Clayton Bigsby

Interception practice...

Where in MT/ID is this?

More than one career. Was an LM. Awhile ago. Turns out there's not a whole lot of civilian career LM opportunities... Shack. Come on Rainman, you knew that. Hope everything works out as best as can be.

It doesn't help that there are some cultural issues here...a load who is perceived to spend too much time kissing ass upstairs is derisively called a 'cockpit loadmaster', and previous avenues for education like time in the sim were cut down - ISI training was done once a year in the sim and used to have quite a bit of extra space built in, until someone at the training contractor decided those 4 hours should be spent entirely on ISI troubleshooting procedures and those alone. To apply external (or APU) power to the jet. That said, there was some CRM training on what to look for should the LM be in the cockpit for final, but most of it consisted of look to see the gear handle down and 5 green lights for the wheels, and see if the flaps are extended. That's about it. The primary LM station is downstairs in the C-17, and the LM is required to be in that seat for takeoff and landing (to monitor pax and/or cargo). If there are extra loads, they can be upstairs if the ACM seats haven't been given away to high ranking officials, hot chicks, etc, but there isn't a requirement either way. They are, but if a plane landed gear-up while I was on position I would be held somewhat responsible as well. I've had gear and wrong-airport saves, but a lot of it is from working GA and the standard stuff that goes with that territory.

It's the towers' job to ensure you're on approach and set up to land on the correct runway (let alone correct airport), as well as double-check that the gear is down, etc...at least that's the standard I was trained to. Where I'm at we have several satellite airports and there can be lots of confusion for the unfamiliar or tired. There is actually specific phraseology for controllers for this issue, for when somebody isn't appearing on final where they're supposed to be or where you should be able to see them...and that's supposed to be the wake-up for the flight crew. But it only works if you're looking for them. I would think the McDill tower is in as much trouble as this crew is. I guess I could go over to liveatc.net and see if there's a feed for mcdill, but I don't care enough to. If so there's probably an archive of it too. Just need to line up the z-times. So, assuming they both weren't up on the flight deck, were the loads Q-3'd too? Just wondering how AD would handle this (assuming they're an AD crew).

You're still not getting it, that's not how it works. LM has responsibility for the cargo the moment it comes off the k-loader or ramp and into the aircraft, so you better believe they're going over it, ESPECIALLY if they're getting a checkride. The onload has to be inspected before it enters the aircraft. And it wouldn't be the first time ATOC has tried to push some bullshit off on a young load out of laziness or outright deception. ATOC has no reason to be doing any teaching to a LM...from a load-planning perspective they're actually equally qualified, load planning is a substantial part of the syllabus at the schoolhouse in Altus, and also with the quarterly CBTs and sims LMs have to do. That doesn't mean they can't help each other out, but specifically this isn't a time for 'teaching the new guy', that's the job of the other senior LM and said MSgt should be keeping his teaching to HIS guys; for example, bringing 10,000lb+ pallets out to the aircraft spun for the ADS format is completely stupid if the load plan that they came up with dictates they'll be spun 90 degrees to fit in the logistics rails. Especially if the effort they send to 'help' get the cargo on the plane is one 100lb female airman...this is something specific that I dealt with multiple times. (This 'logistics format' is a C-17 thing, if you want two rows of pallets they have to be spun 90 degrees to fit in narrower rails, 88" wide. The omni rollers on the ramp give a lot of rolling resistance so the heavier the pallet is, it's much harder to make it move. ATOC will do this out of laziness because if they pre-format the pallets that way they can't fit as many on the k-loader and also have to manually chain them down for movement instead of being able to use the lock blocks built into the sides of the k-loader. For C-5s I think this is a moot point since I think they can fit two rows wide of pallets the 108" format.) This isn't a pissing contest, and when a LM rejects something they better have good grounds for doing so because ATOC will be burning up the phone lines to the LM's supervision. LMs are allowed to modify the load plan as well for several reasons like ease of on/offload, etc. It's on the LMs to not suck at their job.

Got it, but you don't get to be #1 all the time. Pretty funny to see how it gets worked out at the nearby, busy non-controlled airport...not that well at times. At least in ways that are legal for me to do.

Don't helicopter door gunners/FEs have some sort of mask they wear for this very reason? Makes them look pretty hardcore too. And as a controller in a tower...yeah...having to listen to old dudes yell to be heard above outside airplane noise, and understand what the fuck you're saying, sucks bigtime.

Interesting; offsetting report said Syria fired on the SAR aircraft as well.

This. It was fucking hilarious!!! Best Sandler and crew effort since...Grandmas Boy, Gilmore, etc.

Black shit = space gizz, it mutates and reconstructs DNA.

The regular checked bags, I guarantee you, are all over 30 lbs, and the heavies well over 60... Time for new averages, shit has all changed.

Yeah, fuck Montana! More specifically, the MT ANG gave up their F-16Cs a couple years back to the CA ANG in Fresno. Now after swapping to and qualifying on the F-15C, they're giving them up to...yup, Fresno again...and were supposed to then go to 4 C-27Js. Then THAT worked its course, and the next plan was to take the reserve/guard/whatever C-130s at JRB Fort Worth/Carswell and swap them up to MT...and the Texan congressional delegation flipped out demanding that they have the aircraft "for disaster purposes". So, yeah, Montana can go fuck itself. Look, clearly the AF/DoD owns the iron and can do with it as it sees fit, but some of this machinery swapping is completely stupid.

Yeah, it got posted while I was posting this one from my phone. Mod merge? Not sure what I had to say any different from Mike.

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Plane-Crash-Ventura-County-Camarillo-152074725.html Him him. They just lost another in a Kfir crash a couple months back. Prayers for that community.

What, a cheap airline pilot? No way...

I have some feelings on this too, I live in America's largest metropolitan area and every two-bit business and law enforcement agency wants one of these, and I don't see it working out well for the flying public, or the people below them when the wreckage inevitably rains down. In this case - not surprising in the least that the state of Hawaii would piss away that amount of money on a half-cooked idea, without doing any research or seeking any approval. Oh and trying to operate something this finicky on short final for the region's largest airport and military air base? Yeah bad fucking idea. Not surprised.

Originally 8 at Elmo too, IIRC. There is another on order (P-223) to bring PAED back up to 8. Maybe the ochos are a PACAF thing. TCM has 4 active squadrons - the 4th, 7th 8th, and 10th. Three reserves. CHS also has the SOCOM support tasking but I'm not sure if that is what makes their assigned iron numbers so much higher. Those aircraft assigned numbers are always in flux; besides the usual tailswaps between bases there's airplanes that get peeled away for whatever reason; for example the 8 aircraft to Elmo all came from McChord's fleet (I used to work on a number of them). I know that skewed TCM's manning figures for a while, but I think with the higher production allocations some of the new-build aircraft have been slotted to replace the lost 8 at TCM and the manning would be back to normal. I have no idea on the timeframe of that, might have already happened, who knows.

They're also the two largest C-17 wings by far. The next closest (in size) would be, what, McGuire? Not sure how many squadrons they have.

Him him.

Exactly. USN models of the P-8 won't even have a MAD; India's P-8I's do though.

Oh well. The Taliban would have been flying these in two years anyway.

What a faggot. "YOUR MOUSTACHES IS IN VIOLATIONS! Y'ALL LOOK LIKE A BUNCH OF ELVISES!"

Rafael is an Israeli defense contractor; Rafale is the name of the aircraft in question. Does it have the thrust to do the ski-jump, non-catapult takeoff? Eurofighter was claiming their aircraft did, so a naval version of the EF-2000 wouldn't need a catapult launch bar and strengthened nose gear. And French AF Rafales are taking the aerial nuke mission from the AdA's Mirage 2000Ns.

Thank the Italians for funding the major development issues; hopefully it's a fairly straighforward build.