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Well, I hit my decision point (365) and still no bonus - pound sand big blue cause I'm out!

The dreaded "you have to fly it on steam gauges" approach. Scary stuff. Kind of like the T-38C "no HUD" approach & landing. I'm sure it has stymied many a great pilot. Or the "I've failed your primary GPS,... you'll have to use the secondary nav system to find your way." No WAY we would want to use a sectional chart. That's craaazy. Every Air Force flying unit should have a Companion Trainer. And it should probably be a piston-powered aircraft that has only one instrument in the cockpit: an oil pressure gauge about 4 inches in diameter, smack in the middle of the panel.

Not sure if serious, but yes absolutely... numerous occasions, many times with major additional contributing factors. Focusing on only Airline crashes... https://en.wikipedia....ines_Flight_965 https://en.wikipedia....Air_Flight_3407 Yea it is wikipedia, but I couldn't find the NTSB reports easily. Pilots with thousands of hours, with improper reliance on George. AA has a great video that they show in indoc, where an individual breaks down the CRM factors of "highly automated" aircraft that was created due in part to the 965 flight if I remember correctly. If someone knows of a link to the video on the internet it is a valuable resource. It outlines why most airline SOPs, and Vol3 autopilot procedures were created. back to your regular scheduled program... Edit for video link "Children of Magenta" https://youtu.be/h3kREPMzMLk Now off to re-watch it to see if its how I remember the video after 6 years.

What! What the fuck are you talking about? I think Navs can provide very insightful feedback on any number of topics. Why just the other day I was telling the pilot that When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve [insert full text Declaration of Independence] And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor which is why I think you are completely full of shit! But yeah, he did have some hellacious run on posts. Ain't nobody got time to read that shit. Out (edited down for brevity)

Wasn't there unfortunately, but the town of Boerne (pronounced: Burn-knee) had one hell of a turn out for Tyler for his funeral. The local media here in San Antonio did a very respectable job of covering the story. Can't find the video yet. https://www.woai.com/news/local/story/Boerne-honors-fallen-Airman/Ubq3ekhzlU6wrDWpF6jSGw.cspx

can I have a Bell Model 47 instead?

If you can't do something smart or effective, do something visible.

I just saw a story about a heritage flight in honor of Bomber Command's strike on the Ruhr Dam in Germany: https://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/daring-dambuster-wwii-mission-remembered-vintage-flight-164910484.html At the end, they compare the movie's final scene with the trench run in Star Wars, and I found this:

Dallas to Fairbanks to Dallas. 22 days. '75 Yamaha RD350. I had some troubles along the way, such as having to replace rear tire in Fairbanks, roadside repair of alternator, my friend (he was on a SV650) had to replace his chain and sprockets, my right muffler fell off 20 miles from home, and the rings in the right cylinder needed replacing. My friend also crashed somewhere between Alaska and Canada. But it was a good adventure.

Force trim...always wondered WTF they had in mind when they designed that system. It wants to be an autopilot, but it's not. I think they designed it to hold the cyclic while you drank your beer...

You always have the "Pilot has the control's". And force trim. Can't forget about the force trim.

I stopped reading after "she".

I've said it before and I'll say it again-- this reliance on automation has a direct negative impact on pilot skills, and when that automation goes away (and it always will at some point) what is left is the skills you may or may not have. Reference Air France 447 and tons of ATC deviations because automation let the crew down. An analogy I use with students is a guy going out and buying an AR and putting a $500 optic on it right away, never learning how to shoot with iron sights. Yes the optic makes it a lot easier to shoot, until the batteries run out and you're left with iron sights. That is what determines if you are a marksman or whether you can simply push a button and get a banana. The same holds true for pilots. PS: If she's only training post-trans students to rely on the autopilot/FMS she's doing it wrong. I regularly turn off the MFD on my students and force them to use their instruments/hand flying for approaches.

When I was living in Washington I took my RC51 up to Port Angeles then Victoria via ferry. The bike has aftermarket red white and blue fairings and Yoshimura slip-ons that are fairly loud. Got a lot of dirty looks riding around quaint Victoria BC. 'Merica! That was probably only about 300 miles of riding though round trip. My hand goes numb after about two or three hours on that bike. Did you ride around Europe much? That would be awesome... How do you like your 883? Xaarman - I just got my 929 back to stock. It was a bit of a PITA as the stock muffler has this valve in it that regulates the exhaust at different RPMs. It had a D&D full exhaust but I wasn't a fan.

Sooo.. was she hot?

You are ranked based off of everyday events such as tests, simulator sessions (T-6 and T-1), and flights including T-25 sims (this being the big one esp. checkrides and/or end of block rides in the T-25), your flight commander ranking goes in there as well. When I went through I never really saw people "throwing people under the bus" but what I will say is that you can def. tell who in your class is struggling and who is not. Help out those who are. I remember sitting down with a couple of guys and helping them out when they hooked checkrides or even daily rides. Do it for the right reason though! Don't do it to hold it over their head like they owe you, do it because these are guys that you want to see graduate with you and not get rolled back.

It is spelled y'all .

Will never forget this: One muggy Pcola day I crawl into a T-39 at VT-86 for a low-level ride with two of my other buds. G-man and myself have our self made low level charts and radar predictions for our portion of the flight. Third guy gets in...C/S "P".... and pulls out his chart and predictions. He then proceeds to pull out individual low level charts and predictions he created for the instructor and the TRACOR T-39 pilot. Now our instructor was a salty, bean-stalk tall A-6 B/N who a few years earlier earned some air medals for flying under power lines in Iraq avoiding AAA/SAMS (GW#1) and still managed to get his LGB's on-target/shack, and our TRACOR pilot was a A-4/A-7 Vietnam vet with more green ink in his logbook and things shot at him than Jesus Christ himself. The look on their faces was priceless when Q handed them their own personal charts. G-Man and I were just sitting there ready to pound this bag of douche. The pilot just threw his someplace in the cockpit to his left (I was sitting in the rear[sTS])...and the instructor just rolled his eyes and handed them back (he could fly the route with no chart as I found out on a later flight). Don't be a D-bag trying to snob the teachers or leadership...help your buddies that might be struggling. Party on your time off and put your nose in the books and chair-fly the shit out of things to get ready for game time. My class leader was a Marine Capt who had just come from OV-10's as an observer and was tracking/transitioning toward the F/A-18D WSO program. Nobody has ever had higher grades in VT-86 before or since 'Hap'. He already knew how to do everything, heck...he was forward observing and telling half the VT-86 A-6 Intruder pilots and B/N's instructor staff where to put their bombs a few years earlier (again, ref GW#1). **It wasn't the grades that he was known for...it was the fact that every day he was in the ready room quietly talking to the instructors and looking over grades to see who in the class was struggling and he went out of his way to help those students improve**. He would chair-fly and critique in a non-hammering way and that was priceless. I pink slipped my low level check ride on my ######ing birthday not soon after the above D-Bag event (with the same salty instructor, who cut me some slack because of the haze on the route and gave me a two below = no pink). Hap was right there the next day offering advice and assistance to get my head back in the game. Hap went on to a fine career (sqd CO) and I even think he was in county when I was (we might have shared some airspace in a stack or two). Unfortunately I never had the opportunity to thank him since he passed a few years ago in a civil air accident. Be Hap, don't be "P". Apologize for the long read folks. Cheers Collin Edit: damn font size, and changed the C/S to protect the guilty.

You got it all wrong... an FE with two Masters degrees who just cross flowed from a 130J landed gear up flying solo in a C-17; turns out he was sexually harassing the gay singer from Tops in Blue at the time that he was planning the Christmas Party with when he learned he got passed over for a second time for Lt Col and got non-continued. Now he doesn't know what to do because he wanted to sign the bonus that got delayed and isn't sure if he can still transfer his GI Bill to his kids. All of this happened while landing at the wrong airport in Tampa when he was supposed to be landing in Benghazi, but just as he was manually calculating TOLD he got a call from both Obama and Clinton telling him not to go. He was planning on getting out any day now anyway when the Airlines start their massive hiring wave! I guess they already had the court martial and he got convicted by a bunch of shoes on the jury, but a 3 Star overturned the verdict. So when all was said and done... it was pretty much a long week for Rainman!

Or the Air & Space Sexual Harassment Obliteration Liaison Executive?