Aviation BS and Photo Thread

Flew to Utah and back this week... :
D

 

My ride to Florida for a Friday-Monday stay. I’ll gladly escape the nasty weather at home this weekend!

 

Fortunately I was not flying. Unfortunately, this event was a bummer.

I actually had 17 days off around thanksgiving, which was not a bummer!

Again, bummer.

 

This looks like so much fun to me. My goal is to get back into small single engines in 2019! I haven't flown a single since 2013. I NEEEEEEEED to make this happen!

Bravo my good man, Bravo.

 

Always an adventure, and that’s just when doing the preflight on a G-IVSP. Boss man needs to hurry up and grow this pig into a 650.

 

Come to Tucson and we'll fly

My buddies at the regionals don't fly for single engine piston anymore and they are starting to hate life.

 

Key word there is regionals. Regional QOL is terrible. I was a Regional rat for a year before I took my CL64/65 type and went to a part 91 gig in a CL604.

 

I'm trying to skip the regionals in my career path

 

...^^^... I would think that the military aviation route (fixed wing jets or cargo) could help with that and give you a jump ahead too. (Just a thought).

Several of my buddies (years ago) got good jobs with major carriers right out of the military (fixed wing jets or cargo). Don't know how that would work today though.

 

That is indeed my plan!

Here's some pics from my Florida layover. I want to get a nice camera to take with me on layovers, right now all I've got is my old iPhone

 

Smart man. If you can get on with a 91/135 operator, go for it but don’t get stuck in CJ’s or Lears forever.

 

Problem with the military route is most fighter guys only get out with 2-4K hours and you don’t always get to choose what you fly. Transport and cargo is the way to go. Lots of long flights builds time fast.

 

Nothing wrong with being on one of those for a long time if you're PIC in my opinion

That's not so much a problem now. Most (if not all) airlines take into account fighter time and put it on a scale that brings it up to par with heavy guys' time. The airlines know the fighters don't fly as much, but when they do it's pretty task saturated so they put all the military pilots on an even playing field. I want to go into the Reserves, and by doing that I can choose the aircraft and unit I go into, providing there are no unusual circumstances that occur once I've already begun training.

Edit: I just realized you're in Port St Lucie? I just had several days in Stuart.

 

Tankers have the easiest civilian transition, since they're all converted people haulers anyway. Also, they have the longest mission times because they are all flying gas cans. Aircrew as part of a tanker task force can rack up 200 hours in no time.

Still...

16-hour missions over the arctic suuuuuuuuuuuck.

 

Try being a helo guy. LOL. I got roughly 300 hours fixed wing during BPT in the Navy and then transitioned to helicopters. That was not helpful 20 years ago when trying to transition out and get on with the airlines.

 

Yeah, but you weren't flying boring machines that don't need you at the controls anyway.

 

At least in a tanker you’re not strapped into an ejection seat for 16 hours. Imagine doing a 20 hour mission in a B52

 

Imagine when you're pax on a tanker and the boom operator decides to make mother fucking cinnamon rolls in the galley oven while you and your compatriots are eating day-old box nasties.

And you ain't getting any of that Pilsbury goodness.

42 men and women considered murdering a SrA at 41,00 feet that day.

The only benefit that came from that was 2 days later when the boners caught up to us at Ali Al Saleem looking for the "the pig fucking bastard who laid in the window eating cinnamon rolls during their IFR."

NKAWTG only gets you so far.

 

Bwahahahahahahahaha!

I was on a Air Force Transport from Bahrain back to the states in 97 and we stopped in Iceland to drop/pick up pax. All the Air Force personnel on board received hot meals and the 12 Navy guys got boxed lunches. Mine consisted of 2 slices of stale bread, a mustard packet, and expired 8oz can of guava juice. The dude next to me got a slice of bologna and bag of chips in his box. Together, we made a small meal out of it.

 

That trip was in '98, and thank God I didn't have to stay with the tankers. Got to hop a C-5 out of Manama bound for Rota. The whole way, we were praying for a breakdown when we landed in Spain.

No such luck.

The next leg was to Newark...and the sumbitch broke on landing. Thankfully the crew wanted to be stuck there less than we did, and they were able to get airborne again within 4 hours.