouldn't forget that more pilots either means more aircraft to keep them proficient, or less flight time. We all know we aren't getting more aircraft, get used to flying a sim I guess.

    Longer commitment (10 years starting in 2000)

    -Since 2010 hasn't gotten here yet, know one knows how this change will affect the stability of the pilot force. Typical myopic AFPC type thinking. Didn't we predict this same logical failing would be used to support killing the ACP?

    For someone with so many degrees, he made some awfully obvious mistakes.

  6. I have a Stag, and it seems to be good to go, but I've only put 500 or so round through it. It does not have M4 feeds ramps and it's only a 1/9 rifle rifling pattern. A lot of AR-15 snobs go on about gas key staking, and will tell you that anything other than the Colt method is bogus. Looking at my rifle and the way Stag staked the gas key, I can't imagine it coming loose ever, but whatever.

  7. Whoever gets to "deploy" to Souda, you suck and I hate you.

    That said, Kandahar is actually pretty good as far as desert bases go. We were basically shunned by big blue there, and did our own thing. There are so many various nationalities there that you can get away with just about anything and the food was pretty good (06 time frame). Yes, they mortared us frequently, but the upside was that we got left alone, no sock nazis, no reflective belts and no visits by O-6+ with nothing better to do. We wore civilian hiking boots, two piece flight suits (after big blue had already told us no) and ball caps and no one cared. Nothing like being able to do the mission without being hassled.

  8. No matter who wins this election, there will be funding cuts to the DoD. We have a huge deficit, and both want to reduce it. Politically, it's not possible to cut entitlement programs, the easy kill is reducing military spending. However, they both want to increase the size of the ground troops, so expect them to get some AF money. One of the major expenditures for personnel is medical costs, so I could imagine more out of pocket costs, tricare, etc.

    I'm just thinking out loud.

  9. We need to start a good grassroots effort to allow us to paint nose art on the back. Obviously, there's no way in hell they'll let us put anything racy on the back and wear it in uniform. BUT, as an example what would be wrong with all HH-60 folks being allowed to paint the standard Jolly Green Patch on the back. I'm thinking if every community came together and came up with a design that paid tribute to heritage, and was totally PC and optional, what would be that problem with authorizing it? I think we might actually have a shot at getting that passed. Am I smoking crack?

  10. I've heard similar unused wire claims from crew chiefs, mostly they thought it was due to clipping old problem wires and running new ones without removing the old ones. That and TO changes to the way things like AHHS are wired.

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