Leaderboard

When I was a SQ/CC I sent alot of guys to get seaplane and tailwheel rated at a 2 week civilian school in Alaska. I would have done everyone but didn’t have the budget, instead it was about 2 dozen and used as an incentive/reward for great work: IP OTQ, Pilot OTY, etc. Didn't work with everyone’s schedule so randos got to go too. It definitely teaches pilots to unlearn some overly safe attitudes in UPT (nothing wrong with that for their level) and how to fly aggressive without being unsafe, meaning have the confidence to take calculated risks. You can’t quantify the benefit of learning to be comfortable outside your comfort zone, but vignettes can draw connections between unconventional training and success in unconventional combat situations. It’s the same logic used sending officers for masters degrees- “this may not apply directly to current job but you’re learning how to think using new tools, thus arming you for the unknown.” That’s the argument I used to get it approved and left my boss speechless, lol. My thoughts are that if you aren’t actively finding fun creative ways to make the team better you have no business leading. Also if you aren’t willing to take some personal career risk by trusting the team to do these things, you have no business leading in combat. We ought to have the best pilots in the world and that costs money and requires leaders who aren’t pussies.

Sydney Sweeney and Ana de Armas in the same movie?!? Wowser!!

Whatever you all do....panic because the sky is most certainly falling. But seriously, this is why you never budget based on getting premium flying every month. Best to be good with min guarantee, better if you're below that. It's already been a good year so far on reserve, might be a good year to keep riding the reserve train. I'm just excited that I'll be able to drop a bunch of my summer schedule as I have way too many plans this summer. Someone certainly knew that DAL was about to make an announcement. I saw a post on X showing someone massively shorted DAL just before the announcement, then cashed out the next morning. Main millions for a few clicks. It's good to have insider info, especially if you have a few degrees of separation.

If Congress doesn't fix the U-2 divestment really soon, this will likely be the last Beale Airshow with a U-2 flying. Lineup is coming along well, to include TBirds, F-18 TACDEMO, Rob Holland, Aarron Deliu, T-33 Demo, Vicky Benzing. If interested in bringing a static to the party, drop me a note. It should be a large time.

Tangentially related, has the AF acquired enough of anything since Gulf War I other than Bob Gates’s obsession with Predator? Edit: maybe C-17?

The music always stops for a while. Like the Boy Scouts say: Be Prepared.

this is the most important dibs of my life.

According to Democrats, we’re still under Biden’s economy for another 2-2.5 years…or does this narrative change based on how well the economy is doing? https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/443180-2020-dems-trump-doesnt-deserve-credit-for-the-economy/amp/

Yepp I bet she’s a real peach to work with. Def had her as an “instructor” and she packs quite the punch.

Well I agree with the premise, I don't suspect it's very realistic. There aren't a ton of civilian schools out there with fast Jets ready to take on the volume of students that the Air Force requires. That's not to say that there's an Armada of seaplane training schools either, but there are more. Probably just a function of how much cheaper a Cessna with pontoons is. As to the simulators, I have to disagree. If you're a fighter guy then you have much less experience in advanced simulators than I do, and at this point I've done military simulators, airline simulators, and civilian type rating School farmed out by the military (MC-12). If you're an airline guy then you already know this: You are never going to get realistic training in a simulator outside of the raw mechanics of flight. For takeoffs and landings, for aerodynamic complications, stalls, all that type of stuff, the simulator is incredible. But once you start talking about simulating complex operating environments, radio calls, and all of the "real world" stuff, it's just not going to happen. It could, in theory, but it won't. There's just no way to get the students and instructors to take simulator training seriously enough to adequately simulate the experience you get at a real airport with real people and real planes doing real things. This is the hardest part of the conversation. We both know what to do to make good pilots. The question is, how do you make good military pilots in an environment where those things aren't funded/supported/allowed?

NTSB Released today: Read the Investigation Preliminary report. Read the NTSB's urgent recommendation report on mitigating the risk of midair collisions at DCA. Some highlights that popped out to me: At 2047:40, the crew of flight 5342 received an automated traffic advisory from the airplane’s traffic alert and collision avoidance system (TCAS) system stating, “Traffic, Traffic.” At this time, the aircraft were about 0.95 nm apart, as shown in Figure 3. At 2045:30, PAT25 passed over the Memorial Bridge. CVR data revealed that the IP told the pilot that they were at 300 ft and needed to descend. The pilot said that they would descend to 200 ft. The PAT25 FDR indicated that the radio altitude of the helicopter at the time of the collision was 278 ft and had been steady for the previous 5 seconds. At 2047:58, or 1 second before impact, flight 5342 began to increase its pitch. FDR data showed the airplane’s elevators were deflected near their maximum nose up travel. And the airplane rolled about 450°, impacting the water in an approximate 45° nose- low attitude with a left roll about 90°. PAT was at least 60 feet high...not sure if those helicopter routes are supposed to be AGL or MSL, but DCA is only 14 ft field elevation but either way they were high. The CRJ must have seen the PAT too late and applied full deflection. How terrible that must have been for the passengers and crew before impact.

Yeah, not feeling it so much anymore (STS)... Woman Made Air Force History. How She Stays Winning (Exclusive)

Imagine being “on the team” that has to pretend the Enola Gay is offensive. Sounds very snowflake-ish, doesn’t it?