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Yea, when are going to celebrate the first all female road crew laying asphalt in the summertime!

@Lord Ratner Valid points. The bitch for quite awhile has been why are DAL pilots flying record premium pay while simultaneously wanting a new contract. But, it has still worked out, assuming TA passes. The “mission focus” vs. “fuck the company, do only exactly what’s required” is a fine balance. I agree do the right thing, which includes not rushing, cutting corners, completely jumping through your ass to make it happen, or doing anything else that may affect safety/your fitness for duty. But also keep in mind your actions can either make a family’s day/life, or they can destroy it. So if safety is not a concern, then I understand wanting to get flights out and help the people in back. You don’t know who on the plane is trying to make it to see their parent in the hospital one last time or make a once in a lifetime family reunion. Once had a CA give me shit for taking 3 min of my time to source a wheelchair for an old lady because Prospect sucks ass. Got it, not my job, but also that old lady doesn’t deserve the screw job either. We all should remember the human aspect still matters for something.

I would suggest asking this question over in the COVID-19 thread… Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network Forums

Huggy has definitely collected balloon intel with a handheld camera; I know, because he just shared some of his “recently unclassified” pics. Although, I think it was before he started flying the Deuce.

Would be awesome if it weren't a year off.

Thanks for the heads up! Just checked mine; looks like I'm headed to Vance. I'll take this with a grain of salt until I get a RIP.

Just used the EFMP trick in vMPF to find out I'm going to Columbus, if anyone else wants to try. No orders yet, but still great to know.

There's a certain irony that the modern avatar of female empowerment is doing random things that men have been doing routinely for decades.

Looks like somebody in a Viper got to launch a Sidewinder today...

Did one of these get away?

That's exactly why we get nowhere, unfortunately. When you pay me to do that job, I will. Until then, that family will have to deal with the repercussions of doing business with a company that can't negotiate a contract. I wish we didn't work in that world, but we do. That family is a meaningless number to the people running the airline. You take responsibility for their happiness and you are not only going to fail, but you *directly* impede the progress towards a contract. I hope that one day we will evolve beyond the private capital/shareholder obsessed/metrics-based corporatism that our system is currently stuck in. If we actually escape the government-funded stock market model we've endured over the last 30-40 years, I think we'll get back to the world where you make money only by providing a good product or service, not buying an existing one and cost-cutting into irrelevance while making the investors a quick buck. But we haven't, and for now we work for sociopathic accountants competing with each other over who can make the most while accomplishing the least. You want a contract from those people, you have to threaten what they care about. Like with many diseases, treating the symptoms (passengers being left to the predations of a shitty airline) instead of the cause (terrible management that doesn't understand human capital) can make the outcome worse for everyone.

Did AA recurrent training last month and they had a compilation video of vehicles hitting jets or almost hitting jets. The total number of hits on aircraft was over 200. My personal favorite was a high speed baggage tug dragging several carts and the driver makes a sharp turn thus throwing himself out of the tug. And, as our intrepid driver collects road rash bouncing and rolling across the concrete, the now driverless tug and carts careen into another tug and carts. I'm guessing we aren't hiring our best and brightest for these jobs. But it is nice to know that those guys can just swipe a card to enter the airport secure area while 50% or better of pilots are getting tagged for additional screening.

I saw the T-Birds in the Phabulous Phantom when I was a kid...Phucking Amazing. Both teams were superb in the F-4.

It is more than possible for a mylar party balloon to get to 20,000 feet in the right conditions. I was providing tanker support for a POTUS CAP over NYC years ago when Trump was president. It was fun listening to a birthday balloon intercept unfold over tac freq. The Strike Eagle drivers got pretty fired up over not being able to ID this thing for about 10 minutes in between a few overcast layers. EADS was able to pick up a mylar balloon over NYC at about 13,000 feet. In light of recent events, I could see us using excessive force on a party balloon. Sent from my SM-F721U using Tapatalk

No luck for me. I'm hoping for Vance too!

I think they’re all down on Beachfront Avenue in their new 5.0, but if you stop, collaborate, and listen, I bet you can get some good career advice. Good luck.

Probably. But I expended all my satire skills on the last post.

It never ceases to amaze me that these airlines don’t recognize what they have in their pilot groups. We are generally a Type-A, mission oriented group who want to get the job done. And we’re generally pretty good at doing just that when we’re properly motivated. If AA or anyone else offered a Cadillac contract with the caveat that they expected the pilot group to start going the extra mile, they’d strike oil & make everything they put on the table & more back in increased productivity. Instead, they nickel & dime & go out of their way to treat pilots like shit & then wonder why guys are cranking the APU before they’re off the runway. SMH.

My first memory of seeing them was when my Dad was at Misawa, I was in first grade, I remember it being loud and cool. They were flying the F-100 or maybe the 105. I would have to dig out the old 8mm film and projector to be sure. The next time I saw them was in Alaska when they were flying the F-4 1970ish. Big airshow, they had this giant new plane called the C-5 there. I checked out the C-130 ski birds that were stationed there. My girlfriends dad was an FE on those.

Well you said it: bullshit excuses. But at least in my case, I've seen maybe a couple instances of pilots going too far in 5 years. I've seen hundreds of instances of pilots leaning forward, even just considering your examples. The job is very well defined: What you do, what is and isn't allowed, and what the pilots are responsible for within the company. An example (for those not at AA). "Just one ping" means that when something is wrong/missing on the plane, the pilots make one call to the appropriate office, get acknowledgement, then wait. Maintenance call-out, missing catering, fuel increase, etc. You call once, then wait. Often in a chaotic airline like AA that call gets dropped. I can't count the number of times my captain is literally jumping out of his chair to call over and over and over to get the issue resolved. It's not our job. We are not paid to go above and beyond, not are we even encouraged to. Management takes for granted how much gets done on time because the pilots notice it, and so they must be taught. That means people will miss connections, weddings, funerals, etc. Sucks, but that's life. Our job is not a higher calling, it's just a job with a higher emphasis on safety, *not* timeliness. The military guys are usually worse. They talk the same game everyone else does, then immediately lean forward, sometimes literally while complaining about the lack of negotiating progress. It's comical, but also illustrative. We all want to git-er-done. And we are all trained to identify and avoid risk. Great traits for flying, terrible for bringing out your inner longshoreman.

Now I know what I've been preparing for my whole life Sent from my SM-F926U1 using Baseops Network mobile app

Between this stuff and what’s been going on with DCA over Iraq/Syria it’s become the air to air version of what we were doing spending multi hundred thousand dollar to kill a guy with a shovel. Directed Energy can’t get here fast enough… Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I get it, but I still think there are situations where some guys go too far with “fuck the company” and fuck over a lot of people because of their quest for ultimate spite. You can play hardball and still seek to minimize pain for people when able, they are not completely mutually exclusive. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating taking extensions, sprinting a mile from TSA to the gate, skipping the shitter, etc. But I’m also not going to purposely come up with a bullshit excuse to force a timeout to force a canx just because I want to be a dick to the company. Seen that one, and I just don’t agree with it.

Delta didn't stop. On the contrary, they forced as much flying into green slips as they ever have. Every pilot knows how to display their frustration. But the dirty little secret is that most aren't actually upset. That *might* change once Delta pilots are making ~20% more for the same job. Pilots are very attenuated to fairness, but that can't trigger from a hypothetical. But I still have to convince captains to just do the job as it is written in the books. Just yesterday I had a captain ask, "you're going to take a delay to get the windshield cleaned?" Yeah dude, it's night and it's dirty. Let's not even get into the fact we're in negotiations. These guys are programmed to get the "mission" done. It's in their DNA. Fighting for better compensation is not.

At this point fuck KCM, put the delay on TSA.

Seventeen years on gunships, first 3 1/2 as a gunner, never seen the naked gunner hug. On a man anyway. I have seen naked gunners in the showers at various locations, there were no hugs. The initial dedication of Spectre Island had a couple of pavelow dudes, they paid respects without nakedness. I retired in Y2K, what the hell happened after I left. Chugging beers from a prosthetic leg? Not sure I could do that. Drank Jim Mays moonshine from a skull that Wayne Fisk brought to a Spectre Reunion. He said it was a VC skull from Viet Nam.

Having the time of his life…until reality sets in the morning.

There's a drunk Lt buried somewhere beneath that group of massive women.

And it's spectacular.

Those guys look like they could definitely use a Tooeys Old! It's gnarly to walk away from something like that.

Good work by the Ukrainian ADA this morning

This whole post reads like an RT special repor…..I mean Tucker Carlson rant.

"The US sent up U-2 spy planes to track the balloon’s progress, according to US officials. One pilot took a selfie in the cockpit that shows both the pilot and the surveillance balloon itself, these officials said – an image that has already gained legendary status in both NORAD and the Pentagon." So gonna need that picture

I thought the bar would be the place to talk about bacon and wine. It would take me an hour to type it all out so I'm going to provide links. I tried to find the first video I used to make bacon but I guess since it was 15 years ago it's gone or buried deep in the interwebs. You need pork belly if you don't raise your own and we run out. Any grocery store that still has a real butcher will have it. Shop around for price. Even if it's a little more expensive than ready made it's worth it due to shrinkage. Ready made bacon has a lot of water added and you pay for that, it says water added on the label, that's why it shrinks so much, the water steams out. Homemade bacon doesn't have that water. The fat will render out but you save that for other cooking uses. It's stupid easy. All you need is salt, that's it. Salt a pork belly for four or five days and you have bacon, the basic bacon. But who eats that? You got to smoke it right? We, I say we because my charming bride has pretty much took over the bacon making duties(God, I love her), use a Weber Kettle to smoke it. My wifes recipe is basically salt, prague #1(you need to be careful with that stuff but like I said you don't need it) and brown sugar. Token video for motivation. Trying to find that dress for my wife on amazon. Wine. The Desert Storm wine recipe is so far gone I could never remember it. We made it with pure grape or apple juice we got on the local economy. I remember we used the clear five gallon camping jugs to make it. The med techs donated some medical tubing to help with the off gassing. Our room looked like an episode of MASH. Here, we have grapevines and after making jelly we still had a lot of grapes left over so we searched homemade wine recipes and made some. Wow, that stuff made MD 2020 jealous. We may try it again. Here is a link to a cool website. I've used their recipes for curing a ham and to make pastrami. Both were absolutely kick ass. https://amazingribs.com/ We can talk brisket on a Weber too if ya'll want.

KDLF 23-05 KC-135 - Kadena KC-135 - Fairchild C-17 - McChord B-1 - Dyess KC-135 - Birmingham A-29 - Lebanon KC-135 - Mildenhall F-35 - Tyndall (Reserves) KC-135 - MacDill F-16 - TBD KC-135 - McConnell T-6 - Laughlin x2 C-130J - Little Rock A-10 - Davis-Monthan C-130H - Reno (ANG) T-38 - Laughlin

KCBM 23-01 C-17 Charleston Reserves T-6 FAIP Columbus x2 EC-130 Davis-Monthan Tbd JSDF x2 KC-135 ME ANG KC-135 WA ANG HC-130 Davis-Monthan C-17 Charleston x2 C-5 Dover F-16 TBD MC-130 Kirtland C-17 McChord C-130 Little Rock x2 F-16 MN ANG

What? https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/02/12/pentagon-confirms-shot-down-objects-arent-balloons-makes-an-even-weirder-admission-n702817?utm_source=rsmorningbriefing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=bfcab5f0c58b3691765086d28bfa5c1c