Hacker

His "Big Eye", "College Eye", and "Crown" callsigns were all EC-121s, not EC-130s. Hence my post.

EC-121, maybe? Connie, Herk...what's the diff. PLEASE don't lock this thread. This is Baseops.net history in the making right here...one of the best in a long time.

Cool how his phone number for booking L-39 flights is "215.887.NAVY". If Smith has been outed recently, it's sure taking a while for his cover-up to catch-up. He still has the Lieutenants bars on the flight suits and "LT Allen H Smith" on the canopy rail of both his L-39 and his T-34. His "testimonial" writeup says: He seems to think that the L-39 is a "combat jet". This stuff from Google is hilarious!!! The best part is that on the POW Network there's a link to his ACTUAL service record, in which he was apparently in the Naval Reserve from '68 to '71 in Willow Grove and Pensacola. I would love to read the article referenced on POW Network in which he talks about being shot down over NVN. Got no patience for a guy like that....he may have accomplished a lot as a civilian pilot, but trying to fake being a military pilot sends all that down the sh*tter, as far as I'm concerned.

Cracka, please. Don't pitch your nose into a fight without SA. Unless you were intentionally being the high/fast flyer "detonator" with this post.

Tragic they locked the thread. That was just getting interesting. I need to go tell all my Viper buds that they're in the minority in their community for using that name.

If he can show us his UPT class patch, and then tell us what FTU class he was in at Luke, maybe that might nail it down. If he can't tall you that info right off the bat, he's a poser.

Yes, that is correct. He did not go back to being a Lawyer.

Yes, he was all ready a JAG officer who decided to go to SUPT. The biggest thing to realize here is that JAG officers are not LINE officers -- they are an entirely different portion of the officer corps. So, this guy I knew had to petition to leave the JAG corps and become a line officer in order to go to pilot training. It's not a simple process, and not one that just happens overnight. I doubt the story that the Vette Forum guy is peddling...but the people who think this type of career change is only in the mind of Harmon J Rabb are wrong -- I know a lawyer-turned-F-16 pilot.

This is the best thing that dude at the Corvette Forums has posted....this is a f*cking riot: EDIT: Sorry, I guess it DOES get more funny! Will some actual Viper dude please shut this a$$-clown down?

FWIW, I personally know a USAF JAG officer who went to SUPT and ended up flying a Viper, and is currently a Major. I was one class behind him at Columbus and flew AT-38s with him at Moody. Of course, he's significantly older than 26! It's obviously not the same guy, but just proof that such a career path is indeed possible.

Do you think that's why there was such an uproar in the UK over the A-10 incident? Transparency? I thought that SkyNews camping out on the guy's doorstep in Idaho was taking things a little far.

Boom, what "Dude" was that in your photo? I have a couple cool shots I took yesterday of Shell 96 "extending" Whistler 87 (although I labeled the photos "hot barely-legal XXX tanker-on-tanker action" because both the pilots were female and the KC-10 was a 1985 model)

Yeah, yeah, I know. I have been bracing for your verbal beratement of my camera choice ever since I decided to go for a Nikon! For me, the reality for me as a non-pro photographer is that the whole Nikon/Canon debate is the same as Ford vs Chevy, ketchup vs mustard, Pepsi vs Coke, you name it. They're both excellent cameras, and as you've mentioned, each of them have strengths and weaknesses. Honestly for me it went like this: There is a Crew Chief in the squadron with the EOS Rebel XTi and another pilot who as a D80. I took them both flying with me and tested them out. The one I liked better in terms of how easy it was to use with my flight gloves on, ease to grip, balance, weight, etc, was the Nikon. They both were good quality cameras at close to the same price point, so it came down to ease of use for me. Steve, I'm still more than happy to take some of your Canon stuff with me TDY -- I'm not a snob. :)

I just purchased a Nikon D80 and have been very happy with it. It is my first DSLR, and it was quite a bit more expensive than any P&S camera. BUT, the title of this thread is "aviation photography". You're never going to really enter into that sport with a $300 camera.

At every assignment I've had in the fighter community (including one in AETC), there have been phases where singing was okay, and phases when the OG or WG/CC felt like he needed to cut it off. I think it's completely misguided and ignorant to cut off the singing in an attempt to not offend people or be more professional or whatnot. The USAF will spend millions contemplating a new f*cking "heritage uniform", but when it comes to the REAL heritage of fraternity between warrior brothers, the AF only cares if it fits the "warrior monk" image they want.

I'm in the same boat as you are, Rainman. Don't misconstrue my comments to mean that I was somehow against an accusation of pilot error. My point WAS that regardless of who you are or what you have done, shit happens in high performance aviaton. Nobody is immune to that.

That's a great briefing item, but you and I both know that midairs have and continue to happen during formation flying regardless of the skill and experience of the pilots involved. Rules are the rules, true, but without knowing the situation it's impossible to pass such simple judgment. We don't know if the flight controls on the P-51A jammed at just the wrong time...or perhaps there was a wind gust...or any number of other factors outside your implication that it was pure pilot error. Even if it was pure pilot error...what, then? I've seen mid-airs during formation work with highly trained and experienced pilots, too. Howzabout the Thunderbird midair last year or the year before in Chicago where #4's right missile rail came off? Ever seen the movie "Threshold", which shows the 1971 Blue Angels in training at El Centro in F-4s and there's a wingtip bent up because #2 and #3 hit each other? These are just examples that happen to be caught on film... So, you can have all the training rules, training, experience, and detailed briefings you want and things like this can still happen.

One great man lost in the Mustang crash, too. A pretty ugly scene.

Somehow I've been able to suffer through nearly 2,000 hours of military and civilian flying without ever, ever needing to use an E6B in flight. Not even in Tweets.

Anybody got a copy of the article from Stars and Stripes a few days ago that basically said "Metzger is not going on a '18-month leave of absence' -- there is no such thing"

Just looked at the Chapter 3 excerpt....funny...the graphics are EXCATLY like they were in the T-37 and T-38 3-3 back in the day (except with a Yak/CJ instead of a Tweet).

That's great news, actually. I briefly got involved in FAST starting in 2004, and while I liked the overall concept, I did NOT like many aspects of what they taught and how they taught it. I thought their concepts of flight lead and wingman roles, as well as the "flight leadership" of the leads was severely lacking. The worst part was the weird hodge-podge of terms and signals that they used...it was somewhere in the middle of the USAF and USN, and I thought it did nobody any good to execute it that way, ESPECIALLY since there were a lot of ex-Navy and ex-USAF fighter guys that were involved in the FAST program. Sounds like they are moving in the right direction. Maybe when I get back from the UK I'll get back involved again.

I don't recommend LEARNING any kind of formation from the FAST warbird guys. FAST uses the Navy T-34 manual as the basis for their formation terms, references, and visual signals. They are VERY DIFFERENT than what the AF teaches. You'll confuse yourself more than anything if you try and learn that, especially when you show up to UPT talking about "bearing lines" and the like. More importantly, HOW you fly formation in a big piston radial (like the T-28) is VERY different than you will do it in a turbine aircraft. Go do it for fun -- because flying formation in a T-28 is kickass -- but don't do it expecting to get a leg up on your UPT classmates.

Before you guys start going all "SNAPs invented Lieutenants not saluting each other", I'll pass along that my father, who was a USAF pilot during the Korean War, told me about the "Rank among Lieutenants..." bit when I was just a little kid. So, I guess you'll have to consider a Korean-era B-29 pilot a SNAP, because that "tradition" of Lts not saluting each other has apparently been around the USAF since about 1955.

The F-15E that I bought from squadrontoys a while ago totally sucks. I have an Asian Imports T-38 that I like significantly better.