contraildash

hence:

BIRDS!!! (thought these were appropriate)

I just watched "Beer Wars" on Netflix. I really enjoyed it, highly recommend it to any and all beer lovers out there. The blind taste test was pretty funny, and very true. Sam from Dogfish Head brewery is a hell of a due (and brews some awesome beer). Long and short of it, I don't think I will ever drink something from one of the "big three" ever again...support your micro-brews!!!

Food for thought....what happens to all these dudes in a few years when there isn't a need for all those orbits anymore? It'll be interesting to see what happens to that community on a whole when things start to get slow. Just because they won't be needed in UAVs (RPAs...whatever the term is these days) doesn't mean there necessarily will be room for them in other airframes, after all things will be slowing down across the board at some point. It'll be very interesting to see how things play out over the next few years.....

...it's like seeing a space guy walking around ETAR in a bag, leather jacket, scarf, but alas no flying wings... like you said, you just know.... On subject, there was some growing pains with the Combat Action Medal when it first came out. My cousin is a Tech in EOD, multiple tours in OEF and OIF, been shot at - shot back, ect. However, the AF didn't want to retroactively award the combat service medal to him or other members of his unit. (although it's retroactive to Sept 11, 2001) I think it had something to do with their being attached to the Army at the time. In the end he got it, but it took the better part of a year. His biggest complaint was that his folks didn't get the medal, but were outside the wire fighting, yet folks inside the wire were getting the AFCAM because they manned a "fighting position" while getting mortared. In the end it was all a moot point. While he did end up getting his retroactive medal approved, he deployed yet again and got another AFCAM. Personally, you can bash your head against the wall all day thinking about this kinda stuff, but in the end it's not really worth it. Undeserving people will get things, while others who really do won't. Story of life.

There's a book out called "the majestic twelve" about a rag-tag bunch of marines, soldiers, and airmen that start their own convoy protection. The Marine who wrote the book is rather scathing when it comes to the subject of the "fobbits" putting in dec packages for sitting around in some building all day, and while at the same time going out of their way to make sure that the convoy guys (whom they didn't like) had medals degraded or even rejected. Interesting read.

Agreed on the vulgarity. Seems like a bad combination of raging bitch and whiny JOs. It doesn't excuse her actions though, and relieving her of command was a good choice. Having that atmosphere on a ship of any sorts doesn't lead to anything good. Putting senior cheifs in "time out"? What is this? Elementary school? I do, however, like and will use: "I can't express how mad you make me without getting violent."

For anyone that's seen the "epic beard man bus fight"... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67XOc_xIA4U

Lucky no one on the ground was injured! Based on some GoogleEarth skills, and looking at the news video, I came up with this: Disclaimer: bad math ahead To clear 60 power lines (if the news is correct) that are approximately 2400 ft from the runway, you'd need climb at about 155 ft/nm. For reference, I think that around 100 knots ground speed 155ft/nm equals about 240 ft/min. Of course I have no idea how fast they were going...or if my late night math skills are any good.

Nice use of the strike-through for comical effect.

60 Driver, thanks for setting the story straight! ...two points to the bear...

Story is that the guy left some fishing bait in the plane...and a bear 'found' it. Not only do I love the duct tape job, but he still had the presence in mind to write his N number with a pen...you know...for legal sh*t and all that.

It's interesting so far...

Over here, you only get what the Germans who run the housing office think your place is worth. So while my cap is 1200 Euro, and I talked my landlord down to 1000 Euro, the damn housing office says it's only worth 820 euro. They base it off of "living space" square footage. They say they add some value for garages, but barely, and I don't have one. Since the heated/finished basement rooms are only accessible from the outside, they don't count as living space. No value was added for the shop out back. The example the guy used basically showed that "their calculations" said my free-standing house (with two heated rooms in the basement, a huuuuge backyard, two-room building/shop) was worth the same as an apartment with the same sq footage. It's complete BS.

I touched it's titty a few years back: When leaving German controllers, everyone usually throws out a "tschüss". The other day on my way back from Aviano, we heard a JAL flight get handed off and it was "aarr-shroooss-ra". So stereotypically priceless. I wish I could record that kinda stuff....

Hoss: did you even know at the time? Or was it an after the fact "oh sh*t!"...those suck. For me it was going off the end of the runway at a little place called Gila Bend (E63) in a Cessna 310 full of gas after our brakes failed on landing. Stopping before the ditch was nice though.

...that's what she said... I don't look forward to the day when I have to grow up and start arguing about having more dudes around in the jet. Enjoy your meat-fest.

Well thanks to the Canucks, Wittman experienced that on the 8th of August 1944.

I just finished my taxes through H&R Block online. I used TurboTax the past 4 years, but this year their program was a pain in the ass. Plus you have to pay to file your state taxes electronically. I like the free and easy H&R stuff I just used! I also like going TDY to tax free/combat zones...made a huge difference! Side note/question: I did a partial DITY to put stuff in storage prior to my OCONUS PCS, but only got around $250 for it. But didn't see a W-2 for it (like some of the posts above are concerned about) Do I even have to worry about that?

I had to go through PIPS when I in-processed here at ETAR. It was a pain in the butt and my impression was that it just filled in the voucher for me. It was cumbersome, crashed multiple times, and about two hours slower than if I just rocked out a paper voucher. Our SQ RA sucks so I'm still not in DTS, so all my recent vouchers have been done paper style, by me. It's sad that I can fill out a voucher, attach orders and receipts, get the voucher signed by two people, make copies of the whole thing, then drive over to finance and drop it off all quicker than going through PIPs or DTS. I have been getting paid much quicker than I ever did through DTS, let alone the PIPs thing. At this point I'm not exactly pushing to get my DTS account un-fvcked.

Saw a history channel type show about this guy recently, trying to prove who killed him (Brits or Canucks) Captain Michael Wittman I love the sportscar and submarine part.

The A-10

the A-10....enjoy

Badass of the Week note: Randomly came across the site when I googled Captain Ronald Speirs: Anyways, there's some funny-ass stuff on the site, the A-10 entry is great, a good read if ya need to kill some time. edit for quote

Games: Jelly Car (not the crappy second one) AC-130 Spectre 33rd Division X-plane Racing / X-helicopter Cube Runner Tap Tap Revenge 2 (use it to get random music mainly) RC helicopter Paper Toss Parking Lot Air Hockey Amateur Surgeon Flight Control Coast Defense Gun App Flying Stuff: AeroWeather Sports: FlyCast (still can't quite get it to work though) Misc: Convert - The Unit Converter Currency Coverter Flashlight BumpIt German Tutor Wi-Fi Finder Around Me Skype Shazam Facebook Mixologist