Recent content by SnoC653

Despite the fact that these are sold as less than lethal, none lethal, or any verbiage they want to attach to them, the are still weapons and could result in someone becoming dead. If you are justified to pull a weapon, you are justified to kill the person it was pulled on. Once you go down...

Visibility has always been an important feature in helicopters. Airplanes do not fly a profile that would put the flight path where the pilot would need to look towards their feet to keep the area clear. A lot of the early helicopters had plexiglass bubbles for a cabin for this reason. As...

The maintenance and inspection schedules are a key part of becoming certified. Them becoming FAA Certified aircraft rather than exhibition, would be a huge plus. The military has a long history of aircraft that are not FAA certified. Thus using military surplus helicopters presents...

Are the Blackhawks converted military or are they active military showing off the new gov't goodies? Wish I was closer as I would love to see all the new goodies. Please continue posting lots of pictures. And yes if I won the lottery, I would probably have my own Blackhawk/S71. But it does...

They don't need to send the jobs out of the country to make them non-union. A practice I have seen is to convert the job to contracted labor. The contractor agrees to get the job done to a standard. Contractor pays the employees and is not bound by company union agreements. The same job...

The number one job of the union is to make money for the union. This closely followed by job no. 2, grow the union. After that comes represent our members, help them make more money, ect..... Now, what does a company get for hiring union workers? Higher payroll. Someone has to pay for...

capital C or small c? Two different churchs.

This is a typical FAA do nothing study. If you skip to the recommendations, you can see them quickly discount every option as too expensive, not effective except for balls on the wires which are not overly effective at night or in bad weather. We had a OH58 strike wires in Germany (nobody's...

A wise old W4 once told me there are three things every pilot needs to know. What they are capable of doing with an aircraft. What the aircraft is capable of doing. And what it takes to scare the crap out themselves. He then said usually all three happen at about the same time and if you...

Did you suffer spatial disorientation flying an airplane or a helicopter? It's no fun either way, but airplanes dynamically want to fly and helicopters fight you and don't want to fly. We make them fly. And yes I've experienced it while IMC in a helicopter and with the help of my co-pilot...

This pilot seems to have been engaged in the practice of SCUD running. If he in fact struck power lines, then there is nobody to blame but the pilot. And that would make this tragedy nothing like Kolbe's crash other than they were both avoidable. The FAA is notorious for getting their...

How du you not notice the station goes off the air when it is a "radio town" and since "people love the station"? If it goes off the air and anyone was listening, you would think someone would have called in. It sounds like the AM station was there as an after thought so they could run the FM...

There is a lot of pressure in the military to get the mission done and when I flew, it was always train as we're going to fight. During the war, we flew some when we shouldn't have, but it wasn't just our lives on the line. In a training environment, it is hard to say no when the mission says...

As stated above, this confirmed what we were all thinking but hoping wasn't true. Prayers are with the families and loved ones that lost these good men. I have a suspicion that the reporter that asked why they took off for a training flight in that weather, asked the pertinent question. My...

Yes the crew would have emergency radios and pin flares in their vests. CH53s don't normally just fall out of the sky. If they hit a roll cloud (or clear air roll coming over the mountain) they probably were not able to autorotate. With 3 engines, it would take something extreme to make...