60 driver

Believe it or not, I actually know this guy, and I was wondering when the pictures would show up here. I've gotten the pictures emailed to me one million times now, and each time there's a different story attached. I'm impressed that no one here has said (yet) "what a dumbass for leaving his bait/fish/food/moose meat in the plane, so to preempt it, here is the real story:

The first article left out a couple of key words that make it even better. To be fair, it is North Pole, Alaska - wouldn't surprise me at all if the guy looked like something from a Mad Max movie.

My civilian job (cargo airline) uses monitored approaches as well. As noted above, the Captain builds and briefs the approach, FO flies the approach and go around if required, Captain takes the aircraft for the landing. At my airline they're required for all Cat II and III approaches, all Cat Is with RVR less than 2400, and all nonprecision approaches with weather less than 1000/3. From that list it sounds like every approach would be monitored, but in reality we probably end up flying them less than 10% of the time.

Tell 'em how you feel about it.

Thanks for posting the update. Maybe I've been doing this too long, but my first thought was, if I have to die in an airplane, that's about the way I'd want the accident report to read. DIdn't know you, Dash. Kinda wish I had. Blue skies.

I wonder if "straightening" and "sweeping" were covered under the same Value Stream Analysis as "inventorying" and "segregating". Probably had two different teams to assess the benefits of each component of the operation and then had an integration meeting the week prior. That's what I'd do.

What the ###### was that shit?

Good writeup on the medevac guys by Michael Yon. Great article, but long. If you're in a hurry, scroll about halfway down. http://www.michaelyon-online.com/precision-voting.htm

Careful - The integrated AF flight doc/AME has the ability to save you a couple hundred bucks a year, but he also has the ability to to ground your ass simultaneously on both sides of the military/civilian fence if you ever have a medical issue. It's easy enough to lose a medical without streamlining the process. Just my $.02.

Bentwaters I lived in Aldringham, just south of Leiston. I was stationed at Bentwaters the year we shut the lights off, 92-93. I was in a nonflying job at the time (banked) but the atmosphere and the guys from my "attached" squadron (the 92nd TFS "Skulls") are what ultimately led me to put the hog #1 on my return to fly dream sheet. What a great assignment. Wish I could have flown there. The Bentwaters-Woodbridge closing, followed by Soesterberg and then Zweibrucken and Bitburg, convinced me once and for all that Congress BRACs in dream sheet order. I took my wife to the UK for vacation in '06 and we drove out there, knowing that they had turned the support side of the base into council housing, and expecting the worst. To my surprise it looked almost exactly the same, to a creepy extent almost. My house, which was 400 years old when I lived in it, hadn't changed either. You guys should go see your old place, I bet you'd be surprised how little has changed. As you probably remember, the British aren't exactly renowned for that.

Definitely a Fulda Gap era term. :)

BAI was history even when I was still in the hog over ten years ago. The term "deep CAS" was roughly equivalent, but didn't last long, if I recall correctly. At least as far back as the mid-late '90s, it was either AI or CAS, with not much "approved" terminology to describe where you were in the battle space without resorting to old terms. The young guys can explain the current type I/II/III concepts in more depth than I, but those are the latest equivalents for what you might remember as direct/indirect/deep(BAI).

Let him go, he's on a roll.

This is more aimed at the guy from last year who thought an Osan/Red Cloud assignment was a screw job. There's plenty of fun shit to do in the ROK if you give it a chance and don't just automatically assume it's going to suck. There's rock climbing in Seoul (indoor and outdoor), some pretty decent skiing, and the food kicks ass (my opinion). Panmunjon is worth seeing. Lots of temples. Some different SCUBA diving, decent water skiing, fishing, etc. Alternately, you could eat at Popeye's and the club every day for a year and wear out a DVD player or two watching movies in your room all weekend. I've seen that work for a lot of guys too.

One of our Former Army Guys went on and on about the virtues of the 2-piece flight suit prior to one of our deployments. He used to wear 'em back in the Cav, best thing since sliced bread, etc, so he got us all issued 2 each. Of course, publicly we all gave him shit about how much they sucked, but he was right - it's the most comfortable uniform I've ever worn in a hot environment, in flight or on the ground. Keep in mind, these were the tan ones, I haven't tried the ACU model. The best feature of all for helo guys - you don't have to take off your entire combat load to take a dump, and there's almost zero chance of crapping on your sleeve.

Well... The 802 is a kick ass spray plane, (and Single Engine Air Tanker) and it hauls a shitload of weight. It's actually advertised as the world's largest single engine airplane, although I'm not sure about their measurement standard (AN-2?). The guys who flew the 802 for my company when I was in Colombia loved it - but there were some significant differences in how we faced our mornings. As an OV-10 guy, I knew that I had two engines and an ejection seat, and if I got shot at, at 200 mph, I was likely to end up with 3 or 4 holes in the airplane max, and a pretty reasonable chance of getting back to the house under my own power. The Bronco had what I considered to be a decent amount of redundancy, and on a bad day, you needed all the redundancy you could get. The 802 guys took off knowing that with their slow ass airspeed and 58 foot wingspan, if they got shot, they were going to continue to get shot until the guy on the ground got tired or ran out of ammo. If one got through the engine blanket, they were committed to stalling it into the jungle canopy and hoping our SAR guys could get there in time. More than once I met my buds at the airplane to see a hollywood-style row of holes punched through the wing, and one guy I know got shot down twice in the space of a month. Slow single engine airplanes aren't always the best idea over questionable territory. edit: Finally found the video I was looking for. Not the best pictures for comparison, but just so you get an idea of how big that bitch actually is, compare where the wingtips are: 60 feet of wing, 120 knots, one engine and no ejection seat. And doesn't jink so well. Great airplane for some things, COIN maybe not so much.

I met approximately zero of their major hiring requirements, but I got the job because they were looking for A-10 guys at the time (for a program that never materialized). Better lucky than good. That's enough from me, I don't want to distract from Hiflyer's stories. More if you got 'em Hiflyer!

HiFlyer - I've been waiting awhile to mention this to a Vietnam era OV-10 pilot. A few years ago I had a job flying resurrected and significantly modified former USMC D-models on a State Department contract in South America. "Significantly modified" means, among other things, that we had Kevlar floor and sidewall armor, front quarter panel armor, laminate windscreen and side canopy armor, etc. We pretty frequently came back with several 7.62-ish sized holes in various parts of the aircraft, and I remember thinking this experience was highly overrated even with a lot of armor. I also remember, after getting shot off one target, having the very clear thought that those crazy bastards that flew this thing in Vietnam flew it unarmored, against guys packing 23 and 37mm heat, if not SA-7s. I can only assume the squadron had wheelbarrows outside the chute shop so you guys could haul your gigantic balls out to the aircraft. P.S. More stories, por favor.

Good way to get in the fight as a non-rated officer. I was a BALO from 95-99, and I bitched about it just about the entire time. Only later did I realize, as a then-CAS and now-helo guy, it was one of the most valuable learning experiences of my career. I can foresee a little of the upcoming discussion on this topic, so a couple of preemptive shots, if you'll indulge me: One thing the Terminal Air Control career field has always lacked is continuity on the O side, since all but a few guys would do their part time BALO gig or their ALO alpha tour and then hit the road with tires squealing and never look back. The old school philosophy was always that an ALO that wasn't a FAR'd guy wouldn't be able to do the job - of course, that was proved wrong over a decade ago when they starting putting B-52 radar navs through AGOS and found out that one motivated radar nav is worth ten pissed-off F-15 guys who would rather be anywhere other than hanging out in the back of an M-113. The same old school now bitches about the idea of having non-rated guys controlling air - but, just a reminder - every single ETAC/JTAC out there is non rated too. Guys that work with them know - most of them kick ass at it. The college guy ought to be able to figure it out too with the proper spin-up. Just my $.02, worth exactly what you paid for it. I think the AFSC is years overdue.

######ing classic.

I stand corrected. My mil fixed wing experience was prior to RVSM, and my last 2 civilian rides have both been RVSM certified so I never really thought about it - and I've never heard the "Negative RVSM" call on the radio. I learned something today!

If your airplane isn't RVSM certified you aren't getting cleared to 320 in the first place. Which brings up a question I've been wondering about. My current civilian ride is RVSM certified, so it's not something we really think about all that much, but the topic comes up every now and then: Who is RVSM certified besides the C-17 (?) and for those of you that aren't (T-1/T-38/F-16/F-15)? what altitude do you guys go places at nowdays?

What are you calling a CSAR? If it's "Army helicopter goes down, crew recovered by Army assets" I'd reply that's business as usual for the Army. I also don't see a problem with the scenario you just mentioned as long as everyone is being utilized (key word) effectively.

I think a lot more people "get it" than don't, but what gets me is - if a CSAR kicks off while you're sitting on your ass, you go do the CSAR. If a CSAR kicks off while you're on a medevac - wait for it - you get diverted and go do the CSAR. So what is the problem with supporting the fight while you wait for the call for your hasn't-happened-yet-in-eight-years (OEF) primary mission? I have noted that these same guys are usually pretty fired up to go do the direct action support stuff - guess what, that ain't CSAR either, but I guess it sounds more glamorous than medevac (?)

Since you brought it up, maybe someone can explain the reasoning behind this attitude. I've seen it, but I don't get it. Our rental (AD) PJs on our last rotation were among the loudest complainers I've seen yet.