JarheadBoom

Took 15 minutes for my wife and I to get ours at a local AAA "store".

Every time I fly, I listen to the FE's beating themselves up on TOLD, because the requirements seem to change every other week. We -10 guys are right there with you...

Sounds good to me... Check PM.

WG/CC's that have taxied into trees, then compounded the situation as stated above... WG/CC's that have violated a (former, maybe future? enemy) sovereign nation's airspace... WG/CC's who have demonstrated, repeatedly, that they can't lead a Girl Scout troop out of a wet paper bag... WTF is with the people who select these jackasses for command??* * Rhetorical, and totally off-topic, question. I'm not expecting an answer that'll make any sense to me...

If you look closely, you'll also see it has a conventional tail rotor AND a pusher propeller on the tailboom.

Heard earlier today, on a busy NY Center freq: NYC: Citation xxx, cleared direct HAMPTON. Unknown aircraft: Huh? <brief pause> NYC: Citation xxx, NY Center. Citation: Ahhh Center, we heard you, but whoever pulled that "Huh?" crap stepped on us. Direct HAMPTON, Citation xxx. NYC: [chuckling voice] NY Center, roger. And, I heard a dumbass on another freq call himself "Cessna 6-triple-nickel-x". Repeatedly.

Holy shit... Makes what I did to an S-76 earlier this week look like child's play.

1. It's amazing to me that I didn't hear about this officially (and I was just there Friday). I guess that's one of the bennies of being in "the other Wing" on the base. 2. I thought this was from the same person who was responsible for this... but I was wrong. I feel bad for the AD guys & gals...

Damn dude, even I know that... It's Little Peckers Anonymous!

Rest In Peace, gentlemen.

You could be right... but I don't know either.

OK... He's not a reporter, he's a writer.... for freakin' ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE! It's not like he's Dan Rather or some other paragon of journalistic virtue and integrity... Don't watch it like a documentary, don't read it like an after-action report. It'll be OK. ******EDIT********* After reading what I wrote up there, it almost sounds like I have a crush on the guy. I don't; I've never knowingly read anything else he's written. Just don't take a quasi-music magazine writer's account of the OIF kickoff as gospel...

Not quite... Evan Stone was a Rolling Stone writer when he went to OIF - he's never been in the military. He was one of those "embedded" reporters that DoD decided was a good idea... I read Jarhead long before the movie was made, and there was just no way to salvage it. Swofford was a bag of shit, and so is the book.

It's not a push-button or a switch in the cockpit, it's a part of the control laws in the flight control computers. Just like any other computer, to get good output, you have to gave good input. (The old-time computer geeks used to have their own little word for it - GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out.) If the computer thinks the aircraft is waaaay nose-low after rotation not because it actually is, but because of a false sensor reading, it's gonna try to bring the nose up to keep the airplane airborne... and it'll keep trying until: A> the computer decides the aircraft is level (regardless of actual aircraft attitude) OR B> the aircraft stalls close to the ground and bellyflops. It could have gone the other way, too - the computers could have thought the B-2 was nose-high, and kept forcing the nose down through the takeoff roll. The pilots wouldn't have been able to "pull through" the computer's flight control inputs at Vr, and it would've over-ran the runway and become the newest aircraft in the underwater collection off Andersen's runway. The pilot-centric solution - wire a guarded switch into the throttles/stick grips that overrides the FCC's air-data inputs that determine aircraft attitude, and allows the pilot to fly the aircraft based on his view out the windscreen. The maintenance-centric solution - rewrite the TO's to include PITOT HEAT/AIR DATA SENSOR HEAT..........ON as a part of the MX daily/preflight inspection.

Yes, that sort of shit does happen in the Marine Corps. Mostly on the ground side - it wasn't quite that bad in the airwing. But the big difference in the Corps is that it's pretty consistent - the leadership isn't bitching at you to tuck your shirt in just because you're in the sandbox, they'll do it at home station and everywhere else, too. Yes, I've read the book repeatedly - GREAT read. I highly recommend One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick, for anyone who liked/likes Generation Kill. Capt. Fick is the Recon platoon commander of the team that Evan Wright rode with during the OIF kickoff. Can't watch, since I don't have HBO.

Sonofa... Yep, I meant E-2D. After looking at the pic stoleit posted, I must be remembering something else. Those props (I believe they're calling them NP2000's) aren't as solid-looking near the spinner as I was originally thinking...

The Navy's new E-2D Hawkeye has 8-bladed props. At least the A400M's props look proportional - the E-3D's look nearly like a solid mass near the spinner...

I spent 11 years in Marine Air, so I'm pretty familiar with USN/USMC crashcrew ops. And the only canopy I ever saw over the hotspot was at Yuma - it was just a concrete pad at all the other air stations I've been to. Maybe that's a new thing - I haven't been to an MCAS since '03. Side note - NAS Willow Grove didn't have a "hot spot", but they always had a truck slowly roaming the flightline and taxiways. Kinda annoying a few times when we were taxiing out of our line and had to wait on the truck to clear the parallel taxiway so we could go...

Makes sense that they would go to an ejected crew first, and let the wreckage burn - that's what I had hoped to hear, and what I hope happened for the B-2 crew. I hadn't really noticed the lack of a hot spot truck until you posted it... and now that you've got me thinking about it, I don't ever recall seeing one on an AF base. Interesting...

The Executive Summary on the ACC webpage says that the moisture ingress caused the air data recalibration (a maintenance procedure they seem to have done AFTER the moisture was flagged by the aircraft's computers, before the "flight") to be WAY off, causing the early rotation & pitch-up. There apparently wasn't moisture in the system at the time of the mishap. $1,407,006,920.

Wow... Not sure what was worse to see, the security camera video or the ground video (from the link that Fuse provided). Does anyone else think the security camera video showed a lack of prompt response from the crash crew? Or did the initial responding vehicles go to the pilots first (which was obviously way out-of-frame)?

There's a lot of rules, but it ain't that bad - we get a cargo refresher every quarter, and each "cargo load" manages to hit nearly all the various restrictions. The last cargo Q-3 in my shop was the boom who wouldn't/couldn't put the chain in the device correctly. The EB said "You want to try that again?" THREE times; still couldn't get it right. Worst part - it was a mission, not a checkride.

I taco'd a couple flights in the FTU, but not my checkrides (knocking on wood while typing is hard!). The last one was coutesy of the chief instructor; I missed ONE WORD of the verbiage for the cabin doors one night. The devil is in the details...

Clipboard (preferably the nice aluminum one with the fold-up cover in the GSA catalog) + pissed-off facial expression = access to damn near any facility you please. As M2 said - Don't ask me how I know this...

Brings back a funny/sad memory of a Marine helicopter crash on Okinawa some years back (as related to me by the crewchief on the flight): CH-46E doing an autorotation for post-maintenance check flight. At the bottom of the auto, passing when the flare should be initiated, the pilots look at each other. HAC: You gonna pull? H2P: Your controls. HAC: I thought you had it?! Both: OH SH*T! *BOOM*CRUNCH*SCREECH*BANG* Luckily, all 3 crewmembers walked away, and IIRC the helo was eventually pieced back together at the depot. A couple years later, the same HAC flew another -46 into the side of the boat while practicing a simulated single-engine approach... with one engine pulled back to idle (violating NATOPS procedures). Luckily again, everyone lived, and that flight turned out to be the HAC's last as a military pilot. Back on topic: Glad the pilots are OK. And I think I see a parts donor for the Tone fleet in those pics...