Clayton Bigsby

I recently flew in 1st class alongside an Army dude in ACUs, who was also a fair bit drunk; turned out he'd just earned his Ranger tabs at Benning. Certainly didn't begrudge him any of that.

You know, quite a bit of the Pats' regular season games boiled down to luck - look at the Baltimore game, and the Philly one. Luck's not always such a bad thing, and personally, it was immensely satisfying to see it catch up with the Pats.

Same thing for the APU, the APU exhaust blows straight up from the right side, and just like the caution in the -1 there's one about running the APU with the slats extended for a long period of time. Of course, the heat/'thrust' from the APU is small pickings compared to what comes from the reverser cascades...

You would also look retarded not wearing what all your co-workers are wearing. The "go talk to my boss" line is a good one...just go with that.

Merry Christmas and :beer: to our deployed guys. Thank you and stay safe.

Vandal, I know it's the inherently gay ROTC and AETC world, but that reeks of shoe-ism... ...Now, granted, I'll say this - the pants are supposed to be BLOUSED, not tucked into the boots. And the blousing job isn't supposed to be spandex-tight against your calves, but bloused out...that's what blousing means. Basically so you can sit down without your BDUs riding up. Leave that skin-tight shit to CTA and MTI homos. That's Lackland gayness right there. Doesn't need to go any further.

Note that it's the A310 demonstrator plane...not an A330...so it's not really the KC-30 doing a refuel just yet. Just their boom demonstrator aircraft. Kind of funny that it's progressing this slow - there is an Australian A330 flying now with the boom and drogues installed, and yet they're still sticking with the A310 testbed for this stuff, while Boeing is flying its actual KC-767s (not technology demonstrators, but the real deal) almost daily...

I had always heard the pool being called the man-stew...

I can see how people wearing BDUs could have their white socks show, with the blousing and all...but for fliers, that's completely stupid as the flight suit goes down right on top of the boots. You'd never see my socks, ever ever ever. While it's in 36-2903, some common sense and discretion on the enforcer would be appreciated - clearly that's more of a BDU reg than a flight suit reg.

I'm just wondering how to handle a sock check, or short sock haters. Those are the people I'd want to deck...

All AMC aircrew members are required to have a knife and a flashlight of some type on their person, as a result of the Dover C-5 crash - in the troop cab, one of the escape slides was triggered and inflated inside the aircraft without the door being opened, pinning some of the passengers. One of the loads had to deflate the slide by stabbing the shit out of it, hence the requirement.

Four Winds Siesta Apartments!!! Seriously, it's a great name!

Stract - when you quote the shit-hook build-up times and time to Mission-Ready, were you talking to regular Army bubbas, or Campbell guys? Those guys have their shit together and don't fvck around. Just curious, because some seem to be the farm teams, and some are definitely the pros.

Because killing and eradicating the Kurds isn't the work we're doing. They're actually our friends. The Turks will be going after the PKK, not Al-Qaeda or Shiite militias or Sunni insurgents.

Are the H-92's engines the exact same as the H-60's? They sure look it...

The hot cup for boiling water is pretty much always there on missions, unless it's broken for some reason, and you can request it from fleet on locals when they bring out your water/box nasties. I would ask that if it's something really important to you as a pilot, maybe help the loads out with that if you can - it's entirely possible they could be busy doing cargo stuff at that time, and fleet showing up to the airplane and bringing all the necessary crap/forms to sign is just another person harassing the loads when they're busy. It's something the loads usually take care of, but like I said sometimes we're in the middle of something. If you coordinate it at One (more) stop, you can get the craptastic coffee containers that plug into the galley, but it costs money and I hear the coffee blows ass.

No, like a real-world simulation tool built into Microsoft Flight Sim and most other 'real' simulators - I know for a fact the Boeing C-17 sims have this feature.

Anybody have a link to that old C-130 puke story out of Al Udeid? You know, the one where ATOC comes out to the airplane and cites the AC for a safety violation, since none of his evacuated pax have disco belts on. It used to be in the old Al Udeid bitching thread at the old message board, but the link to that thread doesn't work anymore.

Sometimes with military aircraft payware add-ons for FS, the instruments don't/can't necessarily line up all the way with reality - it's a sim-ism, the basic issue being Microsoft Flight Sim is a GA simulator. It can simulate the f*ck out of a Cessna 172, but when somebody makes, say, an F-22 add-on, not everything that airplane would have is necessarily supported by the basic software of the sim (such as a HUD, Microsoft didn't build those in for C-172s). So then it's up to the developer to fill in the blank areas and create something that works. The payware developers do the best they can do with what they've got, but sometimes it just won't be 100% maximum fidelity.

I think for "V" to mean staff transpo, it has to come before the basic mission designator - for example, Air Force One is a VC-25, whereas an AV-8B is not a VIP Harrier. Sputnik, what's funny about that navy thing is they, like the Air Force, operate the HH-60 in a rescue role - however the USAF HH-60 is based off of the Army UH-60 platform, and the USN HH-60 comes from the SH-60 Seahawk platform. Yes I know they're pretty much the same thing, but there are some differences - I don't think the SH-60 has windows for door gunners behind the cockpit, and they've got that large two-wheeled underfuselage tail wheel instead of it being way in back. I think politicians or staffers decided that the "M" for "MV-22" means "Marines"...

I assume it denotes a "Cargo" Mission Design Series, along with "V" for "V/STOL" Personally I think it's all mixed up - the Air Force should have the MV-22, and the USMC the CV-22. The Air Force flies MH-53s in a SpecOps mission, and the Marines fly CH-53s in a general utility/transport mission. But hey, I've also had AF instructors tell me with a straight face in tech school that MDS numbers are assigned in numerical program order. So the KC-135 being the 135th Tanker/Transport design procured, and the KC-767 being the 767th...riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

I won't claim to know anything about how the T-6 flies (never been to UPT, just a fvckin' LM), however I have purchased several products from IRIS in the past and I've been fairly to mightily impressed. Their F-14A, for example, is fantastic, and their F-15s (both Albino and Mud Hen) are pretty damned good too. I'll definitely be buying the T-6 and giving it a whirl too.

I'd have to go with the 729th out of March...or maybe it was the 730th. Anyway, the nametags - the one with the fading sunset and palm trees on 'em. Anybody who's been to Charlie's at Altus has seen them, and they're awesome!

Good on them, they're finally asking for more money instead of being yes men...it's about time. Interesting article in a recent Aviation Week (I think the one with the C-27J on the cover), about contractors, the GAO, and how contractors are building program decision appeals/protests into their business plans...such as Boeing and Northrop Grumman, who are already planning on filing a protest no matter which way the contract goes, in an effort to bleed their competitors. Interesting in that the CSAR-X was the #1 priority, and is now completely sidelined by contractor shenanigans. Thanks guys!