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The pilot in this incident had 7300 hours in this particular B-17. I think he was likely the most experienced B-17 pilot, ever.

It turns out that, due to the American court system, conspiracy theory propaganda has a limit. Newsmax and Fox News collapsed at the threat of a lawsuit and clarified that the voting machine conspiracy theories postulated on their programs have no basis in fact. Stop supporting those who would lie and mislead, regardless of political affiliation. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/business/media/smartmatic-lawsuit-fox-news-newsmax-oan.html

https://www.duffelblog.com/p/claiming-massive-touchdown-fraud?fbclid=IwAR3za_HJT7cu3EEkZ68rDXSN3BUb_sCc_p3dKXvRLsVO8HodHb4s0dbPh6c

Also important to be able to identify true journalism and not junk entertainment.

Hence why best to just not trust journalist, politicians, or corporate spokes people of any affiliation.

From what I've read the Pfizer & Moderna vaccines (the two that are approved in the US right now) should still be relatively effective against the new UK mutation. Both the OG virus and the UK mutation use the same spike protein to latch on to cells and those two vaccines use mRNA to instruct our immune systems to attack that protein rather than other potential ways to get at the virus. YMMV on the details, I'm not a doctor, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. FWIW this is a good article on the expected side effects of the COVID vaccine. It was worth the time spent reading it. https://www.vox.com/22158238/covid-19-vaccine-side-effects-explained TL;DR: people should expect mild/moderate reactions to both vaccines although perhaps less so with the Pfizer one, not unlike many other vaccines. True story, I got 5x vaccines all at once before a deployment and one of them was even non-standard one (Japanese encephalitis virus). I went back to work and about 30 minutes later felt like I got hit with a tranq dart like Will Ferrell in Old School. I drove home but felt absolutely crazy and slept straight from 2pm until 9am the next morning. And that's to be expected haha, it's a lot to ask your immune system to spin up against that much shit at once! Get your vaccines people; they save lives and we can end this pandemic sooner rather than later.

I cannot stress this enough: Polls about how people 'feel' do not constitute evidence of voter fraud. If you would like to have a conversation about generalized election mistrust we can do that.

Chief Traficante was not only a crew chief, he’s been a FE on E model Hercs and a load on E’s, H’s and J’s. He was the load functional at the Guard Bureau and did OGV stuff at AMC. If I’m not mistaken he was a fire fighter in a major dept as well.

I was told that, as long as the vaccine was under emergency approval only, it will not be mandatory for federal employees. I was also told that if you kick and scream when you see the needle you might get two lollipops after instead of just the usual one lollipop. However, if you start yelling about the shot altering your DNA, the nurse will just get annoyed and you won't get any lollipops.

OK, I'll make it easy for everyone... HOME COVID TEST 1. Open a can of beer, and try to smell it. 2. If you can smell the beer, drink it to see if you can taste it. 3. If you can smell and taste the beer, this confirms you don't have COVID! I did this test 19 times last night, and all were negative! Tonight I am going to do the test again, as I work up this morning with a pounding headache and feeling like I am coming down (STS) with something!

Oh, there's been plenty of that for some time. The whole thing amazes me. When I knew some of the Collings folks, it seemed like they had a ton of money and a lot of good talent. If corners were cut, how does this happen in an organization with the cash resources, and talent to avoid it? And finally: training. I have no idea the quality of training that many warbird pilots accomplish. Actually, that goes for any pilot of any type of aircraft. Do they have 5000 hours in type? or 1 hour, 5000 times? "Deliberate practice". I've seen a lack of it in the military, and a lack of it in the GA world. I have no idea if that was a problem at Collings, but a failure to constantly train will rear its ugly head many more times over the course of our aviation adventure. Fortunately, I've seen some great examples of how to continually step up your game in aviation, and I've learned a lot from those people. Some of them are on this forum. They have done everything in their power to avoid ending up as a debrief on Kathryn's Report.

I heard vaccines can give you autism. I really don’t want to catch that.

I for one cannot wait to get the vaccine so we can defeat this deadly virus. Literally inject it directly into my veins. Science FTW.

Call me simple, but I see the utility of a functional pt test. 100m sprint (can I get away from a burning airplane/building) 800m weighted carry (can I do work without causing a burden to someone else) Record the times of each, but set the standard by career field.

NTSB Preliminary report is out: https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/ReportGeneratorFile.ashx?EventID=20191002X11326&AKey=1&RType=HTML&IType=MA&fbclid=IwAR2n3Fk-HkfU6T_b7gWwoQEH68r_ggWP1yAaOme9EJXVyG8jZHQU0V9Glek Generates conclusions no one wants to admit to thinking. Ugly.