Archive for November, 2007

A Red Air Kind of Week

Friday, November 30th, 2007
     I flew three times this past week, but always as Red Air.  Oh, well, it’s better than not flying at all.      On one of the Red Air sorties, we got to use the practice jamming pod.  That made life pretty interesting for our opponents du jour.  They managed to deal with [...]

Magnum!

Tuesday, November 27th, 2007
     Today’s exercise was a simulated Destruction of Enemy Air Defense mission in the good ‘ol DMT (Distributed Mission Trainer, the current fancy name for "simulator").  Huck, Beast, Nash, and I went up against a plethora of SAMs, ZSU-23-4s, AAA, and MiGs.  It was a pretty good ‘Piccolo Drill’ workout with HOTAS, every couple seconds it seemed [...]

Assignment Matching

Monday, November 26th, 2007
     I just received an e-mail the other day that I may be required to move earlier than planned.  So instead of being guaranteed to ride out the ‘Turbulent and dynamic’ cycles of F-16 assignments that have been the result of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure that shut down five squadrons worth of Vipers, [...]

I Thought So

Saturday, November 10th, 2007
     It turns out the Cuero, TX "Chupacabra" was a Texas coyote that had lost its hair.       Nice try, though!

Let’s See if This Makes Prime Time

Friday, November 9th, 2007
     I sent the following e-mail to a nationally syndicated television show host.  The host in question seems to like vocabulary words even more than I do.  Let’s see if this makes the e-mail review section!     I applaud you for disallowing tergiversation during your interviews.    I like to [...]

Selling

Thursday, November 8th, 2007
     For any of you who have been tracking my investments with me, here’s what I’ve experienced and seen lately:      First, IBD has suggested that the market is now in a correction.  After teasing us with 5 or 6 rolling distribution days for what seems like the past two years (or at least [...]

I’ve Named My Dining Room Table “Jericho”

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007
     Little DJ may nearly be what my friends call a "Sucker Baby."  He’s pretty easy to care for.  He sleeps 6-7 hours per night most of the time.  The only drawback is that he gets fussy from 7-11 PM, so it’s tough for us to get to sleep on time during the week.  Luckily he lets [...]

Keep Working On It

Thursday, November 1st, 2007
     Some guy built a 21′ replica of an X-Wing.  Good on him!      Too bad this looks like it’s just an oversized Estes model rocket.      When someone builds an actual X-Wing, let me know.  I know of a canyon near Big Bend, TX that resembles the Death Star [...]

Departure and Arrival

Thursday, November 1st, 2007
     The primary thing that made today a lousy one:  I had just finished my sortie and was getting ready to deal with other happenstances when I got paged to go to the Ops Desk.  Corey, the Samurai’s Aviation Resource Management Journeyman extraordinaire handed me the phone and said "It’s your Mom."  [...]

Anti-CAVU

Thursday, November 1st, 2007
     Someone once told me what WOKSOF (or was it WOCSOF?) stood for.  I can’t actually remember the acronym, but it basically means the weather could charitably be described as fecal.  It wasn’t quite that bad today, but the training airspace was most definitely socked in.       Hoser and I went out to [...]