Peter Sheerin

@DJSnM @dpoddolphinpro Serious question: Do you calculate a new eye-to-wheels height interpretation of the VASI with the camera mounted, to avoid testing its impact rating?

@dpoddolphinpro I regularly fly with cameras on the tail skid of my plane. You just do the math in advance and know the range of allowable pitch angles for touchdown.

I still have no idea how they land that L-1011 without damaging Pegasus. The clearance between the main gear and the aft fins is an uncomfortably low number 😅

@GeorgiTsiklauri @bscholl @yishan @sdamico That ain’t hexclad.

@bscholl @yishan @sdamico Looks like a HexClad product. Ps. Love your jets

I love cooking on this thing.

@BuzzPatterson Definitely off-topic, and I’m not trying to insinuate relevance for the Edwards B-52 flight-test crash, but do you have any thoughts about Bud Holland and Fairchild? Halfway through this now youtu.be/__tuSld3u6o?is…

I really didn’t like G’s. This guy sustains 12 Gs for 15 seconds! That’s studly. I couldn’t do it.

@Ezekle1 @MCCCANM @MCCCANM this was definitely not Captain Steeeve. And where the fuck was the Red Cross? This would have been a great Mass Care training exercise. I’m a former Red Cross volunteer of the year, and a slightly (ahem) higher Red Cross award winner, and I’m ashamed ARC wasn’t there.

He fed all 150 of us before he made himself a plate. Friday the 13th. United flight 2480, San Francisco to Houston. Somewhere over New Mexico, a passenger collapsed in the bathroom. The plane went quiet in that particular way, the kind where strangers who will never know each other's names start silently praying for the same person. We made an emergency landing in Albuquerque. An ambulance was already waiting on the tarmac. That should have been the story. But the delay pushed our crew past their legal flying hours. FAA rules. Nobody's fault, just the math of safety regulations meeting a long, hard day. A new crew had to fly in from Chicago. We weren't leaving until almost 10:30 that night. Seven extra hours. In an airport. With cranky kids, empty stomachs, and the particular exhaustion of watching a short delay quietly turn into an entire evening you didn't plan for. United sent meal vouchers. Eventually. 7:15 p.m. Every restaurant in the terminal was already closed. 150 people. A stack of useless paper. Nowhere to spend it. That's when our captain picked up his phone. He didn't ask corporate. Didn't wait for approval. Didn't make an announcement to the gate so everyone would know what he was about to do. He just called a local pizza place and ordered 30 pizzas. Out of his own pocket. When the boxes arrived, he didn't hand them off to a gate agent and walk away. He organized a line, by seat number, the only fair way to do it, and stood there in his full captain's uniform, serving slices to exhausted strangers one at a time. When a box ran out, he broke it down and opened the next one. He fed all 150 of us. Then, and only then, he made himself a plate. Before we finally boarded the replacement flight, he stood at the door and shook the hand of every single passenger as they walked past him to their seat. Every one. I've flown more flights than I can count. I have never seen anything like this. Nothing about that night was in his job description. Nobody would have faulted him for handing out vouchers and disappearing into the crew lounge to rest. He had every reason to be as tired as the rest of us. He chose to be the one still standing, still serving, still making sure 150 strangers felt like someone in that building actually cared whether they ate. That's not customer service. That's just who he is when no one's required to be. To the captain of Flight 2480, somewhere out there, you probably don't think this was a big deal. It was. 🍕✈️

@BuzzPatterson @SilverCignet What are your thoughts about the VC-25Bs lacking in-flight refueling?

@SilverCignet No. I should’ve.

Farewell SAM 2900! You’ve earned your retirement! Thank you for all the cool places you took me! ❤️🇺🇸✈️

@MCCCANM @Putittheretoo Be careful with the lanyard criticism. He’s stated it’s a fundraiser to raise awareness and funds for vascular Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. However, IIRC, his channel is owed by VC or PE.

@Putittheretoo Really? Now that’s just being an actor. Grift.

A controversy in aviation social media. It’s YouTube videos of “Captain Steeeve”. Young pilots don’t like him. Tanker meme pages smoke him. Said to be retired from American, but dresses in uniform. I don’t know much about it, but the hate in my chat groups is visceral.

@MCCCANM I support the controversy. Though my feelings don’t rise to the level of hate, I did unsubscribe from his channel. If you want to pick my brain as to my opinion, feel free to DM me. I’m not yet a pilot, but had a USAF CFI for my trial flight & know ACP-125 better than most. K6WEB

@BuzzPatterson What were the consequences of your copilot getting tagged as INOP? I’d view that as a serious psychological screening failure), and perhaps not having training difficult enough to expose a weakness that needs to be trained against.

Another flying story. (And the time I should’ve died). 😳 When I was the Operations Officer for a USAF C-141 squadron at Travis AFB, CA, we had an “Island Run” where we flew to Hawaii, Johnston Atoll, Kwajalein, Midway Island, and into crew rest. The next day, back to Honolulu. Long first day and mostly in the middle of the night. On approach to Midway one midnight we hit severe turbulence on at about 500 feet and ingested birds into two engines. Lost one and the other was degraded but still operating at about 50%. I initiated a go around, climbed out, and entering holding to run checklists and access our damage. The weather folks in Midway radioed that it was only going to get worse. We couldn’t get in and our divert base was Honolulu. Thankfully, I’d “tankered” some fuel. For the wife and the kids, we used to say. Unfortunately, because of the severe turbulence, we lost our dual navigation systems (INS) and diverting back to Honolulu was our only option. Initially, I asked for a “DF steer” on the HF radios. Pilots will get how nits that is. Basically, a WWII means of picking up a radio signal and flying to it for about 3 hours. It’s an emergency situation, definitely. To compound matters, my copilot was so freaked out she became “inoperable.” She couldn’t talk. So, now I’m soloing. In what I can only surmise was a God thing, my flight engineer “Smitty” happened to be an avid fisherman and just happened to have an original Garmin GPS in his helmet bag. This was our conversation exactly. He pulls out something I‘ve never seen. He says, “hey, will this work boss?” I said, “fuck yeah, plug in HNL and give me a heading!” It worked. We taped Smitty’s little GPS to the cockpit dash so I could see the course and navigate accordingly. I flew that frikking line like it was life, because it was life. Approximately 3 hours later, we picked up the lights of the islands. Honolulu picked us up on radio and put us on vectors. We and landed safely in Honolulu. Sometimes you feel God’s hand on your shoulder. I made my copilot fly the approach to bring her around. Much like driving a car after an accident. She wasn’t happy about it but she cowboyed up. The night I probably should’ve died.

@Mkellytx2 @Random_Walk_PDX I indeed checked the field elevation before posting that. But since posting that, the apparent ADS-B plot I saw was deleted. But the last of the three points was about 4,400 AGL or greater, which should have been enough, but its deletion makes me wonder if it was fake.

@Mkellytx2 @Random_Walk_PDX So it looks like the last ADS-B was about 2,000 feet above the airfield. Is that not high enough to initiate ejection? Questions: What are all of the modes the AC can select for what happens when he pulls his ejection handles?Would the jumpseaters be wearing parachutes?

The seats have not been modernized. They're still the old school Weber cordite catapult from your T-38 days. No sequencing, weekly knowledge questions about controlled sequencing fire and no fire. AC acts as the director, RN acts as the jumpmaster for the jump seats. That low they never had a chance to get out.

@AirNavRadar Multiple news sources have listed you as providing tracking data of the flight. Are the details of that something you’re willing to post here? Would help a lot of people understand what the press is not explaining well.

🚨 BREAKING: U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress Crashes After Takeoff at Edwards Air Force Base A U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress long-range strategic bomber crashed shortly after takeoff from Edwards Air Force Base in California on Monday morning. The incident occurred around 11:20 a.m. local time, prompting an immediate response from emergency crews on the airfield, located approximately 100 miles north of Los Angeles. “Emergency crews immediately responded to the scene and the situation is ongoing,” base officials said. More details are expected as the situation develops. 📸 Photo: airlive.net ✈️ Track thousands of aircraft live worldwide: airnavradar.go.link/cITxu #Breaking #B52 #Stratofortress #USAirForce #MilitaryAviation #AviationNews #AirNavRadar

@Mkellytx2 Can you provide us non military guys with what no sequencing means? Does every seat have to pull on their own?

@bscholl That’s what I assumed, but with at least one F-14 on its way back to flying status, it seemed like I should ask specifically. When do you expect to fire up the first engine?

@PetesGuide No. Obviously we are not literally bringing back Concorde. We are bringing back supersonic passenger flight in a better modern form.

Challenge accepted 🫡

@ShayneB52 @BoeingB52BUFF @SGTWipper1Each That looks like enough altitude to get everyone out. Field elevation is 2,311 feet, so 4,200–2,311=1889 feet.

@BoeingB52BUFF @SGTWipper1Each Very strange. Seems like flight control loss. Heard there were 2 chutes. Hopefully nobody one in the bottom since it’s a test plane.

NOOOOOOOOOO! There's literally nothing left... B-52 just crashed shortly after takeoff at Edwards Air Force Base.

@ColonelTowner Maybe the new engines? Are they far enough along in that program to have started flight testing?

Why was the B-52 at Edwards? The only B52s there are in the 419th Flight Test Squadron. What were they testing?

@jamsession12211 @dirspielbergo @MCCCANM I believe it used to be related to radio call sign prefixes; assigned to countries by int agreement. In the US, prefixes started as A(rmy) N(avy) K (civil W of Mississippi) W (civil E of Mississippi). ICAO sometimes uses different letters. So IATA: HNL, ICAO: PHNL, FAA LID: HNL

@dirspielbergo @MCCCANM Thank you for the answer that’s. A neat fact I will store away

It’s 2,136 nautical miles from PHNL to KSFO, almost all of it over water. What happens if we have an emergency? The simple answer is that we’ll either turn back to HNL or continue to SFO, whichever is closest. To decide, we take into account the winds, assuming we have to descend to 10,000’ & drop a point where it’s an equal amount of time to either. If past the point, continue to SFO. Otherwise, turn around. This is called our “CP” or “Critical Point”. It’s also sometimes called an “Equal Time Point”. It shifts from day to day, based on the winds, but out of the islands it’s usually at around 140° West. That’s about halfway in terms of mileage; the Coast Guard used to put a ship there in the early days, known as “Ocean Station November”. It served as a weather ship, had a beacon for navigation & was on standby for rescues at 30° North, 140° West. (PanAm 6 did ditch near the Cutter once in 1956, with all aboard surviving) Today, the Cutter is no longer there. Also, our CP is a little West of the mid point in terms of miles, because the winds are a light tailwind. If the winds were stronger, it would be even further West, because turning around means we have to battle a headwind now, slowing us down. LAX is actually further from HNL at 2,217 nm, where SFO is 2,081 nm because it’s further West than LAX, so SFO is our best bet. Hope that helps!

@MCCCANM @SoftZoey1 So I can think of one possibility. Requires two things: 1) Computers down or overseas at some dinky airport where the manifest is on paper, and 2) the guy can read upside down.

@SoftZoey1 I’m curious which airlines allow other passengers to view the flight manifest. Mine certainly doesn’t. I don’t think my friends do, either.

I was on a 6-hour flight, praying nobody would sit next to me. At the last minute, a very handsome guy dropped into the seat beside mine. Tall. Clean. Smelled expensive. About an hour into the flight, he smiled and said, “I know this sounds crazy, but I feel like I’ve met you before.” I rolled my eyes. Here we go again.

@Lindleymarie3 @PatrickMcSwain Based on your post, I can tell that you are an idiot & have not experienced attempting to correct an incorrectly voted ballot before it was submitted in California. Question 1: If you ask for a replacement ballot in California, what do the precinct workers do to void your ballot?

@PatrickMcSwain Wow. California has a very thorough system if they are making you prove you are who you say you are, and making sure there is no fraud. You can go in person to your county elections office to cure your vote - both Pratt and Hilton want everyone to go in person anyway.

Wow. I tried to "Cure" my California Ballot, first by their Website Online Curing, then by fax. Rejected as not matching again at 12:03 Pacific. My wife has also been rejected again. It appears they can block "curing" ballots. I guess it's legal, they can just keep saying they don't like your signature. Wow. I'll try mail next.

@BuzzPatterson Buzz—I’ve never served, but several of my extended family and mentors have; some notable. I concur with your opinion. I helped a nuke warhead designer do several cool things, including promoting TRIADS, finding a despot on the run, firing another one, etc. This memorial is shit.

This GWOT vet thinks it‘s a politically safe, fecklessly abhorrent memorial to those of us who fought it. Much less our heroes who paid the ultimate price. This angers me. Ditch it and start over. Maybe have a real vet design it.🇺🇸