I found myself thinking about this shit again this morning, which means this conversation will be happening Tuesday when I go back. I’ve been charged with his training so it’s time to push him. I’m considering including my boss, for a witness and support. He’s observed the laziness on his own so he will probably want to contribute.
Probably an apt description. But also - I’m way too old to have my time wasted on a middle aged slipdick who can’t get his shit together to productively contribute to the team. Produce or move on. Also I got a new bra and y’all it’s weird having boobs. These things are dropping into the pockets and fluffing and I was unprepared.
They're still in use, so it's very possible. My best friend was the chief Air Traffic Controller at Vancouver Airport during the Vancouver Olympics, so he spent 2 years working through airspace security shit that relied on coordination between Canadian / US Air Forces, Border Patrols, and Homeland Security. He had 2 U2's under his control that were used for high-level surveillance. It was kind of impressive how much "hidden" security shit went on behind the scenes for that stuff.
Believe it or not one of their problems was having the gain on the radar set too high... it was way too sensitive and was picking up a bunch of non-threat signals. Quite often they were picking up flocks of birds and that was resulting in various scramble responses... mostly from the US side. The US Air Force and Homeland air protection guys were fighting for turf which was quite interesting. When it was all done, my buddy sent their ATC heads a big framed pic of a meme that was going around of a photoshopped flock of Canadian Geese that were strapped with suicide bombs. I wish I could find a copy of the pic, but a ton of Googling has let me down, and I'm sure I'm now on some "do not fly" list somewhere.
High altitude flight suits and diapers. One of my friends served at an air base in Korea a few years back. They had guys that did what you see in the video below in these practice runs. Driving a Camaro or Corvette for the Air Force is not a bad gig. The wing supports fall away when they take off, but when they land, the wings scrape along titanium skid plates. The Dragon Lady is a bitch to land. Instead of letting the wings tip and scrape, these guys would catch up to the wing and have a passenger reach out and grab the wing to keep it from scraping and hold it until a stop. I couldn't find video of that, because I'm pretty sure that's not regulation.
My father in law did this during Vietnam in modified GTOs without roofs. He said it was one of his favorite parts of the job. His favorite was seeing the SR71 land at his base for impromptu repairs, and then take off and instantly disappear afterwards.
I don't know... I feel like it's coming back around again with the stuff that SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and other startups are doing in aerospace... there's some cool shit going on that has the advantage of past knowledge and modern day materials and engineering. https://boomsupersonic.com/ I 100% agree that the Blackbird is the meanest, ugliest, baddest, leakiest motherfucker on the tarmac right now, but I'm pretty excited to see what's coming up.
That website says at 60,000 feet you experience the curvature of the earth. So, you're just going to keep posting lies here! We know it's flat, idiot.
Capitalize that "i", you bastard. And we all know it's just atmospheric optical distortion, not an actual curve in a huge globe or something.
All kidding aside, I've been following that startup with interest... they have some HUGE players from finance and tech involved... lots of credibility and history (previous directors of the Skunk Works, the tech lead for SpaceX Falcon, etc), and if you look at their individual achievements, it's fucking impressive. It'll be interesting to see how well they do.
Fish Eye Lenses to fool us all, bro. You can see the ice wall if you look close enough. And the moon turns on at sundown.
With so much wing surface, that jet loves to climb. Seeing in person is even more spectacular, the damn thing looks like it's near vertical. It still blows my mind that while the engine, avionics, and sensors have seen multiple upgrades throughout the years, the airframe itself is a 60+ year old design. Take a look at the saga of Air Transat Flight 236