Finally…

Posted on by March 8, 2023

Not that anyone will be held responsible, but at least there IS a hearing going on!

Congress revisited the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the current threat level from the country where the United States was at war for 20 years in a pair of hearings Wednesday.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee heard from six witnesses in a hearing that focused on evacuation efforts during the final two weeks of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan in August 2021.

Full article, HERE from the Washington Examiner.

This is the testimony of one Marine Sergeant…

That is hard to watch… He lost his right arm and leg to the bombing, and it’s a miracle he’s alive.

Perspective…

Posted on by March 7, 2023

Changes depending on where you are, or what you are doing…

Chasing submarines in the Pacific was always ‘interesting’, even more so when you had to bounce from location to location. Many do not realize how BIG the Pacific actually is…

There is a reason that military and aviators talk about the ‘tyranny of distance’ in the Pacific.

That’s California in the upper right, Australia in the lower left, and Antarctica at the bottom. 7140 miles from LA to Sydney, or 5477 miles from LA to Tokyo might give you an idea. By ship, it’s 20 days to Tokyo, 28 days to Australia.

And you can hide a LOT of submarines in that body of water!!!

Sometimes…

Posted on by March 5, 2023

You just have to wonder about some procedures…

*** British Airways Flight Operations Department Notice ***
There appears to be some confusion over the new pilot role titles.
This notice will hopefully clear up any misunderstandings. The titles P1, P2, and Co-Pilot will now cease to have any meaning, within the BA operations manuals. They are to be replaced by Handling Pilot, Non-handling Pilot, Handling Landing Pilot, Non-Handling Landing Pilot, Handling Non-Landing Pilot, and Non Handling Non-Landing Pilot.

The Landing Pilot, is initially the Handling Pilot and will handle the take-off and landing except in role reversal when he is the Non-Handling Pilot for taxi until the Handling Non-Landing Pilot, hands the handling to the Landing Pilot at eighty knots. The Non-Landing (Non-Handling, since the Landing Pilot is handling) Pilot reads the checklist to the Handling Pilot until after Before Descent Checklist completion, when the Handling Landing Pilot hands the handling to the Non-Handling Non-Landing Pilot who then becomes the Handling Non-Landing Pilot.

The Landing Pilot is the Non-Handling Pilot until the “decision altitude” call, when the Handling Non-Landing Pilot hands the handling to the Non-Handling Landing Pilot, unless the latter calls “go-around”, in which case the Handling Non-Landing Pilot, continues Handling and the Non-Handling Landing Pilot continues non-handling until the next call of “land” or “go-around”, as appropriate. In view of the recent confusion over these rules, it was deemed necessary to restate them clearly.

To avoid confusion, here is the restatement in American English below the fold…

Continue reading →

Burp…

Posted on by March 4, 2023

OMG, I ate too much!!! Cedar did a fantastic job with an ‘Italian’ meal at her house last night, and we had a huge turnout!

The usual suspects, plus Jesse coming down from OKC, Becky and hubby from Dallas, John from over by Gainesville, and Ben Yalow from Dallas.

The discussions were all over the place, from the opening paragraphs of both versions of  RAH’s The Puppet Masters, to research for menus, to plotting for new novels, to hang ups on works in process, to various military things, discussions of guns in books and movies, and Jesse brought a box of his 3D creations to play with…

And those are just the ones I caught parts of, there were ‘other’ discussions going on in the kitchen, on the porch, and in the living room as people circulated!

And I got caught up on my beta reads I owed people, so I can finally get back on my WIP tomorrow! I didn’t get a lot done the last two weeks, because of the situation and worry over PP, but I did at least get up to 42k words.

And I think the radio interview went fairly well, and they didn’t have to bleep me once, so I’m proud of that. But it IS embarrassing when you discuss people and ‘revision’ of books (Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming) and then forget the name of Roald Dahl’s wife (Patricia Neal) during the discussion… sigh

The interview can be found HERE.

Something a bit different…

Posted on by March 3, 2023

I’ll be doing a radio interview today with Ed Bonderenka!

Looking forward to speaking with author JL Curtis today on
Your American Heritage. Join us. Call in.  2pm Eastern
I’m sure we’ll be talking writing and books, and who knows what else. Feel free to listen and have a good laugh when I screw up! I hope Ed has his bleep finger warmed up (sailor over here)…

Home…FINALLY…

Posted on by March 2, 2023

Welp, yesterday was an ‘experience’ I don’t care to repeat…

Got up early to catch and earlier flight home from SMF, only to have one pilot turn up sick. Back on my original flight to DEN. Got there, looked at the weather and went and bought a big bottle of water. There was a SOLID front scheduled to hit DFW about the time I arrived!

Sure enough, a half hour out of DEN on what was supposedly a 1+20 flight to DFW, we started hitting turbulence. And couldn’t get out of it!

And then the fun started! A reroute NORTH, not south around the southern edge of the storm front. We ended up north of Ft. Smith, then routed down about to Alexandria, LA, then in the back way to DFW, all in what ‘I’ would call moderate turbulence. I could tell we were changing altitudes every 10-15 minutes, but we never got any smooth air. The flight attendants spent over an hour in their seats, and our 1+20 flight turned into 2+30 when we finally landed an hour late (and sketchy on gas).

But I did have a first on that flight! The first time EVER my bag was the first one up the conveyor belt!!! Grabbed the bag and ran to the car (many thanks to JimJim for coming to get me). We had just gotten on 820 heading out when the RAIN hit, closely followed by wind gusts I’m guessing were upward of 60mph, that were moving my SUV from one lane to the other. And we had to dodge at least one of the big road signs that been blown into the roadway! Folks were hiding under overpasses, or in some cases just stopped in the lanes (IDJITS).

It took right at an hour to get to Rhome, normally a half hour drive at speed, but we were doing 25 to 30mph and there were times we might have been able to see 100 yards…maybe… And more people stopped in odd places. Pretty much everybody was running their hazard warnings, and skating around due to the amount of water on the road.

A little over 2 hours later, I was finally home! And as soon as I finished this post, I crashed…

So don’t expect any replies early this morning. And a last update on PP, she is doing better, had her second PT and they ‘exercised’ the joint and nothing came apart! Great news, even if she was hurting afterward.

And some people were asking about the amount of snow up in Lake County… From a commercial photog who got a drone up!

6 inches of snow lakeside, 12 inches up where we were, and 18-19 inches on tops of the hills!

On the road…

Posted on by March 1, 2023

Travelling back to Texas today (hopefully)…

Go read the folks on the sidebar while my able assistant works on tomorrow’s post…

Reality in 3, 2…

Posted on by February 28, 2023

And the ‘joys’ of EV ownership…

YouTube personality Steve Hammes leased a Hyundai Kona Electric sport utility vehicle for his 17-year-old daughter Maddie for three reasons: it was affordable, practical and allowed Maddie to put her cash toward college, not fuel. Now, the upstate New York resident has a dilemma many EV owners can relate to: finding available charging stations far away from home.

Full article, HERE from ABC News.

Personally, I think  Subway has the right idea…

But I’ll never own/lease one. My trips are too long and I don’t want to spend as much time charging as I do driving…

Much less what the ‘cost’ of charging stations will be sooner rather than later.

Your thoughts?

Whupped…

Posted on by February 26, 2023

Sigh… The grand’s dad took them snowboarding at the VERY hilly golf course day before yesterday and wore their butts out… THEY slept in yesterday morning, but the pups were whining and scratching at the door at 0600 as usual… Kids got pancakes and bacon for ‘brunch’ when they finally rolled out about 1000. PP is doing better, but arm is still hurting. And snow is melting, but they are now calling for more snow tonight and tomorrow. Oh joy, oh joy…

Fast forward a day- The kids slept in again, the dogs didn’t… And the kids wore me AND the dogs out.

Now they’ve cancelled school for tomorrow… Sigh…

Ramping up…

Posted on by February 26, 2023

This used to be a once in a while thing…

The U.S. Navy plane had been in the air over the South China Sea for a few hours when a warning came crackling over the radio.

“No approaching any more or you will pay full responsibility,” said a voice from a ground station belonging to China’s air force.

Full article HERE from NBC News.

Now days, it seems that just about every flight and every Freedom Of Navigation (FON) trip in that part of the South China Sea gets intercepted/threatened…

A number of years ago an EP-3 (PR32) was hit by a Chinese fighter attempting to ‘bounce’ them. After that the Chinese became a lot more circumspect about approaching, but now…

I can’t help but wonder if the next ‘provocation’ is going to be a shootdown.