Apollo

Thanks. Can't wait to read it.

Anyone have a sober elaboration?

There are no moving parts on the iPad that can wear out. The lithium ion battery cannot develop memory like nickle cadmium, therefore no need for proper charging procedure (besides not letting them drain to a minimum, battery destroying level). The battery is the only thing that can wear out, and that is through the normal charge/discharge cycle that is inevitable whether used or shelved. As far as "eating up all the memory", I don't know what that means. Keeping the iPad up to date and charged is being handled the same as keeping any pubs up to date. Aircrew responsibility with associated regs to back it up. Simple really, new FCIF comes out, go update your iPad on the dedicated station. Half of the reason for purchasing these things was so aircrew could study and mission plan on the ground. As of a year ago we are no longer issued paper pubs (speaking from the J side of things, don't know about others). That led to a void where new pilots where expected to stay in the books, but weren't really given a practical solution to. This helps with that tremendously. Also, all of the planning flip and most airfield information you'll need is on the device, which helps tremendously during mission planning. The in flight application is marginal when you're doing anything but cruising airways and shooting approaches (though when you are doing those things, the EFB is great). I've I've spent more time with the EFB during ground based planning than actual strapped-to-my-leg flying. As a side note, we still have to check out weapons. Mostly so we don't eat up all the memory.

God damnit, I avoid Facebook for a reason. Don't copy and paste that factless, baseless bullshit here. Show up with something more than some high school drop out's napkin notes.

The squads don't really have much control yet. Also, we can't go online with Wifi until a secure network is set up (next year some point IIRC), even then I don't know how useful something like ForeFlight will be because I don't know if we'll be allowed to access the interwebs. From my cursory glance at the ForeFlight webpage, it seems Phaero has a lot of the same functionality besides any real time WX updates or NOTAMS. Even so, most of us have something like that on our cell phones for real time updating. For the time being, we have GoodReader with all of our pubs and Phaero which has airfield info, charts, and flip. Pretty convenient for mission planning and it will be nice when we don't have to carry 100 lbs of flip out to the plane.

Hey, maybe stepping up and making the hard call is knowing which standards are superfluous and which are legit. Then his priorities are A-OK! Edit to say: I think this quote is much more important.

Well, as of several years ago it was blues three days a week with ABUs Thursday/Friday. Historically it's been blues all five days. I would say then, if it's been ABUs four days a week for only the last several years of the institutions 57 or so years, his point is probably valid.

That's the spirit! Jesus, people bitch when bad decisions are made. People bitch when good decisions are made. A lot of problems in the air force would be fixed if people just worked to make things better for their bros instead of crying all the time about how crappy things are.

Thus the discussion of using backup instrument approaches. With that said, the four mile difference isn't much time for a large plane to cover. Minute and a half or so.

Sure you would...

Tell that to Dharun Ravi...

One of the things that helped me keep going through basic was the beautiful scenery. Imagine going through with the land on fire around you. Haha, talk about intimidating.

Meh, in the end then the hobbiest is spending $75 to keep the excitement alive. Whatever. I've spent more than that on a single night of drinking. Which is more of a waste? Depends on perspective. My perspective is coming from someone who liked collecting foreign coins as a kid and someone who likes to drink alcohol now. Both are fun in their own ways.

Assuming his avatar is accurate... with regards to the pjs I've met, I would never call one of them a SNAP. For one it doesn't make sense. For two, it would take a life time of the bad-assery of what I do as a pilot to make up for one day in their shoes. I'm sure the level of difficulty of his training more than makes up for X number of times you've made four month deployments. Let's not even get into any actual service time he has... Edit: Typo

Anyone hear word yet on what actually brought the aircraft down?

Cool video. Though can we all just admit our rescue helo pilots are the only real bad asses we have in the current conflict? We look like clowns when we dance around in the sky to music videos while our ground based brethren are getting shot up... Just saying.

I was going to say since it's so small just keep it in class G and fly low. But then I looked at the chart and saw class C is surface to 090 all around the harbor. Woops!

I would argue the easy thing would be to keep fighters the way they are. Everyone loves them, pilots want to fly them, and they draw the young crowd for new recruits. Though, according to the higher ups that have more information than I do, they believe the right thing is to employ more UAVs. Will we need more fighters in the next war? Perhaps. We will adapt as we always do. In the end, we signed up to fly whatever aircraft the Air Force needs us to fly. As I pilot do I want to fly UAVs? ###### no. But it's a changing world. The linemen don't make the decisions, we just implement them. Sifting through the nonsense leadership that is bitched about on here all the time, there are some pretty intelligent and capable leaders in charge. We have to trust in them to lead us, or change it for the better any way we can. Otherwise, what option is there but to cry about it and get out?

You're missing a part to your statistics. The part where the auto pilot goes squirrelly, and the pilots calmly and routinely take manual control to de######ulate it. This isn't reported as mechanical failure, though maybe it should be for people who think autopilot is completely safe. Autopilot works great... Until it doesn't.

Yeah, when the whole TSA is a SNAFU. Seriously, they trademarked their gay little screening program? "TSA Pre✓™" Are you kidding me? What, are they a ######ing fast food chain or something? Who is going to steal that gay little check mark, and why would a government organization care if they did?

When I went through T1s at Vance about a year ago we were issued some ArtCraft aviator glasses that had the Air Force symbol imprinted on the side. They're ok, feel a bit cheap and kinda goofy but I've kept them around as a backup. During the UCI we were forced to wear them as opposed to our personal pairs if we wanted shades. They were only "issued" if you asked for them though. Fuzz, if you visit the lady who works across from the commander in the 32nd (forget her name, sorry), she had a whole drawer of them to hand out. One per stud, and they came in three different sizes.

Generality. And if true, what does that say about his leadership?

I still don't get why the government would have to pay extra for design errors... Wouldn't that just encourage contractors to ###### up, then get paid more to fix it?

I haven't tracked this topic too closely, so I'm sorry if I'm being redundant. In regards to flight hours vs ground school for IFS on a limited budget... Get those flight hours!!! The only thing I saw people get knocked out of ifs for was landing. Other random gross errors or flagrant lack of knowledge were issues... But for those who cared landing was the deciding factor. Get to your solo and then save your money. That's all you need for the currernt syllabus.

How many crews print off their own approach plates as it is in addition to the hard copy flip? Digital flip doesn't prevent what you personally feel secure with, but instead it trims the fat.