Majestik Møøse

Voted your post up simply because of your login name. But otherwise, yeah, we'd still have to carry 100lbs of pubs to the jets. I think the biggest issue with the iPad is battery life. Does anybody have a realistic lifetime between charges? Could it last for an 18 hour sortie?

The big benefit is the extremely low cost. A new iPad costs about $600 whereas the same capability in a MFD would cost, what, $50,000? I think the kneeboard thing for the Herc costs about $5,000. For that price you could buy plenty of iPads to replace broken ones. Plus, the iPad is actually customizable by the user, unlike everything else ever purchased by the DOD. My base has been working on getting them for about a year. I think they wanted to get them below the radar before too many higher-ups could get their inputs in and slow things down. Maybe too late. I've generally only heard of iPads being considered for the jets on which coffee is consumed. It would be kind of silly in a fighter.

This State Department press conference on 25 Feb says the evacuation 250-270 people by ferry and 41 people by aircraft was complete. According to the article above, on the 26th the British still had 300 people left in the desert near Benghazi waiting on a frigate to pick them up. The Libyan government had lost control of Benghazi somewhere around the 25th plus or minus a few days. According to the BBC, the British evacuation is complete as of 28 Feb. Not sure if the Canadians have gotten their guys out yet. It looks like the Brits somehow managed to move everybody from Tripoli to rebel-held Benghazi on the ground so they could be evacuated by the military. The US went a different route and chartered a ship and aircraft to remove people straight out of Tripoli. I'm sure the British and American operations were massively difficult to put together and I don't really fault either. I'm sure there were minor screwups and delays as always, but as far as I'm aware the only foreigners killed have been African mercs. Sounds like successful to me.

Pretty sure the "Clemons" one is photoshopped. Somebody just swapped the "on" and "s". Otherwise, those tats are rad.

"The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All our hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day…" Winston Churchill 20 Aug 1940 Even platitudes as strong as this will eventually fade away as those who were actual witnesses to such heroism slowly die off. The hard lessons learned will eventually disappear in time, as they have for thousands of years. I know times are different now, and these are "only" trainees, but you can't screw people over that harshly and expect the best recruits to keep coming back. It seems like the RAF, as well as our own Air Force, only knows how to treat these pipelines like an on/off switch. Someone please tell me what other organization in the world would use that method to put the best people in the right places...

He's also missing a requisite diving badge that CCTs wear. Also, do CCTs always wear combat boots with blues or do they sometimes wear the regular shoes? I can't believe someone who's in the current active duty military would do this - especially a guy who works around the flying community.

So is the purple light in the intake a photographer-placed effect to make it look more menacing? Or did they just leave the cover off the onboard Blu-Ray player?

Exactly, the people with the most time on their hands will spend the most time writing PRFs. Which leaves a bunch of Ops guys turning in "below average" PRFs. Hopefully whoever looks at these things can see the big picture and apply some common sense to the process.

Because that would instantly put ALL the journalists at even greater risk than they already are. Similar to why we don't abuse the Red Cross symbol in the same way. Disguising oneself as a noncombatant and then opening fire is generally a tactic reserved for the OTHER side.

"In Soviet Russia, North Koreans defect to YOU!" But seriously, what the hell is a late-model MiG-23?

As another new guy, I'd like to know as well. It seems like for every 06 and above there's half a dozen guys whose only job is preparing briefings for their boss. Not to mention when said DV decides to take a stroll around base and every office comes to a complete standstill to Windex the desks and put on reflector belts. After which, of course, the DV is running late and decides to skip the base tour and go play golf instead. Streamlining the command structure seems like a good idea to me. Unless the idea is to provide redundancy in case of a nuclear war. That I could understand, but something tells me it wasn't by design.

Agreed that the AB in right eng didn't light. In picture 2 the exhaust gas looks a lot more prominent out of the left eng, while in picture 3 the flamethower effect coming out of the left is probably caused by the AB shooting fuel into a suddenly slow exhaust stream. Never seen it before so that's my guess.

That's actually one of the most worthwhile things you or anybody else has written on this board. I'm going to write that on my mirror 80's style so I can reality check myself every day. I can't even begin to tally the number of people I know, including myself, who feel the need to rest on their laurels. As they say in motorsports, you're only as good as your last race.

HPV, I like that one! Because once you get it you can't get rid of it, or, um, uh, so I'm told...

Self-selection automatically makes any poll worthless.

Well unfortunately that sounds a lot like Scott's Tots from the Office! If in fact Mr Foglesong has screwed up the charity so much that they have reneged on the kid's scholarships, that is by far his worse offense to date. Too bad the President contributed to it (if it really is as bad as you say). FWIW, President Obama actually donated money to 10 different charities, with the most ($250,000) going to Fisher House Foundation. They definitely DO deserve the money.

If stating the obvious puts me in the minority, count me in too. It's the President's money, he can do what he wants with it. Apparently he wants kids to go to college. He split the money among four different ethnic groups because that's what he has to do. Does anybody know anything about Foglesong's charity? I don't, either. Maybe, just maybe, it's actually a worthwhile organization that gives kids from the poorest part of our nation some money for college. I doubt that it was chosen because the President likes his vans lined up in a certain way. Something also tells me that if the President had put all of his Nobel money on the bar at your squadron you guys would still find a way to get pissed about it.

Reserved for a "2" response to slacker, along with his entire post (including page-length pictures) quoted all over again. I will also question the sexuality of anyone who posts any picture which isn't as provocative as his. I'll probably also add a signature block quoting his post for good measure.

This is retarded. It would make a lot more sense to unblock online email (like Gmail & Hotmail) first before letting in all of the gayness that exists on Facebook and My Space. Just block all of the attachments called chinese_sortie_tracker.exe and we'll be fine.

Agreed, when it works. It was broken for the first half of the week, at my base anyway. It's ridiculous that random systems are broken for days at a time (like the local network, email, AF Portal, LeaveWeb, ADLS, you name it). That would never happen in civilian life. I've never seen a major website go down for more than a few minutes, much less days.

2

The T-6As on our ramp seem to always be in some state of slightly broken. We treat ours pretty well, how likely is it that the AT-6B will be any more durable in combat from a forward location? Can the AT-6B land on unimproved strips? I bet the Sky Tractor could.

I got my wife's engagement ring from diamond.com. It was around one third the price of mall stores. They get all of their diamonds from Steinmetz, and they're all GIA graded. The particular diamond I got was a 1.25 carat, F color, SI1, Ideal emerald cut and it was $4,000 (the .75 carat setting I chose was $1400). A similar loose diamond from Zales was over $10,000 and it was a J color with I1 clarity. Note that the prices have gone up a bit as the dollar's value has fallen over the past two years. I found that Zales and the other mall stores don't even offer 1 carat diamonds that were better than H color, at least where I was looking. The salesmen act like diamonds in the colorless range don't even exist. I would recommend going to a store and finding one you like, get a feel for the carat size and cuts of different diamonds and settings, then purchasing at diamond.com or bluenile.com. I do the same thing with electronics.