nsplayr

I'm holding out for Mexican drug war to spill over big time. We can base out of DM in Tuscon, get TDY money for flying in "combat," and hit up the bars on the weekend. Perfect setup.

Perhaps this one?

Sexy gun man. Funny you mention that shop; I was taking a trip from Navarre to Lowe's in Gulf Breeze and stopped in there to see what he had. Actually didn't have a 336 in 30-30 which surprised the guy and he said come back in a month or so and he's probably have a few or could get one transferred there if I really wanted. I'll be sure to check back.

Anyone have a Marlin 336 in 30-30? I'm sure some here must and I'm looking to get a used one at a fair price. Never owned one before so any advice on what to look for (other than functioning obviously) or reasonable prices for the NW FL area is appreciated.

GA = General Atomics, maker of the MQ-1 and MQ-9

My god...the photoshop options with that photo are endless.

What's a music store? I heard they have those on the interwebs now...

I think I'm one of the lucky ones, didn't do ASBC and now it's history. Booya.

So how do you guys do this; I've done it twice as follows: Rent truck from rental place, drive to weight station. That is your gas full weight. Drive truck home, fill with sh*t. Drive to weight station. That is your full of stuff weight. Am I missing something here? The OP needed an ASAP response to getting his PCS weights figured out and that's what I offered up. The way I do it is both faster than constantly stopping at the gas station and, bonus, it ensures the government pays me *less* than what I would be due if I had filled up my tank just prior to weigh-in each time. Like 3-holer said before, you're gonna max gain like 200 lbs from trying to game the system so really there's no point when I'm hauling way more weight than that. Save yourself some time is what I was "implying." I've literally seen dudes fretting over "well the tank said XX before and now it says XX;" for f*cks sake weight the truck and get on the road. Note: My comments here are not responsible for dumb people and their actions

What if we could hold the whole course online, using emerging internet technology like blackboard and such. Then a majority of people wouldn't even have to physically go TDY to Maxwell and could complete the course much faster. This would allow for greater ops tempo back in the operational squadrons, less man-hours lost due to travel and etc., and thousands saved in travel costs! Man, I'm gonna submit an AFSO21 proposal ASAP...

Just heard about this today at the sq...sweet, now with 75 days home per rotation it's now literally impossible to do SOS in that time block when you factor in CTO and re-deployment spin-up. That should be good for our careers... At least ASBC went away, on that one Big Blue!

Worth what? Lighten up francis. I'm not gonna purposefully not fill it up, but I'm not making an extra stop at the gas station just to top it off. Same goes for when I weight it full, not gonna stop at the gas station with a truck full of my sh*t and pulling a car on a trailer. It all comes out in the wash man.

I'm not suggesting this in any way, but that full tank of gas is totally optional...I'm just sayin'... My gripe at the weight station was they made me take my dog out of the car because he was "moving around" and it threw off the measurement. I said BS, I hauled his heavy ass all the way across the country! Anyways, GL man.

What you wrote maybe isn't entirely clear. When you started, you should have gotten the empty weight of the big truck and trailer without anything on it. Once it was loaded with all your crap and your wife's car, there's your full weight. I'm not an expert so IDK what the regs say on transporting vehicles if that counts just as part of your total weight moved or what but to me, those are the weights you need to determine how much crap you hauled.

Linky no workie.

For me at least, my commander is highly competent in the aircraft so it's not an issue. I'm also young and YMMV with different squadrons. I don't even think that's the biggest issue people are seeing, it's that dudes who prioritize CYA and box checking are promoted and dudes who are out there kicking ass and taking names are passed over to a certain degree or more likely punching out after looking at a long dark tunnel or further CYA and box checking. It's the slow vectoring over time where dudes who are most worried about their own careers and "play the game" most effectively get on the golden boy track and dudes who kill the enemy most effectively look like just another Captain Bag O'Donuts because out evaluation system doesn't seem to adequately value primary job excellence. And I also don't think the problem is with SDE (or as you said senior service colleges). Those seem to be valuable and CH already spoke to his very positive experience. The problem is where doing SOS both in correspondence and in residence is a major discriminating factor for promotion. Other than the commissioning-source re-hash of ASBC, is the first real PME a person will go to and while I have not had the privilege of attending Shoe Flag yet, I've heard less than stellar reviews. Why are CGOs, the supposed tactical experts, doing practice bleeding for something that isn't even that valuable? Do CGOs need to get "strategic breadth" or do they need to be in the vault studying their weapons system? Assume "both" is not a viable option (that is the AF's current stance) because time and effort are finite factors and you can't make two different things your #1 priority. That's the rub. Why are masters degrees, no matter what they are in or how hard they were to obtain, valued above being good at your job? The current system assumes everyone is good at their job and thus discriminates based on who also has that AAD done. That's simply not true and it's part of the problem.

Threeholer, All of your last questions are valid and you seem to share the same opinion on PME and DL masters degrees that the rest of us do. The system should evolve from one that promotes based on box checking to one that both incorporates legitimate educational opportunities that are applicable to strategic thinking (and strats based on those), but importantly, also includes more emphasis on primary job excellence. The more I've discussed this overall issue in various settings the more I'm starting to believe the core of the problem is simple: the AF assumes everyone is excellent at their job and thus has to move to "secondary" factors to rack and stack folks. We all know this is false in two ways, A) there is often a wide spread (STS) between the guys who are sh*t how and the dudes who can't fly (or finance or contract or turn a wrench) their way out of a wet paper bag, and B) even if a guy is obviously bad at his job, his OPRs/PRF will often be compiled in a way to minimize that so not to have one of the Commander's guys "left behind." There's not an easy fix to either of these problems (realizing not everyone is a winner and writing honest assessments), but to me the problems are at least becoming increasingly clear in my eyes. As OverTQ alluded to, no, the CC doesn't need to continually be the best pilot in the squadron and I'd much rather have him be good at Commander business rather than crew dog business, but the idea that a person can rise to the position of Commander without ever having been even decent at crew dog business is a foul on the entire system. I'd argue it is exceedingly rare where a person is a sh*tty pilot but would make an excellent commander of a flying squadron based on other "officership" type qualities, and even then that person would have a credibility problem leading troops in wartime. Being good, even excellent, at your current assigned duties at any level of responsibility should be an absolute requirement to move on to the next higher level, bottom line. In the ideal system, if you suck at your job you don't get promoted; there's no amount of boxes you should be able to check (PME/MA/volunteer/d*ck sucking/execing/etc.) that should allow you to escape the fact that you can't flourish where you're planted. As your level of responsibility becomes more and more strategic and less and less tactical, your job follows suit so at a certain point if you can't move beyond A+B=C of the tactical world then you will not command or make strategic positions. At that point perhaps relevant, useful PME and Masters-level strategic study are factors that should influence the decision of whether to promote or not. In today's system it seems to me and to a lot of other that those "strategic thinker/well rounded/MA-educated/officership" considerations are coming up when a dude is a f*cking lieutenant trying to plan ahead for getting on the right "vector" as a young captain so he can get a school slot on his first-look major's board. That's exactly the wrong time for those things to be important; it's the time when that guy should be fully immersed in the tactical mission of his unit, because his primary duties lie at that level. This is amplified even more when you're at war and the Boss is putting pink bodies in iron to go out and kill the enemy, because guess who is likely to be sitting in the seat? What skills do you want that guy to possess at that point in time?

"I normally don't have a burger, a brat and a steak, but it is 4th of July. And I need the energy if I'm gonna start blowing crap up later."

Exactly. My last feedback session with my flt/cc involved him telling me, through gritted teeth, to get my MA finished up and to get SOS in correspondence knocked out ASAP. He's a former fighter dude and honestly I could tell what he wanted to tell me was to stay in the vault and concentrate on my upgrade, but he's saying what he has to say to keep his people competitive. The pendulum has swung way too far in the direction of queep and like it's been said numerous times before, being good, even excellent at your primary duty does not factor in to you being promoted almost at all, which is absolutely insane when our primary duties are as important as they are and our MAs in Basket Weaving and SOS completion certificates are as worthless as we all know they are. Like Danny said above, I don't exactly need to spend time "grasping the bigger picture" here as a CGO in a flying position during wartime. I like education and would probably pursue masters work even if it wasn't required, but that (and entry-level PME) should not be the focus and they are because you will not get promoted without those boxes checked. There are 6-9 thousand FGOs above me who can get working on the bigger picture and another 6-9 thousand O-6+ who can actually be in a position to affect broader strategy. Someone needs to give almost their entire focus on cultivating and maintaining tactical excellence and that person should be the crew dog flying the line every day.

Tac, I don't want to be rude, however, your post fills me with an overwhelming urge rip off my shirt, grow a huge beard, crush some heavy deadlift, or punch a Nazi in the face. Yes x 1 million. I know several dudes who are fangs-out mish hackers who have continuously stiff-armed the queep and are seeing their careers suffer for it. Likely to be "not continued" in the future. There is a fine line between principled stand and failing to take necessary self-preservation measures and perhaps they could have given a little more in terms of doing what's needed to stick around, but the sheer amount of BS has crushed the souls of many fine warriors who just want to kill people for a living and don't give a sh*t about a MA in Basket Weaving so they can make O-5. In the CAF and SOF especially, I want dudes who fly because it's the fastest way known to man to go from sitting peacefully in the TOC to finding and violently killing the enemy. That quality is not prized or even considered when it comes to career progression/advancement/awards/etc. The last time I checked the "paying your dues" part of our job was college/OTS/Zoo/ROTC/UPT/MWS qual/Q1 mission checkride/AC or flight lead upgrade/IP/EP. Once those are accomplished you have made it to the NFL-level of warfare and the focus should be on the mission rather than the career. In the end, no matter what you fly, none of us in the service are hoping the red-eye from Charlotte to Denver or chasing ambulances.

Speaking of Mustache March, looks like this former Lex Luthor-bald actor/politician and current crazy person has gotten a premature start of Novemburly.

Well said. P.S. - piddle packs FTW. If you sh*t on my plane you're off the team.

You're guessing wrong. This can't be adequately discussed here so I'll just stop. The point of the article I think was positive, that we're leveraging some relatively high-speed women in a limited role that allows us as a whole to take the fight to the enemy more effectively. Everything else here is just chaff that need not be rehashed again. From the Army's official website on the program (emphasis added): So everything about "fighting your way in" to a hot objective is moot within the intended scope of the program. Yea sh*t happens as Rainman so bluntly stated but CST members are not "operators" and seem to receive about enough advanced training to adequately defend themselves if sh*t actually does hit the fan unexpectedly. All of which is not entirely new but it's good that the idea is being expanded/normalized.

Huh? Yea, exactly.

Eh...I am willing to give them a pass since they said "Women Special Operators." If you are in ops and assigned to USSOCOM, you are a special operator or SOF to me. Special operators conduct special operations, what else would you call it? Being an "Operator" colloquially is obviously very different and I don't think the article implied that they were breaking necks or bear crawling up mountains like the bigfoot-ninjas we have out there. And if it was slightly on the sensational side, it's a headline, that's the idea I guess... Overall, good on these ladies because debriefing/searching the chicks on the objective can be extremely valuable in a situation like this one where the primary target (senior IMU guy) put on a burka in an attempt to escape.