Bill Griffith 🇺🇸 🛫 🔧

I know it's corny, but the thought keeps running through my head that after 60 years of flying I might have had my last waltz in a Cessna 172 on floats... and no the song is not about the flight instructor it's a metaphor about ♥️ #aviation Volume up #avegeek #airplane #oldduffer

This picture was taken about thirty years ago in the Olympic mountains of WA state. A mountain goat approached me and at first, I feared that he was going to butt me off of the cliff behind me, but I soon discovered that all he really wanted to do was lick the salty sweat off of my legs. So, I told him to have at it.

@SonsOfChesty Yes, and it's absolutely frightening me. Islamist killing each other in Sudan Syria and Pakistan. Iran shouting death to everyone, but these guys blame their sorry life on the Jooooooos

And you've bought into new hate faster than German citizens pre WWII. So many have been swept up by bought & paid for media influencers who built their brands to eventually sold to the highest bidder. Every former pro Trump influencer talking points shifted from anti islam to anti jew at the same time. Orwellian

I’m just going to leave this here

@Combat_learjet Thanks, it's been a blast. In this picture I'm landing a seaplane at the exact spot that I made my first solo landing sixty years earlier. Three great kids, four grandkids and a wonderful wife that I have been married to for fifty-four years. I've been blessed.

@BilGriffith I hope you are enjoying retirement

21 years ago today I had my last flight as an airline pilot.

@eMTBrides This is so true. If you have a red dot your flinch can be analyzed by watching the dot jerk around. Concentrating on the dot and forgetting about the trigger fixes this.

This Is How John 'Shrek' McPhee Trains Control Before this, he was pulling the trigger himself and flinching. John 'Shrek' McPhee uses this drill to remove anticipation. No anticipation = no flinch 🔫That’s why he can shoot with almost zero movement 🤛

@dirspielbergo It was the age 60 rule I would have happily flown to 65. I wasn’t excited about going overseas for five years to keep flying.

@BilGriffith Hope it was on your terms. I have been skating on thin ice last two medicals 😅

@vondelparkbaan 😆

@BilGriffith I don’t care

@lockhidmartinez No website but here is a picture for you

@BilGriffith Just followed, btw your bio says Atmospheric research pilot, is there any website i can read more about your work? It’s super interesting.

@Habu12 Yes it was a great airplane

@BilGriffith I've yet to find anyone that flew the DC-9/MD-80 series that didn't love it. I was too young to ever get to.

@Habu12 👍

@BilGriffith Mad Dog?

I admire Joe Kent and I am thankful for his service but I disagree his decision. Yes this war is costing innocent lives and bringing economic hardships world wide but it pales in comparison to a radioactive Middle East. Which is something that I believe this war is preventing.

@OnDisasters Sorry but the fight engineers control the throttles but they don’t set the power. Pitch and power are a part of airmanship. Flight engineers are not pilots. They will set power that a pilot commands. The throttles to the right of the pilot are not there for decoration

B-29 approach. Note the throttle levers moving on their own, on the right. That´s no Poltergeist activity: they are controlled by the Flight Engineer, sitting behind and not seen on the video

What does US air superiority over Iran mean for the Iranian people? It means that the people who weeks ago were protesting the Iranian regime and being killed by the tens of thousands for their efforts now have the ability to electronically target their oppressors.

@DJSnM Our high school age grandson lives in as small town. After school he works in a machine shop. He recently had to sign a nondisclosure agreement with @SpaceX. So, it appears that the tenacles of space travel are quite long.

Just found out my neighbors kid took got a job at Blue Origin. This is in addition to another neighbors whose daughter works there. Considering there are 7 houses on this street that’s quite a hit rate.

45 or so years ago I was flying a Cessna Citation from OTH (North Bend OR) to CEC (Cresent City CA) when ATC stopped our climb because we were being overtaken by F106. The F106 was on UHF and we were on VHF so I told the controller to tell the F106 pilot that we expected a show as he passed. We were below FL180. Next, I heard ATC issue a special VFR clearance to the Fighter. I warned our passengers that they may see a fighter soon and sure enough the F106 pulled up on our wing and the pilot waved. He eased out in front of us rolled inverted lit the afterburner and climbed out INVERTED. So, imagine this scene with the exception of the plane being inverted when the burners come on and the plane going upwards instead of down and you will get the idea. This is something that I will never forget. As to why a F106 was cruising down the Oregon coast at low altitude I don't have a clue.

@OnDisasters If you come to the @museumofflight Seattle and go into our Air Force 1 aircraft, you will be able to see the celestial navigation port on the ceiling of the aircraft cockpit.

Sent by a reader as "707 navigator". Anyone can confirm if it's the case? Reverse search didn´t yeld much results

Scott, can you imagine having Bomarc missiles located next to major cities in the US seeing that it was liquid fueled? This would require the fuel to be hurriedly added with the nuclear warhead attached. This could easily lead to a catastrophe, and it almost did. BOMARC missile accident site - Wikipedia The IM-99A had an operational radius of 200 miles (320 km) and was designed to fly at Mach 2.5–2.8 at a cruising altitude of 60,000 feet (18,000 m). It was 46.6 ft (14.2 m) long and weighed 15,500 pounds (7,000 kg). Its armament was either a 1,000-pound (450 kg) conventional warhead or a W40 nuclear warhead (7–10 kiloton yield). A liquid-fuel rocket engine boosted the Bomarc to Mach 2, when its Marquardt RJ43-MA-3 ramjet engines, fueled by 80-octane gasoline, would take over for the remainder of the flight.

@B_Garelick And they used nuclear warheads, because the radar system didn’t have the resolution to pick one aircraft out of a formation.

American cities were once ringed with air defense missiles, coastal artillery before that. Today the casemates sit empty and the radar sites are hiking destinations.

@ianbremmer @TalShprecher @gzeromedia How are we to gage the truth ?Leaking sensitive information while Americans lives are at risk using anonymous sources seems like you’re intent on driving a wedge between the U.S. and an ally in the middle of a war.

@TalShprecher @gzeromedia either i make it up or i work with 250 folks whose careers are devoted to understanding this, talking with the political leaders, relevant bureaucracies, and so forth. i’m ok if you want to go with the former.

trump is looking for an off-ramp in the war with iran. the israelis drive to keep striking makes the situation difficult. @gzeromedia

I hope that the people that are moving to Idaho are retired because there aren't new jobs moving to the state. We would move to ID and leave Seattle if our daughter didn't live next. Our son lives less than a mile away. Nobody in their right minds retires in Seattle however I didn't come here and I ain't leavin.

Anything surprising?

I was on a cruise from Athens to Haifa Israel. The ship would give the announcements in German and this would set many passengers off because at the start of the announcement they would sayACHTUNG ACHTUNG at which point gestures were made and f bombs flew. It happened with every announcement. Quite comical

THE CRUISE SHIP STORY I can't believe this happened to me. I finally admitted to myself that a girlfriend was not something the good Lord was going to give me, so I might as well go on vacation by myself. So I jump into an aeroplane and head down to Lauderdale to climb aboard a cruise ship for a week meandering the Caribbean. My suitcase is packed with $400 worth of scotch and $200 worth of cigars (money I would have spent on the girlfriend...so she missed out, whoever she is). So the first thing that happens is I'm in line to present my passport and ticket and while standing there I meet this comely maiden who is also traveling alone. I'm nice to her. I probably should have asked her to meet me for a drink later, but for whatever reason I didn't. I kept running into her on the cruise and it got super awkward. We'd avoid eye contact. So I give my baggage to the handlers and board the vessel, but can I go to my stateroom? No, I can't. For 6 hours, they keep us on the pool deck, all that time in the sun, with my skunk-screen in my suitcase, as is my bathing suit, so I can't swim. Only thing to do is buy drinks. I must have burned through a $300 bar bill. Finally they release us to go to our staterooms. I'd booked one on the very stern, the ass end of this bigass cruise ship, right, with a balcony so I could smoke cigars. Immediately I see a "NO SMOKING ON THE BALCONY SIGN." Fuck. Not only that, but there's a security camera pointed exactly at my balcony. Eventually, the crew brings my bags. I open up my bags. The whisky is all gone. I complain to a steward. "Outside alcohol is not allowed on the ship," he says. I ask if I'll get it back. He shakes his head. Fuck. My cell phone rings. It's The Irishman, who is my boss, who called to piss in my ear about a post, an article, I wrote on the Linky-Dink. I assumed no one would read it. In it, I said that small modular reactors were stupid because they'd have all the rules and regulations of bigass reactors, and as long as you have to go through all that shit, you may as well build 1300 megawatts instead of 80. The Irishman orders me to take it down and says the CEO wanted me fired that day, but The Irishman fought to keep me on the payroll, but man, he is pissed. And there's no wifi till we shove off. The whole thing added to my day being ruined. Finally we're underway, but we wait off the coast at speed zero, just sitting there, for hours. Exhaust from the engines makes all the outside air hazy with pollution - temperature inversion on a calm day with no wind. I decide I'll wait until we're doing 20 knots before lighting up a cigar. A few hours later, whatever delay held us up is over, and we set off for Bermuda or one of those Carib ports. I go to the balcony to smoke a stogey. Someone knocks on my stateroom door. It's the steward. "No smoking on the balcony, sir." Fuck. So I decide, at dinnertime, to go find some food. I couldn't believe the crowds. I mean, imagine the worst Christmas Eve crowd at O'Hare Airport, that's what it was like. After an hour wait, I got some mediocre choke-puke food. After that, I just ordered room service, but about all they had for room service was kid food. Hotdogs and chicky nuggies. So for another 5 days, I survived on hotdogs and chicken nuggets. And I had to do all my drinking at one of the bars, assuming I could get a seat at a barstool, hopefully away from the comely maiden. So arrival day back at Port Lauderdale. I had no idea when I'd get off the ship. They disembarked passengers by deck, and mine would be the last one called. It began to look like I'd miss my flight. When they did call my deck, almost 3 hours into the disembarking process, the elevators were so crammed with people and suitcases that I lugged 100 pounds of luggage down eleven flights of stairs and out to the gangway. At the exit of the pier facility, there are no taxis. So I try to arrange an uber or lyft, but everyone else departing had the same idea. Fuck. So I wait and I wait and I wait. Eventually, I got to the airport and onto a flight back to Newark. I shut the door of my apartment behind me and leaned up against the door and shut my eyes. Never again will I take a cruise. Never. And now you know...the cruise ship story. Good day!