Departure and Arrival

Posted on Thu, 01 November 2007 by Chris Penningroth

     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." 

     I think I said something to the effect "You mean ‘My wife,’ right?"

     "No, it’s really your Mom," he replied.

     Thinking this had to be some sort of joke, I took the handset and answered "Major Penningroth." 

     It really was my Mom.  She had called to let me know Grandma Penningroth had just passed away.

     So as I was heading earthward from the heavens from my sortie this morning, her soul passed by.  I’m sure she blew me a kiss.  That was what she did. 

Posted in Family & Friends, Homelife | 1 Comment

Anti-CAVU

Posted on Thu, 01 November 2007 by Chris Penningroth

     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 try to do some BFM, which both of us were looking forward to.  The uncooperative weather forced us to hang out in radar trail a lot.  We tried to do a couple heat-to-guns sets, but all we really ended up doing was playing strafe rag for the guy at six o’clock, we were primarily avoiding flying into clouds. 

     Normally the flight was the highlight of the day, but today got really interesting after we landed.  By ‘interesting’ I don’t in any sense mean to imply that any of us had any fun.  It just got really busy in unusual ways.  No, no combat, no starting a land war in Asia, no resurgent former Soviet States going for Cold War glory.  Just non-routine things that popped up unexpectedly. 

     At least I got to fly!

Posted in F-16 Operations, USAF | 2 Comments

Twice the Fun

Posted on Wed, 24 October 2007 by Chris Penningroth

     Today was a pair of SEAD/Force Protection sorties.  Four of us jumped out in front of a four-ship of strikers and practiced weaving in and out of SAM rings and knocked a couple Red Air fighters back a peg or two. 

     Two sorties in one day! I’ve almost made RAP for the month.  Attached life. . . *sigh*.

Posted in F-16 Operations, USAF | Comments Off on Twice the Fun

Shipping

Posted on Thu, 18 October 2007 by Chris Penningroth

     Wow! Here’s something you don’t want to see the day you buy a stock — a huge drop in price in high volume! Two days ago I purchased shares of a shipping company.  The sector looks like it’s doing pretty well, and I picked what looked like the best of the bunch.  It had about 35% institutional ownership (according to MSN Money) and was ranked highly by IBD.  I checked the charts and it was definitely well-extended from a decent buying point, so I knew I was taking a risk (like leaving a couple grand in a money market that gets eaten by inflation isn’t a risk in and of itself!).  Sure enough, the order went through first thing next morning, and the stock got crushed during the day. 

     Lucky for me I’m not prone to panic, because it went up on high volume the next day!

Posted in Finance, Stocks | Comments Off on Shipping

Blog Call

Posted on Sat, 13 October 2007 by Chris Penningroth

     If you happen to be in the Pacific NW in late Oct/early Nov and like to write on the Internet, Anwyn‘ll be hosting a Blogofogorama in a couple weeks.  I hear the main topic will be Saint Peters’ historic defeat of the Islamic Fundamentalist Balrog on the bridge of Lepanto-dûm.  Or something like that.  [Wow. . . how un-PC of me! –ed]

     I wish I could get there! Methinks my wife and newborn wouldn’t so much appreciate Dad taking off just now. 

Posted in Internet, Tolkien, What\'s Right | 3 Comments

Flight of the Stork

Posted on Fri, 12 October 2007 by Chris Penningroth

     Perhaps I should say "Landing of the Stork."  Christina and I just welcomed a healthy baby boy into the family. 

     Mother and son are doing splendidly! Christina spent 2 hours, 19 minutes in labor.  This was our first kid, and since I figured she was going to be in labor for a good long time, I suggested she take the epidural.  She elected to go with no drugs.  I’m pretty proud of her!

     Immediately following the birth, I started trying to teach the kid Faraday’s Law, but then I realized I forgot it after the physics final back in 1989.  I settled with reciting the equation for general relativity.  The nurses then suggested I try a lullaby.  I don’t know what’s more sleep-inducing, the barely-remembered songs of my infancy, or the partially-remembered nuclear physics from college.  Either way I went, he fell asleep pretty quickly. 

     I’d best start teaching him how to play football.

     . . . That would be NFL football, the other game is called soccer, no matter what my European wife says!

Posted in Family & Friends, Homelife | 3 Comments

Marketing

Posted on Fri, 05 October 2007 by Chris Penningroth

     I haven’t written about investing for awhile.  I recently sold my holdings in Apple, it gapped up about a week ago and the volume seemed to be drying up.  I made my 20% gain on it, although not in the IBD-recommended eight weeks or less.  So I sold, making a small profit. 

     Other issues I’ve been scoping out have been Crocs and Force Protection.  They’ve done well this week, but they went up on extremely light volume yesterday while the rest of the market chugged higher.  That leaves me a tad concerned.  Crocs is the maker of the shoes everyone seems to be buying.  The danger there of course is that everyone who wants them has them, and earnings will dry up.  Force Protection makes the Mine-Resistant Anti-Ambush vehicles that are in-demand in Downrangeland.  They’re going to be facing some competition from Oshkosh trucks at a minimum, and depending on which team wins the most contracts, Force Protection may go nowhere.  I’d consider it a fairly good risk, but I’m prepared to have to sell later on with no profit. 

     I’ll offer the standard disclaimer:  I’m an amateur investor.  You must do your own research.  I tend to buy things late and have to sell early, making only a little profit.  By the time you read this, there’s a good chance the stock will be on the way down. 

Posted in Business, Finance, Stocks | Comments Off on Marketing

Welcome Back to the Den

Posted on Thu, 04 October 2007 by Chris Penningroth

     The 13 FS arrived back at home station today.  They flew 13 jets home.  Go figure!

Posted in "Downrange", F-16 Operations, USAF | Comments Off on Welcome Back to the Den

Welcome to Weltanschauung!

Posted on Tue, 02 October 2007 by Chris Penningroth

     Greetings to visitors from the Cox & Forkum website! I’d love to say to check back here for cartoons, but unfortunately for lack of a picture, a thousand words will have to do.  We’ll have plenty of time for commiserating later, we’ve all got to learn to get along without their poignant talent.   

     As for the Penningroths, my little brother’s the one in our family with the drawing talent.  He doesn’t have a website.  I’m all you’ve got!

     Maybe we can convince them to make drawings of F-16s bombing appropriate targets?

Posted in Weltanschauung Viewers | Comments Off on Welcome to Weltanschauung!

SEPT

Posted on Tue, 02 October 2007 by Chris Penningroth

     Let’s see, what did I do today to top off last night’s divert to Hachinohe?

     I had the brakes fail on taxi.  Then after "New jet, new day" I had the engine fail shortly after takeoff, followed quickly by a successful flame-out approach and landing.  Then I took off again with a similar engine problem that terminated in a flameout approach and landing.  Then I had an oil system malfunction after takeoff with the engine seizing, followed by a flameout approach and landing.  Then I had the flight controls nearly completely fail after takeoff, so I simply RTB’d to a no-HUD, no-AOA gauge visual straight-in.  Then I had the engine fail again.  Then while I was doing an unrestricted climb to 32,000′ the jet went out of control, so I simply let go of the controls and gave it ten seconds for HAL to try to fix itself before I intervened and showed the computer how to fly a modern, high-performance fighter jet.  Then I called it a day.

     I did mention this was situational emergency procedures training in a simulator, didn’t I?

    

Posted in F-16 Operations, USAF | Comments Off on SEPT