pintail21

You're right. A POW held by a terrorist group who might say it and cut his head off is exactly the same as a former military member who is being held in jail by a legitimate government awaiting trial for a crime he certainly, although accidentally committed.

That is true, BUT once you do hit the minimum amount of hours for a regular ATP your restricted APT magically becomes a full up one.

Nice job skytruckers, there haven't been too many aviation articles with happy endings this year.

Is there any word on how competitive you would be on the commercial side with a restricted ATP?

I'm on leave and my CAC reader is TU, so I'm a little out of the loop. If I'm reading that chart right, a 2009 11S isn't eligible for any voluntary program, so we shouldn't be under any nonvoluntary program either right? Then if any AFSC is involved, it will be further broken down so H model gunships might get hit, but whiskeys get left alone, etc right? Personally I'm more curious to see how big blue handles the next round of announcements. A red tag in your locker that means you died and went to the civilian side? Finance "fixing the glitch" and letting everything resolve itself? Maybe the dean notifying the local draft board that we're eligible for 'nam. So many choices!

I've been looking into it a lot. Granted I have the better part of a decade left on my commitment but hey it never hurts to dream, hell that's the only way to stay sane in some communities. I haven't looked into dropping citizenship but I've read a lot of articles lately about more americans doing it to avoid paying double taxes, and some americans abroad who are having serious issues getting banks to even take their money because the new tax laws are so complicated the foreign banks don't want to deal with it. There are a lot of countries where gringos can live like kings, english is common, health care is cheaper with a similar 1st world quality, everything you could want a cheap flight away, and the women flock to you like the salmon of Capistrano. Granted there are some drawbacks but I've met a ton of civilian expats who are living the dream too. I can think of worse ways to spend your time than living abroad in a tropical locale with the option to come home whenever you want. Costa Rica or Clovis? Minot or Belize? Cambodia or Creech? Holloman or Hong Kong? I will say don't forget about looking into property ownership laws. A lot of countries won't let foreigners own real estate, but there are a lot of 99 year leases too. http://www.expatforum.com/

It was his first triple 7 landing at SFO, but he had thousands of 747 hours and had been to SFO previously. I wonder if the difference in view from the cockpit from the 747 to the 777 and maybe some negative transfer played a role. It will also be interesting to see if the training standards change. I talked to a lot of comm dudes whose first landing in the plane was with pax in the back.

I just want to know if they also have to wait 2+ hours on the ramp waiting to get their ADC number. Dealing with Indian ATC is a ######ing nightmore. Their government actually makes ours seem like streamlined, efficient geniuses.

I heard a rumor that a few relatively new U-28 dudes got pcs orders out of the blue and at least one person got an AMC gig. Any truth to that? As far as the preserving the family waiver, I know several dudes from different branches who are way outside the limit and their current and planned deployments and tdy's aren't changing so maybe the plan fell through or the waiver is pretty easy to get. Just my 2 cents.

The bigger question is if the little planes will even exist come FY14

The “poisonous material” was deployed by government warplanes, Haaretz reported, citing a rebel statement. The Assad regime, meanwhile, is blaming the rebels for the attack. Al Jazeera posted two videos it said were obtained from “a field clinic in the city.” The graphic videos appear to depict gasping victims of what could be construed as a nerve agent attack. However, the origins and contents of these videos have yet to be verified by other sources. U.S. officials note that several things about the video are inconsistent with a sarin strike. There are complaints of strong smells; sarin is odorless. There are reports that the victims inhaled large amounts of the chemical; a minuscule of amount of inhaled sarin can be fatal. “It just doesn’t jibe with chemical weapons,” one U.S. official tells Danger Room. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/12/did-syria-just-use-nerve-gas/

The aquifer is running dry, and depending on who you believe will last around 4-12 years. According to a real estate agent I spoke with (who wasn't trying tell sell me a house since I already have one), this won't have a major impact on people within city limits and use the city's water system, but if you depend on a well you're pretty much hosed. Take it for what it's worth. Right now they are building a pipeline to a reservoir ~2 hours away, and there are no real water restrictions.

Roger, ditching my "opinion". "The crash investigators’ evidence was sparse: “With no eyewitness accounts, surviving aircrew members, emergency radio calls or `black box’ recordings, the specific reason for the spatial disorientation cannot be determined,” the investigation said. The only personnel who participated in the pre-flight briefing were the four men who perished." Read more: http://nation.time.com/2012/10/29/too-tired-to-fly/#ixzz2B4wxOYQ1

He needs surface winds to be less than 2 mph to avoid damaging his ridiculously thin balloon? Good luck getting that to happen in New Mexico!

It's like they combined the AF's knack to come up with shitty uniforms and new tradition with Nike U's hideous jerseys. Personally I think they should have scrapped the stealth MDS's and gone with CBT's. B-2 Spirit and F-22 Raptor might be scary, but if you see "cultural competency", "CBRN" and "SABC" coming at you'll really be terrified!

The SIB had very little to go off of, and had a lot of theory, conjecture and "best guess" which may be holding up the AIB.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/military/macdill/only-the-air-force-is-tight-lipped-about-c-17-wrong-airport-landing/1241869 "In the absence of facts, people are trading conspiracy theories, fueled in part by YouTube videos now viewed by more than 50,000 people. Theory No. 1: The landing was all about testing C-17 capabilities for the upcoming Republican National Convention. "That's a new one," Bressendorff responded. "To the best of my knowledge. It was a routine mission." Theory No. 2: President Obama. After the cargo plane landed, workers in the airport lobby heard a woman screaming that she had seen him at the top of the stairs. "She was on her cell phone telling friends," said Dymerski, the airport official. "At first she said she saw on him come to the windows. It doesn't have any windows. Obama would have to be a pilot."

The most recent info I heard from a well placed source is the CVS PC-12's are going to be converted to U-28's, and the current PC-12 guys will be augmented by one of the U-28 squadrons at HRT. The timeline might be as soon as next summer.

That's an excellent video, but you have a well lit area, nobody was running around because the bad guys obviously weren't planning on killing everyone in sight, and an open room. If those robbers came in shooting and everybody was running around it wouldn't have been that easy. Either way, props to the old dude for stepping up. Compare that to a movie theater. You have a foot of room between the seats, it's dark, you're sitting in the middle of the theater, there's smoke, and seats left down, a bunch of people's shit on the floor, probably bodies in the aisle, I don't care if you're ######ing Usain Bolt, you aren't going to get a good run at the guy unless you're lucky enough to be sitting in an aisle seat and no one is in your way, you're not blinded, you think on your feet fast enough and you haven't been shot already. In this case the video shows the guy firing 6 times at 2 targets. For the first 2 shots he sneaks to within a couple of feet of the only one with a gun and then fires a few more close range shots at them running away. The result? 3 Superficial wounds in the hip, arm and buttock. Again, well lit area, no one in the way, open shooting lanes and area to maneuver, no body armor and most importantly no one is trying to kill him and everyone in there, and the suspects are still able to sprint away. If they were more bent on death and destruction like this ass clown that probably means the bad guys could keep on shooting and killing. I wish there were some brave dudes packing heat who could have popped this guy the second he started throwing shit, but this isn't an crappy action movie where the good guys always win and the bad guys can't shoot straight, it's real life. Don't think that because he surrendered that he was a coward who wouldn't fight back. A lot of assassins and deranged shooters want immortality through infamy, but are willing to die or fight back in the process because they know if the stop the second someone resists they won't get that infamy from wounding 1 or 2 people. In this case he probably figured he'd met his quota and would just bask in the media attention in jail. Either way put him on trail, play a recording of his confession, drag him out back and put a bullet in his head and move on. Why can't these pieces of shit just save everyone the effort and put a bullet in their head before they plan something like this?

So let's get this straight. A fellow pilot augers one in and there's nothing but "Don't speculate, you weren't there, you can't say how you'd react." But go to a movie theater and have an armed, armored, prepared lunatic packing heat with 100 round mags throwing flash bangs/smoke grenades/tear gas open up on everyone and there's nothing but saying "those people are pussies, I totally would have tackled the guy". If you think that in this situation that a CCW would have done anything you are completely wrong. The Hollywood shootout had the above scenario with the dozens of trained police officers having time to prepare for it while responding, open firing lanes, broad daylight, no gas or civilians running around blocking your shot and what effect did those small caliber handgun bullets do to the a-holes wearing body armor? Absolutely nothing. The dude had kevlar, a helmet, the element of surprise and a great vantage point. Maybe you'd be the hero and put a round in his face to save the day, but odds are you'd panic, take a poor shot, put more rounds in the air possibly hitting people who might have escaped unharmed, the dude would have killed you, maybe saving 1 or 2 people (but then again maybe the crossfire results in an equal number of casualties), then resumed the slaughter.

Theres a world of difference but honestly it doesn't matter because the PC-12's will be converted to U-28's really soon. PC-12's are mobility assets while U-28's work on the ISR side of things.

I don't know what their procedures are but whenever we got help from tankers or seats, they were right around 100-200 agl, terrain permitting. You don't want the retardant to spread out so much that it's ineffective.

Glad to hear they're okay, the 1st sow has had a rough time lately.

"Sgt. Gary Stein will get an other-than-honorable discharge and lose most of his benefits for violating the policies, the Corps said."

I liked the part of the T-34C's flying combat missions. Who needs the AT-6 or the A-29 Super Tucano when you have combat proven AT-34C Turbo Mentors?