Hacker

Personally, I'm just amazed that Freewilly made Lt Col, and is the ACC/CV's Exec!

Amazing to think that with the thousands of engineers at different companies who worked for over a decade designing the B-2, just two ordinary guys on a web forum with engineering degrees and no knowledge of how the airplane was designed or how it works were able to come up with a solution to their act, which was obviously in the street.

It's not like the B-2 was a copy of the YB-49 painted black. No flight control computer = no flying straight and level. An override switch wouldn't do anything except speed up the process of the airplane impacting the dirt.

The same thing I shoot at in the States...paper, pop cans, beer bottles, etc.

Man, every time I see this thread bump up to the top and read about somebody buying a new gun, I curse the fact that I'm living in England right now. Hell, I'd even settle for a tupperware gun over here.

I haven't, but mostly because I think they look like I'm wearing a pair of sunglasses I was issued to wear in the desert. I might go check them out today just so I can actually reply to you what they're like compared to the Oakley Fives 2.0 that I'm currently wearing.

I thought the first big milepost was the 30-day report...and that's not even close to being the "final" report. It will be a while.

This always helps me whenever I start to jones about caliber:

XD-9....best Croatian gun an American can buy.

Interestingly, NOT everyone who reads these reports is a pilot and has any f*cking clue what "VFR entry" might be.

I'm interested to see if there will be any backlash against the originator of the presentation for essentially dragging an officer's name through the mud. Pretty sure there's something in the UCMJ about that.

I don't think there's anything odd about a fighter dude flipping the bird to a wingman who is taking his photo. Seems pretty standard to me.

I don't think there's any weirdness to flying without the NAV pod and anything else or nothing else on the other side that requires AFSEO testing/permissions at this stage of the game. I've flown the jet with all types of configs with and without targeting pots (all three...LANTIRN, LITENING, and SNIPER) and with and without NAV pods.

SNIPER is only a targeting pod, which replaces the LANTIRN targeting pod that formerly went under the left intake. The LANTIRN Navigation pod on the right side stays -- the NAV FLIR and TF radar systems are in that right side pod.

For inexpensive 9mms, this is the way to go: This is a Star BM, which is a Spanish-made all steel single stack 9mm. They go for about $150-$200 used, and are widely available at shows but tough to find through retail since they're not currently made. I have two of them, and use them as knock-around backpacking protection and plinking. They are 1911 style, but are smaller than a 1911 and don't share any parts. Parts are a little more difficult to come by, but are easily found on the internet or gun shows. Here's a comparison of the Star BM with a Colt Combat Commander to see relative size and style differences:

Just a side point...vehicles are VERY EXPENSIVE here in the UK. Pricing is about double what you can expect to pay in the US for a comparable used car. In other words, if a used car were to sell for, say $3,000 in the states, it will sell for about £3,000 here -- which makes it cost nearly $6,000. In fact, pretty much everything in the UK has a price that is similar to what it costs in the states, only in Pounds, which makes the actual price to us Yanks double. I think it's valuable to have a right-hand-drive car here for a number of reasons (safety, first and foremost), but if you want to be "fiscally" responsible bring your own car. As mentioned, everything here from the road lanes to the parking spaces are much smaller here. I drive a Ford Mondeo (same as the Ford Contour in the states from the late 90s) and that is comparatively a larger car that sometimes I can't even fit into parking spaces lengthwise (sts). You can buy as much gas on base as you want...you are restricted on how many coupons for off-base fuel you can buy. So, a drive to Scotland can be made from Lakenheath/Mildenhall if you plan your fuel stops very carefully (and can make 400+ miles on one tank), otherwise you'll have to fill up on the $8/gallon economy.

That's the best part. I'm a lefty and I find no problems flying with my right hand, nor is it an issue to switch between flying a fighter and a GA aircraft with the hands reversed for the control and throttles.

There's no 'kudos' about it -- unlike in the US, the UK government actually has legal authority over what the press publishes when it comes to national security matters. EDIT: Forgot to mention: More importantly...if Harry is even only half as good of a JTAC as his fellow Brits, good on him. Brit JTACs are some of the best I've worked with. I'm sure he's brigning some honor into the House of Windsor (or Mountbatten, depending on who you ask, heh heh).

Grand canyon's worth of difference between FedEx pushing for an unmanned freighter -- where the reason is cost savings -- and the USAF's reason for going unmanned is the safety of people. Completely opposite motives. We'll see it at FedEx before we see it at Uncle Sam airlines.

Don't lose a minute of sleep over it. Killing is killing, whether you're in danger or not. Hadji doesn't feel a twitch of moral guilt about activating an IED via cell phone from many miles away from danger and killing GIs or, worse, civilians. The sniper doesn't think it's an unfair fight picking off an @$$hole in a man-dress 1,500 meters away while he is safely in his hideout. GIs in 'Nam didn't feel any guilt about making Charlie into mincemeat via Claymores hooked up to tripwires around the firebase...while he was inside his hooch flipping through Playboy, "listenin' to punk rock music and bad mouthin' his country". This is part of the natural progression of warfare, and I don't see any moral ambiguity about it in any way. If you're all ready morally comfortable with your role as a warrior and killing of other humans, then it should be no different than strafing, LGBing, JDAMing, or whatever else.

Wow, don't I wish I were able to make that comparison!!

Here's my Mustang flight...N1451D.

In other news, the cougars will be out for new meat in Colorado Springs soon!

I'd like to see more public floggings of gangsta airmen like this. The military is the one place where "they" can say what you'll wear and how you'll act. So...tighten up or be ready to get ripped a new one.

The GI is a "traditional" 1911 -- more or less the way John Browning designed it and GIs carried it for 70 years. The Springfield is a very mixed bag. I own one and like it, but only because I "de-Springfield-ed" it. They have messed with the internal spring ratios to make the pistol "California safe" without adding the Series 80-style firing pin block that others use. They also added that "ILS" mainspring housing so that the gun can be locked. Springfield decided to make the firing pin thinner and out of titanium to minimize its mass, then put it against a very stiff firing pin spring to make it damn near impossible to move forward if dropped. To overcome that stiff firing pin spring, they had to make the mainspring stronger. Because the mainspring stiffness changed the timing of the slide, they had to change the radius of the bottom of the firing pin block and the power of the recoil return spring. All of that results in a pistol whose insides are all out of standard spec in which the 1911 was designed. It works for the most part...but it is just not correct. The first thing I did after buying my Springer GI was replace the firing pin with a standard steel pin, replace the FP spring with a stock weight, replace the mainspring (and MSH) with a stock unit, replace the firing pin stop, and replace the recoil spring. I've literally never had a single misfeed or jam with that thing since, probably a couple thousand rounds. 1911s work as designed when they are configured as designed. It's when you start f*cking with them they you get problems. No 1911 needs "upgrades" to be an accurate and reliable piece -- it simply needs to meet the tolerances under which it should have been made. Again, the 1911 was a dead-reliable pistol made by numerous manufacturers for the military for 50+ years. There would have been mutiny if GIs were whipping out the ol' Colt '45 and it was jamming on them every 3rd round. This idea that the 1911 needs work to work is very much a post 1980s idea when people decided that 1911s needed to be "tight" to be accurate -- which is also a fallacy to the extent that many think. There are now so many companies making the design, and with their own ideas on how to make it better and/or cut costs, that you almost never know what you're going to get with a particular brand of gun. If you want a 1911 to work correctly, you simply need to (or have a gunsmith do it if you don't feel you have the skill yourself) grab the Kuhnhausen 1911 shop manual, a micrometer, and a small metal file. Go over that thing from stem-to-stern and make sure the damn thing is built within tolerances. If it's not, then file off a few thousandths or hundredths to put it in the correct tolerance. Then grab a scale and make sure your springs are of the correct weight and specified number of turns. Replace them if they aren't -- but only with the weight specified in the manual -- no "extra power" springs or any of that crapola. Don't forget to look at the magazine, as that is the source of many problems with the 1911. Make sure the follower is the correct shape (with the dimple), and that the mag spring is correct. The pistol will work great if it meets specs. Part of the problem is that you can never be sure which manufacturers are going to have guns that meet spec. If there were 25 different makers of "Glocks", you would have the same issue. Even buying a good name is no guarantee. Personally, I have nothing for Kimber unless it's one of their Series 1 guns. I have seen just as many poorly built Kimbers as I have anything else. Hell, I've even seen some Colt's that are all messed up in very embarassing ways. Unless it is a Dan Wesson or Les Baer or one of those hand built pistols, it is always going to be a mixed bag in the current market place. On the other hand, if you buy a stock USGI model, I can almost guarantee you that it's going to run like a Timex with no tweaking.