Clayton Bigsby

All that work to drop bombs that wouldn't explode...

Or they cold just cancel their entire order.

End effective 100% of the time!!! Yup Lyndie England in all her post-Abu-Gharaib hawtness.

Well good job with the easy kill, only took how many months?

That'll make it hard to continue to do work as an intel officer in her Reserve career...guess that's over. As for the theory on Benghazi, that theory has always been a stupid one anyway.

^ So, that appears to have the same engines as the H-60. If a lack of power is the issue for the HH-60, how does making the helicopter larger (heavier) with the same engines solve anything? Or is it a better rotor/dynamic system that gets more lift?

Wow. He was a Mx Officer in my AMXS at McChord, and just saw him a couple weeks ago. Unreal. I did my water surv training in PCola too. Wow.

Like the one about the chick at AUAB going to her Shirt because the John's check bounced? Something like that.

It's entirely possible not every SEAL has the same opinion on the subject as there are several thousand of them. From what I took from my reading, he and several of his teammates were frustrated with the narrative of their work that had been given by the administration. Especially given how much information was leaked out after the mission including lots of wildly inaccurate stuff, and that their team was being continually reminded and harassed by their management about not leaking anything out. Their perspective was basically that they were barking up the wrong tree. It got to the point where when the team met the President at Ft Campbell, and they were supposed to sign a framed flag from the mission, and the quote was 'fuck man they've leaked everything else, our names are all we have left, why should we sign it? So they can leak those too?' Then his critical commentary on the President and how the Vice President conducted himself at the meeting...you can see why the book wasn't given to the DoD for review. I guess I'd rather see this story here from a direct source than, say, in that upcoming Zero Dark Thirty movie that came directly from leaks out of the White House.

Finished it. Really liked it, came across as very humble and described things well enough to make you feel like you were there...that's what I took away anyway. The idea of chasing Taliban fighters up on goat trails with sheer dropoffs, at high elevation and at night...not so much fun.

Didn't somebody land a C-141 at Adana airport in Turkey instead of Incirlik once?

Something similar, Coast Guard HH-65 helo transitioning, Mode C turned off or not transmitting (no altitude info on the radar scope). Approach controller - "Coast Guard XXXX, squawk altitude." Coast Guard pilot then dials in his exact current altitude as his 4-digit discreet squawk, and says "How's that, approach?" I thought it was funny.

Time to get a euro car and crank the techno.

He apparently had the gear down too. Not a given in a C210 (or a C-17)

Getting pretty excited about Total Recall. Wasn't sure at first but I gotta say it's looking great. It'll be interesting without Verhoeven's campiness/excessive gore fixation.

Oops! Missed that. So, unable stop and go, other options approved...just because it was previously approved doesn't mean that can't be changed.

Lots of other non-standard-phraseology phrases derived from military phrases like "no joy on..." or "tallyho!" are used all the time, and ya just learn them and move along...guess I don't understand why if an inbound was saying something about his fuel state, that you'd launch somebody out right in front of him. Just because the E-word wasn't used doesn't mean you can't give somebody priority if it seems they might need it. Especially with the outbound being a C172...he can wait, it's not like it's a Lifeguard King Air or something. Story doesn't say when the Centurion guy admitted to low fuel...if he only said it on short final after the first go-around order, then it's on him.

This is making the rounds today...

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.