
sherpa
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Everything posted by sherpa
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Sorry I didn't see this earlier. The formal transcript of the CVR has not been released, but it has been discussed and pointed out by the NTSB. I am not sure it would matter to these NY Times clowns anyway, because they clearly don't understand context. Here is a legitimate discussion of that from real pilots who do understand. Only need to listen to the first five and half minutes. By the way when the guy says "aviation experts," he is being totally sarcastic. Neither anything about anything. NY Times Nonsense
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One Song to Listen to For the Rest of Your Life....
sherpa replied to Mike in Horseheads's topic in Off the Wall
Not a popular choice, but I would go with "Starry Starry Night," from Don McLean. Crafty references to Van Goghs's work. Just a tremendously written song, For pure listening, I'd go with "Boys of Summer" from Don Henley. -
Tim Walz Was A Great Pick Thread
sherpa replied to Trump_is_Mentally_fit's topic in Politics, Polls, and Pundits
Can't lie about the George Floyd after effect. That area of Minneapolis has never recovered to this day. Horrible gov. Ya. He spoke in "code" to me, and he said, "I am an idiot, and I was chosen because I am dumber and not a threat to Kamala." -
There were three altimeters. They were all within tolerance, but there was a difference between what her's and the other pressure altimeter were indicating. Her's was indicating 300'. The other one was indicating 400'. That is within the margin for error. She was never "told" to change course or "told" to descend. It was simply a discussion between the two. The radar altimeter, which indicates height over the water where they were, was also indicating 278'. The entire thing from the NY Times is bull stuff, written by someone who covers "money, policy and influence" for the NY Times, and a guy who is Washington based and reports on "transportation matters" for them. Neither of them is in any way competent to come to the ridiculous "conclusions" they claim. This isn't quite as bad as the Rolling Stone fabrication of a rape at the University of Virginia, which was completely false and resulted in a significant lawsuit, or the Duke lacrosse team fiction, or even the nonsense by alleged "experts" on CNN after the Malaysian 370 disappearance, but it is very b bad, and the result of the media interpreting something they are not qualified to do. Worse, they point an unjustified finger at this pilot. The grossly obvious fact is that those two aircraft should have never been in that airspace at the same time, both doing what they were supposed to be doing, and where they should be. The regional jet should have never been told to circle to land on runway 33 with a helo in the area, or the helo should have held at Haines Point until the RJ landed, which was the standard policy. Just an insane operation.
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Not that anyone cares, but this non skid stuff is kind of interesting. A friend of mine, also a carrier aviator, was involved as a civilian in the F-35 program. During testing, the carrier suitability tests are done at Pawtuxet River MD. They do normal carrier landings and very hard ones at the runway there prior to sea trials. Everything was fine. When they started sea trials on the F-35 there was an unexplainable and dramatic increase in engine damage because the engine mounts to the airframe were failing. Months and millions spent, and nobody could figure it out. One day this Navy buddy of mine was working on it and he was watching the carrier landing testing at Pax river. He mentioned to his cohort that the only thing different in this environment was the lack on non skid on a runway. They did the testing and found that the non skid on the carrier was causing a harmonic through the landing geat that was vibrating the airframe to levels that were causing the engine mounts to fail. Solved the problem. Saved well over a hundred million bucks. Carrier aviation is weird. There's an old quote from somebody years ago. "Carrier aviation. It gave me moments of extreme exileration and moments of extreme terror, but either way, it will always be with me."
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Almost never. If they are re-spotting in heavy seas, and they don't unless necessary, they'll put a guy on each wing carrying chocks, and if something goes awry, they run up to the main gear and get the chocks under, hoping to stop it. I can remember a few times when the deck was really moving and after I landed they had our guys with chocks follow me throughout the entire taxi to a parking spot. Once you park, you are immediately chained, every time.
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Sure. I guess you're referring to the Truman based F-18 that went overboard. At sea, airplanes are chained to the deck on the flight deck, anywhere from a four point to a twelve point tie down. So four to 12 chains, depending on sea state. When they go below to the hangar deck they are also chained. When they have to be re-spotted, (moved), without the engine running, they put a maintenance guy in the seat as the "brakerider." The problem is that if the engine isn't running, they have no hydraulic power, and thus, no airplane brakes. They use a "tug," which is a big low built byt very heavy vehicle to tow them, connected through a tow bar which hooks to the nose gear. To re-spot an airplane to the flight deck from the hangar deck, it is towed to one of three elevators, goes outboard to that elevator and is raised to to the flight deck. They don't do this in heavy seas for obvious reasons. Anyway, it looks like calm seas, a re-spot tow underway and the ship, for some reason, Truman an abrupt maneuver, which caused a significant list which was enough to exceed the braking capacity of the tug, which is significant. Tug driver and brake rider bot jumped out and remained aboard. Tug, tow bar and F-18 deep sixed. As an aside, after about two months at sea, the flight deck loses a good deal of it's "non skid," which is a thin layer of abrasive material to give ample traction to the steel deck. After a time, this wears off and the combination of small jet fuel leaks, hydraulic fluid and other lubricants can make the flight deck quite slippery. When you launch, you man a chained up airplane and the chains don't come off until taxi to the catapult. If this ship is moving because of sea state or turn, this can get quite interesting. That's why we always arm the ejection seat when getting in. I can clearly remember one day at sea and the deck was quite slippery. I was taxiing to cat 4 for launce and the ship started it's pre-launch turn into the wind. Airplane started slipping sideways and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Fortunately, whoever was at the helm eased the turn and all turned out well. Next day they cancelled the morning schedule and hosed the flight deck using sea water. They always apply new non skid during port calls at places that have the stuff.
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No offense to you because you are just reiterating what the NY Times reported after "investigating." What they "concluded," and what was linked to above, is completely false, and totally not supported by the voice recorder. That is what happens when you get people "investigating" something they know nothing about. This crap happens all the time.
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Our Nation's Military Does It Again
sherpa replied to The Frankish Reich's topic in Politics, Polls, and Pundits
I understand your attempt at humor, but the situation is far more complicated, and these people are not stupid. Moving airplanes on an aircraft carrier is done with great care. If the carrier needs to maneuver very quickly, and it is unanticipated, ie., when repositioning a hangar deck airplane, where the the engines are not running and no hydraulics, stuff can happen. Back to basics, it is a boat, and boats can do things that cause the deck to be inhospitable to towing airplanes. -
Not me. We need to attract the best people for public service. Denying them the opportunity to participate would be a major deterrent. My view is that a blind trust should be established, managed by a competent, approved group. The Representative is allowed to participate to whatever level they desire, but has no influence over the portfolio.
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I really regret the way the administration has not informed our country on how obvious this situation was, and that something absolutely needed to be done. We were getting abused by China, India and the EU. A response to this is absolutely justified. China is the worst, but our other trade partners are nearly as guilty, and the situation needs to change. The Treasury Secretary was on CNBC for an extended interview this morning and his most informative comment was that when they started looking at this stuff, he couldn't believe how bad it has gotten. This gets worked out, but it wasn't moving in that direction.
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No offense intended, but this is an incorrect conclusion from the reality. It was a checkride. You don't "refuse" on a checkride. She simply didn't respond immediately. It was a stupid process, but the reason was the switch to a different runway and not holding the helo at that point, well out of the way. It wasn't "her."
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So you invent quotes that were never said. Create viewpoints never expressed, and now demand responses, as if you have any qualification to do so. The point is I don't care about Hegseth. What I do care about is cabinet level influence at the Pentagon, which ultimately goes downstream to our services. I do care that the past four years were marked by political appointments that were identity driven and not positive nor effectual. Much the same as other gov institutions. If Hegseth can reverse that and redirect the focus on fighting wars instead of social experiments, I'm OK. If not, or if he proves to be a risk to that goal by lack if discipline or incompetence, fire him. Not complicated. I care as much about him as I do about you.
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We can be better "friends," once the gross abuse is addressed. If you are not aware of that, and I am, you seem quite happy to tolerate it as long as it doesn't effect you. Trump is calling a spade a spade, but like the frog in heated water, we have put up this this horsestuff for years. Whether it's trade, NATO or the UN, the American worker has been abused by these entities for years. I feel pretty good about how it will work out, but it absolutely needed to be addressed. Perhaps not in his tactless manner, but it needs to stop.
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Not me. Not for a second, and I'm not a fan of Trump at all. The previous gov was clearly a Regency gov., and none knew who the Regents were. DOD was a mess. FAA was a mess. Hegseth cannot make another security misstep, but the plan underway, which is to return warfighting to DOD, is far better than the strategy to run it as a social program, appointing people nobody respected. As those are cleared out, there is bound to be the usual Washington blowback from those impacted.
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This is so typical of your stuff and the stuff that gets put out here all the time. This, or these, were strikes against a country which has no air defense. There is no evidence, anywhere, that such information effected anything. You have two carriers in the Red Sea. That's a pretty small body of water with a lot of ships and a few belligerents who could have clearly seen the arming and positioning for the strike. I'm not excusing the idiocy of putting this on unsecured social media. What I am saying is that it had no influence on anything. Comparing this to any serious strike against a target that had significant anti air defenses is silly. The guy screwed up. It amounted to nothing. I don't excuse him for that, but I think comparing it to anything of a serious nature is wacky politics at play, as always. If the second charge is true, and not accidental, get rid of him. If not, get over it and be glad that we are finally doing something that makes sense, saves airplanes, shipping and lives, which we absolutely weren't under the previous group of who knows who making decisions. And by the way, with all the crap thrown around here, I have never seen anybody, ever dispute what I have stated about the strategy involved, which is far more important than Hegseth's stuff. That is what matters. That is what I have posted on, repeatedly. Never seems to be an issue with folks here. It's all about getting political pound of flesh, and not what matters.
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No. Wrong again. Hegseth gets no pass from me. The "grunts" as you call them don't need a SecDef as an example. They need to be trained, prepared, equipped and deployed capably and honestly. Most couldn't name the SecDef, and that is fine. I think you are amazingly naive about this. There are secrets and there are secrets. Your comparison of this to Mossad is ridiculous, and I guarantee you the SecDef is in possession of far more things that would climb the ladder to your analogy which he wouldn't disclose. Didn't happen. Again, I have no interest in defending the guy, and couldn't care less about him personally, but firing him? I say that with the caveat that I really don't know what the second circumstance was, and if he has a defense, I'm willing to listen rather than send him out to the firing squad because, be assured, there are entrenched individuals who will do whatever they can to avoid upsetting the status quo. Just like illegal immigration, DOD is an independent industry that seeks to maintain their current circumstance.