Im lost without the PW thread!!!!

[robert theisen]

Have fun,i'm off to work now.

[robert theisen]

With the first top page post of the morning!

[robert theisen]

Later hoes!

[skippabcool]

FINALLY FRIDAY

[skippabcool]

RT was in and out

[skippabcool]

Posted over on WW.

[skippabcool]

It has been a while since I have done that.

[Wakeman22]

Morning skippa

[skippabcool]

Off to do some more emails for work. Then I get to do some windshield time.

[skippabcool]

Morning BigW

[Wakeman22]

How's the weather up there.

Its cooled back off here.

[skippabcool]

Dr, I am guessing your headed to your moms for this weekend. Have a good trip. Hope she is feeling good for the weekend.

[skippabcool]

How's the weather up there.

Its cooled back off here.

The wind blew through hard last night. I don't know what the temp is yet.

[Ewok]

hyphen,
I would love to learn about that. I know the basic airplanes, all this refueling stuff is new to me - I am learning a bunch. Do you think there will ever be aerial refueling of commercial aircraft?

No, when the we started doing aireal refueling (AR) the airlines looked at it too and determined its too dangerous to do with a plane full of people. Now they have extended range wide body's that can fly as long as most passengers comfort level, I don't think they need it at all now.

AR of heavy jets is one of the most dangerous things we do in the Air Force, there were many mid-air collisions in the early days of the 135 as we figured out the best procedures to minimize the risk. Altus AFB is a full size AFB dedicated to AR training for tankers and C-17s. C17 is the hardest heavy jet for us to refuel because the pilots use a joystick instead of a yoke and it's very responsive to their inputs, so it moves around the contact position faster than other heavy aircraft and pushes us around a little more too.

The airlines would need to invest in a lot more training for the flight crews to AR, and I don't think they have a need that would save them any time or money that would offset the new equipment and training.

We need AR in the AF to save time and extend range. In Afghanistan, we use AR to keep a continuous presence of fighters overhead to give troops close air support anytime. If we didn't have tankers we would need double or triple the fighters to provide the same coverage, since the airborne fighters would have to land to refuel. We can refuel a fighter in about 5 min in the air, but it would take about 45 min to do it on the ground if you include time for a landing, taxi to the fuel pit, gas up, and takeoff and fly back to the coverage orbit area.

[Ewok]

Just about to hit the road, I'll check back in at lunch time