TreeA10

FFDO training is great for increasing your handgun skills with the added bonus of telling the TSA to pack sand.

Did AA recurrent training last month and they had a compilation video of vehicles hitting jets or almost hitting jets. The total number of hits on aircraft was over 200. My personal favorite was a high speed baggage tug dragging several carts and the driver makes a sharp turn thus throwing himself out of the tug. And, as our intrepid driver collects road rash bouncing and rolling across the concrete, the now driverless tug and carts careen into another tug and carts. I'm guessing we aren't hiring our best and brightest for these jobs. But it is nice to know that those guys can just swipe a card to enter the airport secure area while 50% or better of pilots are getting tagged for additional screening.

I was volunteered non-voluntarily to be a T-38 FAIP at Columbus in the magnolia state back the late 80s. I don't remember the students, I don't remember the class, I don't remember the year but I do remember the week or at least 3 days of it. On Wednesday, I had an engine fire. I am with a student and we are the good wingman doing a rejoin when lead says, "2, you are trailing smoke." How I missed the big glowing fire light, I do not know but we execute the boldface and the fire light takes its time to go out. Single engine home and all is right with the world. Thursday appeared with crappy weather and I launch on a contact ride with a student. In the weather, the right generator fails and the left does not pick up the right side. So it's a no-flap ASR to weather mins to get home. I don't get paid enough for this job. TGIF! Friday finds me on another formation ride headed out to the high sectors and at FL330, there's a thump noise, the cockpit fills with fog, and I'm pressure breathing with a cockpit pressurization failure. Sumanabache. Copious quantities of alcohol was consumed at the bar Friday night as my students were trying to tell me as nicely as they could that they didn't want to fly with me anymore.

Jared Diamond wrote the book Guns, Germs, and Steel covering how some societies evolved and became dominant while others did not. He also wrote Collapse about civilizations that were but are no more plus societies that are in the process of failing. Haiti made that list. He compared the Dominican Republic on the other half of the island with Haiti and how one is thriving and the other is a teetering on the edge basket case. Was a participant in the near invasion of Haiti back in the day. We were only going to shoot target practice 30mm because the powers that be were worried we would set the slums on fire with no way to put the fires out. Obviously, the situation hasn't improved.

Ancient Hawg Driver proverb: Where are your tanks, I will shoot them.

Finding a little strip of paper with a future prediction or words of wisdom like in a fortune cookie would be hysterical. "Classified documents not in safe not safe."

So, is there going to be a big party at the club tonight to celebrate the first Raptor kill? "So, there I was..... Got a visual on the bandit and used the awesome power and thrust vectoring to manuever to his 6.... well, there really wasn't a 6 position. So, there he was just floating......"

Yeah, what he said. I started the process after turning 60 after an active duty then reserves career. Tinnitus was easy. Neck injury was documented. However, frostbite from Land Survival and Arctic Survival was not. Raynaud's (blood flow shutting off to fingers) triggered by cold at Arctic Survival was not documented because I was afraid they would ground me or boot me out of Alaska. This is a significant % according to the VA office. Hearing loss due my time as an Armor Battalion ALO surrounded by loud ass tanks wasn't documented but easily proved but wish I had done a hearing test after getting surprised by an M1 main gun firing only 30 yards away. So, even if it is just one line in your medical records, it is in your records for later use. Document everything.

Congressman Dan Crenshaw just did an interview on his podcast with a SEAL who has been fighting in Ukraine. Interesting stuff. Title of the podcast is "The Truth about Dan Swift, the Navy SEAL Killed in Ukraine."

WTF was that??? I'm not sure if M2 needs a psychiatrist or a veterinarian.

Boeing said"Hell no" because the jet is certified with the ECL system.

Just finished recurrent training and lots of conversation about the JFK incursion and the new procedures. My sim partner was another high time 787 FO and we came close to the new procedures covering everything but erred as to was supposed to do them. We had the same new CKA under supervision on the two sims and they said we did great because we got everything. I figure it's AAs jet and we can do whatever procedure they want. However, what would have made more sense would have been to implement before start/taxi the first quarter, before takeoff second quarter etc. And this is without even raising the question why the 787 even needs this crap because we have the awesome ECL (Electronic Checklist).

During the last election cycle, something like 60% of Californians were unhappy with how their state was being run but Newsome wins reelection by a 20 point margin. You can't fix stupid.

Hawaii and Alaska??? Hell no. California, Oregon, and Washington.... Can I get back to you on that?

I've got a lock on my garage door it's all good.

Just a couple days ago, Driving back in the dark from Narita to DFW over the Pacific ocean about 140W, we are on pretty much an easterly heading about FL 350. We start seeing a light that would appear, flare up brighter, burn for about 20 seconds, then go out. This happened approximately every 40 seconds for several minutes with some larger time gaps. The lights had a high to low motion with a slight right to left track. Looking through the HUD, the lights were anywhere from 2 degrees to 6 degrees above the horizon with no range estimate available. The sun was still well below the horizon in from of us. I'm thinking it was refections off satellites but the repetition was weird. I don't know enough about satellite density and orbital mechanics to hazard a guess. I've seen satellites, the space station and space shuttle reentry and know what those look like and this was nothing like those.

What the hell was Hugh Grant thinking??

Got woke then broke.

Not enough tattoos and too many teeth to qualify for Walmart employment. I call shenanigans.

And trying to find the right spot on the wing to block out that stupid blinding light was always a good time.

It's the Walmartizination of airline travel. Cut product and personnel trying to maximize profit and leaving no margin for error. Cancel one flight when running 90% load factors and folks are going to be stuck for a while. Cancel a bunch of flights and fit hits the Shan.

But if the murder bent pilot had run a couple trees through the chipper after committing the crime, the rental store employees would not have remembered him triggering the search for the credit card plus he would have had plausible rationale for renting the chipper in the first place thus working more favorably in his legal defense versus "No your honor, nobody has ever returned a clean chipper shredder".

My understanding was this guy got caught because he cleaned the wood chipper. The machine was so clean the people at the rental store remembered him and when he rented it.

I've known some military guys to do some really crazy stuff and end up incarcerated so I wouldn't single out airline pilots for bizarre behavior. That being said, I flew with our VP of Flight and asked him what was the strangest thing he had to deal with as a Chief Pilot. He said he got a call from a County Sheriff in Tennessee that had arrested one of our pilots because he was running up and down the street barking at cars....while naked. The pilot got help and returned to flying. I flew with a former Domicile President and asked the same question. He told me he got a call because one of our pilots had trashed his hotel room on a layover and was found passed out drunk in the room....with a goat. Not sure of what became of the pilot or the goat.

Comment from an old school Flight Attendant: "Sexual harassment will not only be tolerated, it will be graded."