JCC P E O P L E Interviews, Issue LXXX: Sarge!

Welcome back to PEOPLE!

It is a testament to the sheer number and diversity of great personalities on the Jedi Council Forums that this series of interviews can be 80 issues in and have only just gotten around to the cheerful, adventurous, unceasingly positive man we all know fondly as Sarge. We talked a little about all those people and what makes the JCC our own lovely little corner of the internet, in addition to an unending parade of airplanes, boats, automobiles, Starships Enterprise, and more.

Warning: super nerdy interview ahead!

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So we know you as Sarge, but does Sarge have a name?

"If the Air Force wanted me to have a name, they'd issue me one!"

Of course I do, but it so happens that I have a cousin with the exact same name, first middle and last, and in the past when I have shared my name, it has bounced back to him. He's a good cousin and I don't want to cause him any problems, so I don't share our name online.

I love how that implies that if he were a bad cousin, tough ****

Are you really a sergeant? (I don’t know if you’re retired now...)

Yes, I spent 20 years in the US Air Force and retired at the rank of E6, tech sergeant (5 stripes). I can't find a good picture of me in uniform, this is the best I have at the moment:



Last year I made a display with a bunch of my military patches and medals and stuff; you can see the 5 stripes in the middle:



“Short easy days”

That’s one of the badges that caught my eye—not a drinker, huh?

No, not much of a drinker. I'll have a beer or glass of wine to be sociable if someone offers me one, but I have no interest in it.

As for that patch, it's a "limited edition" that my last combat crew designed in Iraq. Short Easy Days was one of my sayings; on our way into work whenever someone wondered what our mission for the day would be, I'd say, "It's gonna be a short easy day." It never was.

This is us in one of our so-called "hero pics."



The "100% non-alcoholic" part was because most of the Middle East is hardcore dry with no alcohol allowed per the laws of Islam. A few people smuggled in a little booze, but getting caught with it was a career-breaking offense. Going without any didn't bother me, but I knew a few who wouldn't shut up about how much they wanted to get drunk as soon as we got home.

The last line on the red background says "Guaranteed 120 days without a DUI." That refers to a policy popular among base commanders stateside. If the whole base goes 120 days and not a single person assigned to the base gets a DUI, everybody gets a day off. The Air Force is pretty serious about cracking down on drunk driving. Of course it doesn't apply at all for those of us at bases in The Sandbox.

Just drunk driving? What about drunk flying?

The air force rule is, 12 hours bottle-to-throttle.

Did you know of anyone who ever, you know, flew drunk?

Nope. That would be both appallingly stupid and a court-martial offense. If I had known of that ever happening, I would have refused to fly with them and reported the reason up the chain of command. I have zero doubt that the system would have supported me and hammered the offender. Flying under the influence is way too dangerous to allow. Even in civilian aviation, the blood alcohol limit for flying is .04, which is half the legal limit for driving in most jurisdictions.

What about the “Dirty Deid Done Dirt Cheap” patch?

That was Al Udeid Air Base, in Qatar, known as The Dirty Deid. Like most places over there, you couldn't get away from the blowing sand. That was the worst climate I've ever been in. Summer days were around 130F/55C, and it was close enough to the coast that it still got humid. Miserable weather, and painfully hot, step outside and the sun hits you like a big bright hammer. Night time wasn't much better; the sun went down, but the humidity stayed and it was still nasty hot. That's on my short list of places I never want to visit again.

Would you recommend a visit even if out of mere morbid curiosity?

No, but if you insist on going, I'll just recommend you schedule a short visit. You won't want to stay long.

So you guys have all these bases out there in the desert, and my question is: just what do you guys do about heatstroke?

Air conditioning in all the tents and buildings, usually as cold as it would go, and lots of rules about how long we could be outside working. There were colored flags to signal the heat stress level, IIRC red flag meant come inside for 15 minutes every two hours, black flag meant come in every hour.

We also got lectured regularly on hydration and there was free bottled water available everywhere. And almost all the urinals had posters over them showing what color our urine ought to be. Clear was ideal, pale yellow was OK, bright yellow or cloudy means drink more water, and if it looks brown you're supposed to get medical attention. Once I peed about the color of weak iced tea. I was feeling tired and had a headache, but it was the end of the day and I didn't feel like going anywhere so I just drank 2 bottles of water and a Gatorade; about an hour later I felt fine.


Favorite Book The Bible, and other favorites are LotR & Silmarillion, Chase the Morning, A Gift of Wings, Skyborne, Jungle Pilot, Battle Hymn, North to the Orient, the Aubrey-Maturin series, Kon-Tiki, Brian Daley's Han Solo trilogy Movie SW OT/LotR/Princess Bride in a 3-way tie for first, plus Master & Commander, High Road to China, Joe vs the Volcano, The Three Musketeers & The Four Musketeers, Dunkirk, Excalibur, Rogue 1, Captain Blood, PotC: Curse of the Black Pearl, Stardust, A Knight's Tale, A Bridge Too Far, The Great Waldo Pepper, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Dawn Patrol TV show Star Trek (old school), Firefly, DS9, B5, NewsRadio, Cheers, Frasier, Andromeda (season 1 and half of season 2, after that it turned shark-jumping into an Olympic sport), Looney Tunes, Jeopardy (I tried out for it at a roving contestant search, didn't get picked) Writer JRR Tolkien, Richard Bach, Patrick O'Brian, Ann Morrow Lindbergh, CS Lewis Game Tabletop RPGs, I've had a lot of fun with D&D and WEG d6 SW, but those were more fun for the settings and the people I played with than the game systems

You’ve got old school Trek and DS9, but what about TNG?

TNG had good episodes, and a few great episodes, but there were also enough boring episodes that I don't consider it a favorite. All the Treks I've seen have had a mix of good and bad episodes, but DS9 was the most consistently good.

What made DS9 really good?

An interesting setting, complex, believable, and relatable core characters, a huge cast of "minor" recurring characters with more depth than the regulars on some other series, willingness to change the status quo in long-term story arcs, daring to tackle tough issues, and they still managed to keep a sense of fun when it was appropriate. Not to mention going surprisingly dark when that was appropriate.

Like most Treks, DS9 gets off to a slow start. Still, season 1 is far better than TNG season 1, and it lays the foundations for the great stories that come later. Persevere through a few slow episodes and you will be rewarded.

Favorite Artist Norman Rockwell, Ted Naismith (for Middle-earth landscapes and architecture, not characters), Geoff Hunt (age of sail paintings), John Amendola (aviation art) Actor Jimmy Stewart, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michael York, Audrey Hepburn, Katherine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Robert Redford, Errol Flynn, Anthony Mackie, Sean Bean, Bernard Hill, Gemma Arterton, Olivia deHavilland, James Cagney

Aviator

Bob Hoover for amazing stick-and-rudder skills developed over an incredibly adventurous lifetime of flying (got to youtube and search for his video of pouring iced tea while doing a barrel roll in a twin-engine plane), Sean Tucker for wild airshow stunting, Patty Wagstaff for inhuman aerobatic precision, Nate Saint for putting his skills to use in service of humanity, Paul Mantz & Frank Tallman & Corky Fornoff for legendary Hollywood stunt-flying, Charles Lindbergh and Chuck Yeager for blazing the way, Billy Bishop and Albert Ball for death-defying bravery in WW1, WW2 ace Douglas Bader for answering Britain's call and going into battle with two artificial legs, and one who's not so famous: Major Gene "2-step" Maples, a C-130 pilot I flew with twice, who turned assault landings into thrilling roller coaster rides; it felt like the nose was pointed straight down at the runway at low level and the automatic terrain avoidance system always said "Pull up" three times before he pulled up and greased the wheels onto the first hundred feet of the assault strip. I loved flying with that guy.

Airplane

I used to own a 1950 Piper Pacer, which was a great little plane for a first-time owner-pilot, challenging enough to be fun, forgiving enough to be reasonably safe for low-time pilots (as the saying goes, "It's barely fast enough to get you killed."). I'd say it's a decent real-world analogy to Luke's T-16 Skyhopper.



The C-130 is the plane I spent 20 years on, so it will always be special to me. It's a legendary transport plane; books have been written about it. It carried me safely through 682 combat flights and I trust it like no other piece of equipment.



If we want to talk about dream planes, money being no object, I'd love to fly a Spitfire and Beechcraft 17. They're both reputed to be among the best-handling planes ever flown, and are usually finalists in contests for the most beautiful airplane ever built.
I've bought rides in the B-17 Flying Fortress (legendary WW2 bomber like the Memphis Belle, sitting up front in the bombardier seat behind the plexiglass nose is fantastic, you can hardly see anything but sky and ground), and a 1929 Ford Trimotor passenger plane (if you've seen The Rocketeer, it was the exact same airliner that he flew alongside during his first daytime flight. I paid extra to sit in the copilot seat and the pilot let me fly it for a while, straight and level then a 180 turn back toward the airport.).

Boat

I spent 3 days aboard the Stephen Taber sailing off the coast of Maine. She was launched in 1879 and is maintained meticulously, still carrying passengers on casual vacation cruises. And I ate better on board that little boat than I ever have anywhere else in my life.



The day after I left the Taber, I had the opportunity to go on an afternoon sail aboard the Lynx, a replica of an American 1812 privateer:



And of course I love USS Constitution, Old Ironsides:



If you're visiting Old Ironsides, you can also walk across the pier to the USS Cassin Young, a WW2 Fletcher-class destroyer, same as Tom Hanks' character commanded in the recent film Greyhound. Those movie sets were instantly recognizable to me and I really liked knowing how they all fit together.
I've also been aboard the Charles W Morgan, an original 19th century whaling ship. Highly recommended for anyone who ever read Moby Dick. (Thought I had pics but can't find them at the moment, if you really want to you can google some.)

(Was that too much? That's what happens when you pull my string and engage my inner aviation buff, gear head, and history nerd.)

SF ship

Classic Trek designs can be just beautiful, especially the original TV series Enterprise, but this fan design is my favorite among big ships:



For a single seater that's a real hot rod, I'll pick the A-wing. If I wanted something to cruise around and pick up hawt chix, I'd like the royal Naboo ship from the opening scene of AotC (that's the only thing I like in the whole movie).

SW episode

RotJ for the awesome and unexpected conclusion of the saga, which still holds up as well now as it did in '83. Props to ANH for pure fun and laying the groundwork, and ESB for building and refining the story and characters. Outside of the OT, R1 is easily tops. The scenes of the regular people struggling and sacrificing against impossible odds gives me goosebumps every time, just like in The Two Towers when the old men and young boys are taking up arms in Helm's Deep, and Dunkirk when the little wooden boats sail right up to the enemy coast.

SW character

Luke is #1. Back in '77 I was a kid who wanted to leave home in the middle of nowhere and go off to grand adventures, so I totally identified with him. I also had a sneaking admiration and envy for the freedom of Han Solo, especially after I read Brian Daley's novels.

ST character

I grew up when the originals were the only Trek crew, so I was warped (ha!) at an early age by the depiction of Kirk as The Hero. I also admired Sulu's swashbuckling and piloting skills, Scotty's technical wizardry, and as I grew more discerning Spock became more and more "fascinating." And who couldn't love Bones for his humor and humanity? With later shows, of course I found Picard compelling thanks to Patrick Stewart's acting (the only thing that kept TNG afloat in season 1), and Worf slowly grew from your basic tough guy into a deeper, complex character. I could probably make a case for every one of the DS9 people to be a favorite. As the series progressed I developed a crush on Jadzia Dax; she started out kind of dull and flat, but turned into a warm, fun, and very complicated person.

all time favorite Star Trek episode

There are so many great ones! Let's break it down by series.
TOS: Journey to Babel, The Trouble with Tribbles, Balance of Terror, The Enterprise Incident, Amok Time, Bread and Circuses, City on the Edge of Forever, Who Mourns for Adonais?
TNG: Yesterday's Enterprise, Best of Both Worlds, A Fistful of Datas, In Theory, The Wounded, Lower Decks, The Hunted
DS9: Duet (Most Moving Trek Episode Ever for me), The Siege of AR-558, Trials and Tribble-ations, Beyond the Stars, Blood Oath, The Way of the Warrior, The Search, and all of the multi-episode arcs
Voyager: Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy
Enterprise: The Andorian Incident (mainly for Jeff Combs as Shran)
I haven't seen any of the newer series. The reviews and comments I've read haven't really grabbed me. Someday I'll probably get around to watching them. But are they any better than Galaxy Quest? And if you like GQ, check out Voyage Trekkers: https://www.voyagetrekkers.com/season-1.html


So as that kid who wanted to go off and have those adventures, what has turned out to be the biggest adventure of your life so far?

I've seen things you wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off Orion's shoulder. C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those memories...

But seriously, I had to stop and put some thought into that question. I guess it depends on how you define "biggest."

Most dangerous adventure would have to be combat missions as a C-130 flight engineer. Flying a big, slow, unarmed transport plane over cities where insurgents are hiding and hoping to shoot you down with heat-seeking missiles is an experience that tends to focus your mind. And some of it really did look like that classic Bladerunner quote. If anyone wants to know more about that, I wrote this: https://boards.theforce.net/threads/something-about-me.50054046/
Not me, but another FE in my squadron, doing what we refer to in the technical vernacular as "BSing.":


Learning to fly private planes is also pretty adventurous, more so if you are young and foolish enough to fly a Cessna up a river below treetop height and under power lines by accident. File that under stupid things I'll never do again. What was I thinking?

Medieval re-enactments and martial arts was a pretty intense experience. It's not as dangerous as you might think, although the bruises could be impressive.

Eventually I combined my adventures and got into a rubber knife fight on top of the wing of C-130 parked in Qatar. The guy I was sparring with was a US Army flight surgeon, so if I had slipped and fallen 20 feet onto the concrete at least I'd have had medical help immediately available. Still, I should have gotten into trouble for that. I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations has run out by now.



There were also a few sparring matches during long boring missions over Iraq when a couple of us would leave the flight deck and go a few rounds in the cargo compartment while the plane was on autopilot at high altitude. That was a great way to get yourself awake and alert before it was time to descend back into the danger zone for another landing in a potentially hostile area.



I mentioned the cruise aboard the 1879 sailing schooner Stephen Taber; that was far safer and more relaxing than most of my adventures, but still very memorable.



Another crazy thing I did was run a marathon in Kuwait in the summer time. That's how I got nicknamed Crazy Pete. It was July 19, 2005 and I started running at midnight, when the temperature had gone down to 100F. I ran 4 laps around the Ali al Salem Air Base perimeter road, 6.5 miles a lap, and finished at 4:05 in the morning. By then the temperature had gone down all the way to 96F. That made the front page on the Air Force news official website.

Swimming across the lake is fun, but I haven't had a chance to do it in a couple of years. It's about a quarter mile across and usually takes me about half an hour. I always have someone go with me in a canoe or kayak to keep boats from running me over by accident. It's pretty cool when the loons swim over to see what I'm doing in their lake and start calling.



I've done a lot of work customizing my '17 Mustang, and I'd like to take a course in high speed driving on a racetrack, but that's still on my maybe-after-covid list.



So what’s the appeal behind medieval reenactment? Why are all those bruises with it?

Medieval re-enactment was lots of fun. The fighting is the obvious spectacle, like the action scenes and VFX in movies. It's a full contact sport, like boxing, martial arts, wrestling, and fencing. The swords are wood so no blood is drawn, but a hard hit will still leave a bruise. I enjoyed the intense focus; there's no room for any extraneous thoughts when you're on the battlefield, so it's a great way to put everything else out of your head for a while.

Most people at SCA events don't fight, though. There's amazing arts and crafts on display, delicious feasts, singing and dancing, teaching, brewing, building, blacksmithing, horses, falcons, dogs, heraldry, games, research, writing, calligraphy, costumes, parties, and some great people. And the most beautiful girls I've ever met. I haven't been to an event in years, but I'm still friends with lots of wonderful people I met in the SCA.

Do you long for a more pastoral, simpler time? I recall Tolkien writing about nature giving way to industrialism

Yes, more so as I get older, I think. I loved sailing on that 19th century schooner, so quiet and calm and peaceful. And I treasure the time that I spend at our log cabin on the lake. I haven't gotten there at all since last year due to travel restrictions. Also, I get annoyed at the noisy power boats that go blasting past when I'm trying to relax.




Our? Does Sarge have a special loved one?

No special loved one in my life. I've met a few who I thought would be wonderful as Mrs Right, but failed to convince them I'd be Mr Right. As the saying goes, my heart has been broken so many times it rattles when I walk.


So let’s talk about flying

What’s the thing that people don’t get about it? And I don’t mean passengers in a jumbo jet, I mean being the dude in the cockpit

I don't think most people get how much preparation and planning goes into flying. It's not like when you realize you're out of milk and just thoughtlessly jump in your car to drive to the convenience store.

The FAA mandates that a pilot must gather all available information about any flight he wants to make. That information gathering usually begins with weather.

Looking out the window or flipping to the Weather Channel on TV isn't nearly good enough. In the old days we had to phone a local aviation weatherman to get a briefing on what the weather was and was likely to become all along our planned route of flight; that usually took at least 10 minutes. Nowadays most of that info is available online, and studying the maps, radar images, and satellite photos takes even longer, but that gives us a much better understanding of the weather picture.

We also need to check NOTAMs, NOtices To AirMen, which are announcements about all kinds of things that we should be prepared for. There are notices about runways and taxiways under construction, navigational beacons out of service, TFRs Temporary Flight Restrictions (some areas are occasionally closed to all aircraft because of happenings such as big sporting events, space launches/reentries, military exercises, or the presence of POTUS or VEEP), tall towers under construction near airports, streams of migrating geese, or anything else that might affect the planned flight. It can take another 10 minutes or more to review all those notices.

After looking at all that info, we can start planning the flight. There's not much to it if we're just flying around the airport practicing touch-and-go landings, but to go anywhere, we need to pull out our charts (and check that they are current; most of them are updated at least twice a year and it's illegal to fly with expired charts), plot the course to our destination, calculate the course (adjusting for expected crosswinds and magnetic compass deviation), measure the distance, calculate the fuel required, and ensure the plane can handle the required fuel load along with all passengers/baggage/cargo without being overweight or out-of-balance. Check the expected take off, cruise, and landing performance, adjusted for forecast weather conditions. Modern ipad apps and GPS can make all that quicker and easier, but it still needs to be done.

When we finally get to the plane, we still don't just jump in and go. FAA requires that every plane have certain paperwork on board, airworthiness certificate, registration, pilot's operating handbook, and weight-and-balance information, plus, the pilot has to have his license and medical certification. After the paperwork is all checked, we can finally look at the plane. Always open the fuel tank caps and check that they really have fuel in them because fuel gauges can malfunction, and drain a little fuel out the bottom of each tank to make sure no water has collected inside (water in the fuel tends to run through the fuel lines and reach the engine shortly after take off, which is the worst possible moment for the engine to fail). Inspect the airplane and engine for damage, missing components, corrosion, proper fluid levels, lights working, flat/worn tires, flight controls operational and correct, and radio checked. For the average single engine Cessna, a preflight inspection might take 5-10 minutes. When I was doing the flight engineer's preflight on the C-130, that usually took me 45-60 minutes, assuming I didn't find anything wrong.

After engine start, it's very important to get the engine(s) and especially oil warmed up. A cold airplane engine can cut out at the worst possible moment. Before take off we need to check that the engine systems are running reliably, both magnetos, carburetor heat, fuel mixture, and variable pitch propellers all need to be tested.

In summary, airplanes need a lot more thought and attention than cars, and they shouldn't be operated as casually.

That said, once you're up there and flying, it's worth all the effort. I love the moment of lift off when the ground falls away beneath the wheels. And if it's an overcast day and we climb up through the clouds and we suddenly break through into sunshine and blue sky, that's a glorious moment.

And after all that, there was still that one time you decided to fly low along a river and under some wires?!

Hey, if you put that much work in, you deserve to have some fun!

So have you ever seen anything weird up there in the skies?

UFOs, flying saucers? No.

But I have seen St Elmo's Fire, like small blue lightning bolts crawling slowly across the windshield panes of the C-130 as we were flying near a thunderstorm over the Mediterranean. That looked pretty cool... until we were hit by lightning which knocked out the generator on #3 engine. The other generators were still fine, so I just had to flip a few switches to keep everything running. We had to replace that generator after we landed in Crete.

Night vision goggles look kind of weird too. They pick up tiny amounts of light and magnify it to where human eyes can pick it up, and everything shows up in shades of green. They're so sensitive that if you look up you'll see maybe a hundred times as many stars as you would without them. They'll also pick up small meteors that you wouldn't normally see; there are a lot more rocks coming into the atmosphere and burning up before hitting the ground than you'd expect. Flying above clouds on a moonlit night with NVGs made me think of sci-fi shows with spaceships flying into a green nebula. And if there's a flash of lightning inside the cloud while you're watching with NVGs, well, I don't even know how to describe what that looks like.

One night when we were landing in Baghdad, there was some action going on in the city and we could see a helicopter gunship at low altitude. Helicopter rotors look like transparent green glowing blurry discs in NVGs, and the gunship was shooting a gatling gun with tracer rounds at a ground target. That was my "C-beams glittering in the dark near Tannheuser Gate" moment.

Ever seen a full circle rainbow? I've seen it in the air a couple times, in similar conditions to on the ground, you need the right mix of rain and sun from the right angles. Flying on top of bright white clouds, I looked down to see the plane's shadow on the cloudtop, and a perfectly circular rainbow all around our shadow.

Did you ever have to avoid a missile or a rocket, something like that?

Maybe, it's hard to tell. We had missile warning systems on the plane that were designed to alert us when it detected something that looked threatening, but the systems aren't perfect and I'm sure most of the times it went off were just false alarms. We never were able to definitely confirm we were fired upon, never saw any tracers or missiles homing in on us, but we were trained to treat all alarms as the real deal, so we always took evasive action and fired flares to decoy any missiles that might be tracking us.

We got fired at fairly often on the ground. Way back in '91 during Desert Storm, the Iraqis launched SCUD ballistic missiles at us in Saudi Arabia. One of the last ones they fired fell into the desert about 4 miles away from our base. I heard later that our radar was tracking it and detected that it was falling apart in midair and was obviously going to miss us, so the Army decided not to waste a Patriot interceptor missile to shoot it down. It was a little after sunrise, a very still quiet morning and sound carried clearly, and I heard the boom when it hit and detonated. Judging by the noise it made, I'd have guessed it hit a quarter mile away, not 4 miles. I think they had 500 pound high explosive warheads on that version of the SCUD.

Most of my time in Iraq was at Balad Air Base, which the Army named Camp Anaconda, but everybody called it Mortaritaville because we were on the edge of an Iraqi town where insurgents lived and they liked to run out into the streets with portable mortars, fire a shell at us, then run back in and hide in their basements. That happened about once a day in '03-'05, and was still happening about twice a week in '08. Their mortar shells weren't much bigger than hand grenades, and a lot of them were duds, so we didn't take them very seriously. And their accuracy was pitiful. Our base must have been 3 miles wide, with 12,000 foot runways, and sometimes when they shot at us they missed the whole base.

Eventually the base was equipped with several radar aimed point defense gatling gun emplacements that were accurate enough to track and shoot down a mortar round in flight. I saw them test fire a couple of times. The amount of tracer a gatling gun puts out is unbelievable; it looks like a solid beam of light.

All the buildings had sandbags piled up around them so even if a shot did get through our defenses, hit on target, and detonate, it wouldn't do much damage. We got pretty casual about the threat. After being there a couple months, we barely even noticed them. It was pretty common to wake up, go to the chow hall, and a friend would ask, "Where were you during the mortar attack last night?" and the answer was often, "Huh? Oh, I guess I must have slept through it."

Here's where a mortar hit the concrete:


What are some fun and surprising things people might not know about airplanes?

The cockpit of an airplane is the funniest place to watch the movie Airplane. It was one of those long boring flights over Iraq when we were just flying for hours on autopilot, so we had a laptop computer on the dashboard and the sound output plugged into the intercom. It was surely hilarious.

Most airplanes can fly straight and level without any help from the pilot, and they don't even need an autopilot. They're designed to be balanced and stable, even if turbulence bounces it around it will right itself and return to straight and level.

A few new airplanes are now being built with automatic landing systems. If the pilot has a heart attack (which doesn't happen nearly as often in real life as in fiction), the passenger just has to push a button that will activate emergency radar signals, find the nearest suitable airport on the GPS, and the autopilot will land the plane and stop it on the runway.

Before WW2, most airplanes were made out of wood frames covered with cloth skins. There are still a few made that way today. They're lighter than all-metal airplanes, they don't have rivets so they're a little better streamlined which makes them faster and longer ranged, and they're a little quieter because engine and wind noise doesn't echo around inside them. They're often cheaper to build too. Their major disadvantage is that they don't stand up to weather and sun as well as metal airplanes; cloth planes really ought to be stored in hangars, while metal planes can be parked outside with no problems. The plane I used to own was built in 1950 with cloth skin.

What about Harrison Ford? He’s stepped in it a few times with FAA, hasn’t he?

I just remembered one other thing about airplanes that I found amusing: when we were flying low-altitude training missions around Arkansas, chicken farmers would complain that their hens stopped laying after we flew over. So our wing commander made it official policy that all chicken farms would be considered hostile SAM Surface-to-Air-Missile sites during our training missions. Our navigators plotted courses that would take us outside the danger zones of known chicken farms, and if we discovered a new one during a mission we took evasive action.

As for Harrison Ford, he's had quite a career as an aviator. I'd consider this article a fair summary of his more-publicized incidents: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52503316

What doesn't get so much publicity is the amount of good he's done for private aviation. He was honorary chairman of Young Eagles (a position also held by Chuck Yeager, Sully Sullenberger and his copilot Jeff Skiles, legendary airshow pilot Sean Tucker, and actor/pilot Cliff Robertson). Young Eagles is a program that takes kids up for free airplane rides so they can learn what it's like to fly a small plane, and he personally flew 300 kids in his own planes. https://www.eaa.org/eaa/youth/free-ye-flights

In 2018 Ford was awarded the Bob Hoover Trophy for his work promoting general aviation, including Young Eagles, volunteering his own personal time and aircraft for search and rescue missions, and testifying before congress on the importance of keeping small-town airports open and available to the public. https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media...-actor-harrison-ford-humbled-by-hoover-trophy

I've read a couple aviation magazine articles written by pilot-writers who flew with Ford, and they wrote that he was humble, willing to learn, and had a good grasp of his own abilities and limitations as a pilot.

As for his less glorious moments aloft, he always owned up to them immediately and worked to get the training to ensure he wouldn't repeat his mistakes. That's all any of us can do. It's tempting to make fun of him for making dumb mistakes, but who among us has never made a dumb mistake? Not me, I've already fessed up to flying under phone lines.

What does the future of aviation look like?

The last 5 years were great for the airlines, huge growth, so much that there has been a lot of concern about there not being enough pilots and airplane mechanics to keep them all going. Obviously Covid has been a huge blow to that progress with lots of people getting laid off. Private aviation has not been affected nearly as badly because it's a lot easier to fly small planes without crowding huge numbers of people into confined spaces. In fact, there are reports that private plane sales have increased this year. We can only speculate about how all that plays out, whether or not Covid is cured or if we're living in a new normal.

Technically, airplanes have changed very little for decades. Part of that is because the FAA has very strict rules about how airplanes must be built and modified. Everything has to be inspected and tested very thoroughly to be approved for aviation use, and the testing standards have not advanced along with technological progress, many of the rules are decades out-of-date. Forward-thinking organizations are pushing for reforms that will allow for better progress, but trying to change an entrenched government bureau is a glacially slow uphill battle.

There have been a few improvements in materials like composites, especially carbon fiber, that are likely to become more widespread as manufacturing techniques improve and prices come down. Electric powered airplanes are being tested, but suffer the same limitations as electric cars: short range and long recharging times, and the heaviness of batteries is a bigger problem for planes than cars. When battery technology improves, I predict electric airplanes will be built in big numbers. A solar-powered plane has flown all the way around the world, and there are companies developing that technology to keep drones up at high altitude to supplement communications satellites.

Electronics is where we've seen some really impressive progress. An ipad with GPS and easily available apps can display a moving map that makes navigation simple; it's a quantum leap ahead of paper maps and radio beacons. There are also new tracking systems that make it far easier for air traffic controllers to do their jobs, and to locate planes that are missing. Another amazing ipad capability is called synthetic vision; the GPS tracks your exact position and a huge database displays the local terrain on your ipad screen, so you can virtually see mountains and towers even at night and in fog.

I expect automation is going to become more widespread in the future of aviation. Flight engineers are a dying breed; Lockheed's newest C-130s are now built with a flight deck for two crew, just the pilot and copilot. The older C-130s I was on had four of us, pilot, copilot, flight engineer, and navigator. The FE has been replaced by computer monitoring systems, and GPS does the navigator's job. It's efficient and economical to replace two highly trained crewmen with electronics, but I don't think it's a good idea for planes that fly in combat zones. They only have half as many eyeballs looking out for danger, and half as many brains to solve problems. (If you believe most of the jokes FEs and navs tell about pilots, it's half the number of brains and about a quarter the brain power.) And when problems come up, pilots and copilots both look at the problem the same way. Navs and FEs have different training, different experience, and look at the problems from different points of view. That's something the new 130 crews lack.

But, hey, I'm just an old dinosaur grousing because I've been replaced by a machine.

I found this:



True?

Maintenance has spent hours in the heat/cold/rain/sleet working on the plane and they know it's ready and safe to fly. It's perfect, to a maintainer.

The flight crew is getting ready to trust their soft pink butts to the reliability of the plane, so every little scuff, stain, and ding looks like a potentially lethal problem, and they're doubtful about putting their lives on the line until every last detail has been properly seen to, not just temporarily cobbled together for one more flight.

Management pays the fuel bills, the parts bills, the maintenance bills, the flight crew salaries, the landing fees, the registration fees, the insurance fees, the taxes, the catering bill, the hangar rent, etc etc ad infinitum. There's an old saying: It's easy to make a small fortune in aviation, all you have to do is start with a large fortune.

Ok so let’s say you’re the captain of a large passenger aircraft on a 14 hour flight. What different JCCers are on the plane? Who is crew? What kinds of passengers are different JCCers?

Most of them are just sitting in their seats, watching the movies or talking to each other, looking like perfectly ordinary people. (Ha! We know better!) It's like a low-key party, or just a get-together. @Diggy @Darth Punk @Lordban@harpua @Zapdos @Darth Guy @3sm1r and all the usual suspects, cronies, groupies, and hangers-on.

There are several rows of seats full of people debating politics. I'm happy that I can stay in the cockpit and not get involved in that mess.

@GrandAdmiralJello is in first class, of course. Standards must be maintained.

I'll upgrade @Vaderize03 to first class on my authority as captain, in recognition of his front-line service in the covid crisis.

Ender had a first class seat too, but eventually we had to shove him out the escape hatch in the tail. "Get off my plane!" Common decency requires that I reluctantly let him have a parachute.

@A Chorus of Disapproval is the guy with all the quick one-liners, and everyone is telling him he ought to be a stand-up comic.

@Gamiel is trying to schmooze the first class passengers, hoping to find a wealthy patron to sponsor his art gallery. He's also cruising coach to discover starving artists to support.

@Master_Lok is bored with the in-flight movies and wishes they'd show some old Italian horror films or cheesy martial arts flicks, but that's not happening, so she's trying to do stretching exercises in her seat.

@Rogue1-and-a-half is focused on the movies, taking notes so that his self-published reviews will be as thorough and detailed as possible.

@I Are The Internets is tired of the movies, which is too bad because he writes great reviews when he feels like it.

@Havac is poring over massive tomes of world history.

@Kenneth Morgan is browsing popular light histories and listening to news radio.

@PCCViking and @Iron_lord are plugged into the music system, listening to classics.

@Princess_Tina is gossiping about the latest celebrity to die. That's all old news to @Juliet316, who wants fewer movies and more pro wrestling.

@Runjedirun can't sit still and spends most of the flight pacing up and down the aisles.

@AutumnLight91 is the nervous kid on his way to boot camp. I'm tempted to make him do push ups in the aisle, but I'm not THAT mean!

@Ananta_Chetan spends the entire flight with his eyes closed in meditation. Or is he just sleeping? It's hard to tell with that guy.

@ConservativeJedi is also meditative, but more aware of his surroundings. Or so it seems.

@Adalia_Durron is bored and wishing she could set up a target in the aisle to practice archery. She ought to know better, since she's our copilot.

@Bardan_Jusik is our flight engineer. He gets my jokes.

@Vehn is the navigator. He keeps us on course... more or less.

@Rebecca_Daniels is our chief flight attendant, even though she's ridiculously over-qualified for the job and clearly destined to go on to Great Things (TM).

@LAJ_FETT is our in-flight mechanic. He has a set of stock answers to all the problems we have with the plane. "That's the way it's supposed to work." "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" "We can't do anything about that now, but it's going to be upgraded eventually." "That's just one of the limitations of the software."

@The2ndQuest @BigAl6ft6 and @K2771991 are on their way to a Trek con, wearing Starfleet uniforms.

Now, having been in the Air Force, what do you think of the Space Force?

Some kind of change was needed; there were too many chiefs each with their own little piece of the military satellite pie. We needed one overarching command to coordinate all their activities. But I think it was too soon to make an entire branch of the military to fulfill that purpose. IMO, the USAF's Space Command should have been assigned the overall responsibility, with the possibility of eventually becoming a separate-but-attached service, like the US Marine Corps is a part of the US Navy. The "problem" with that solution is that the Army and Navy wouldn't have a piece of the satellite pie, and their chiefs would have to give up more funding to the Air Force. So the solution to the problem was more political than military. That's not a good basis or beginning for a military force.

As for the Netflix show, that was good enough that I watched all of it, but not so good that I have any desire to watch it again. Every now and then there's a line or a plot point that makes me wonder if one of the writers served in uniform, or at least got some good guidance from someone who did. My favorite moment was when Steve Carell was testifying before congress explaining to the Angry Young Congresswoman why he sent oranges to his troops. I've spent months at a time in places where things like that are a rarity, and when they show up it's a real treat and a nice boost to morale. The way he explained it made me want to stand up and cheer because someone gets it.

What’s an example of the proverbial orange that you got to enjoy when you were serving?

When I was in Iraq they gave us lobster tail and Alaskan king crab legs a couple of times. For a seafood lover, that was better than Christmas.

I’ve always been iffy on seafood myself... what is it about seafood that you love?

The tastes, textures, and smells are all wonderful. And when you have to go a long time without having good, fresh, seafood, there's also a lot of nostalgia for home that comes with it. Right now I could really go for a big half-and-half basket of fried clams and scallops, with sides of coleslaw, crinkly fries, and onion rings. Or a good, fresh lobster roll, not too much mayo, with just a little fresh romaine lettuce.

How about a bouillabaisse?

That's good, but not as good as clam chowder.


What is your overall judgment of the SW sequels?

I enjoyed the ST in spite of the obvious flaws. TFA lacked originality; I'd rate it a lot higher if the X-wing trench run had failed to destroy SKB, just damaged it enough to save the Resistance base. TLJ wasted Finn and Poe on a subplot that doesn't make sense and led nowhere. RoS dropped Sheev into the story out of nowhere and rushed from one macguffin to the next in a desperate rush to obscure the weak plot points. But they all had likeable characters and were fun to watch, which is why I like the ST much better than the PT.

The biggest problem was that Disney was in a hurry. Instead of rushing out a new saga movie every two years, they could have followed tradition and released one every three years, giving themselves more time to iron out the wrinkles in the story.

What’s your overall judgment of the prequels?

Overall, the PT was disappointing.

TPM had Qui Gon Jin, easily my favorite PT character, but GL had to kill him off, dammit. Oh, ummm... spoiler alert? The rest of the characters were very flat, with none of the charm and energy of the OT characters. At least it ended with the most technically thrilling saber fight (not a duel, a duel is one-on-one) of the whole saga, which still lacked the emotional punch of the OT duels. And I liked the Naboo ships. The rest of the movie fell far short of the OT.

AotC is still my least favorite SW movie. I liked the new Naboo flying wing ship in the first scene, but that blew up, and there was nothing else I liked in the rest of the film.

RotS was less bad than AotC, but there's still nothing there that I want to watch again.

I've decided that in my headcanon, the PT is a holo-drama created by some overwrought angsty soap opera writer 20 years after Endor. There are a few nods to the true story, but most of it didn't happen the way the PT showed.

How did the events of the PT really go down in Sarge-canon?

I've never really tried to flesh out the story, much less write my own screenplay, but I do have some vague ideas about how I thought it might have happened before the PT came out, and what story I would find more appealing.

First, Anakin would be more mature (not necessarily much older, but better balanced emotionally and mentally). I see him as the classic image of Lancelot, greatest Knight of the Round Table. HIs downfall would be pride. In his opinion, the other Jedi didn't live up to the highest standards he set for himself. His disappointment with most of his fellow knights slowly turns to resentment, disrespect, and contempt. He gradually becomes unwilling to risk himself to help "less worthy" knights, eventually leaving some of them to die rather than rescue them from losing battles.

I'd have the clones and their creators be the enemies of the Republic in The Clone Wars, which is what I assumed to be the case before AotC. One of their favored tactics would be to clone any captured heroes of the Republic and turn them against the Jedi. (I thought of that years before I read about Luuke.) Anakin had to fight several cloned Jedi during the war. When he finally became so arrogant that he decided to murder unworthy Jedi, he used the excuse that he believed they were clones, and it was impossible to prove otherwise, until Obi-wan caught him in the act and stood up to him. That led to their fight and the lava pit.

Also, Anakin would have a haircut that wouldn't be an embarrassment to trailer parks the world over.

That’s really good! I especially liked the part about pride being the big downfall

What was it like being a grown up Star Wars fan before the internet and the JC?

There wasn't much content to be a fan about. Of course the movie was biggest thing ever in '77 and most fans saw it repeatedly. There was also the novelization which came out before the film, and the double LP soundtrack album; for a long long time those were the only things widely available. TIME magazine had a multi-page featured review that I saved and read over and over. But in those days nobody had VCR's at home so there was no way to watch it, until it finally was on broadcast TV. That was a huge moment, every fan was hyped for that, even with network commercials. We only had a black & white TV in my house; even in B&W it was a thrilling event. I read the novelization with photo inserts so many times that the pictures were falling out, then I kept reading it until the whole book split in two, then I bought a new copy, and the photos started falling out of that one. About a year later a new novel came out, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, and I pounced on that and read it several times, even though it wasn't nearly as good as STAR WARS.

Sometimes I doodled SW spaceships in my school notebooks. TIE's were easy, and Star Destroyers, Millennium Falcon wasn't too hard, and I could do a decent Y-wing. X-wing was too hard for me, I couldn't get the perspective right with the angles of the multiple wings.

It was a long 3 year wait for ESB. People ask what order to watch the saga; the correct way is to watch ANH repeatedly, wait 3 years, watch ESB repeatedly, wait another 3 years, watch RotJ repeatedly, then wait a decade and a half before starting the PT.

Where I lived, there weren't many fans, so talking about SW wasn't much of thing for me. It never even occurred to me that it would be possible someday to have a place like this where it would be possible to discuss SW to the point of getting sick of it.

The good ole days!

Were they?

Meh. On the plus side, there was a lot less to be divisive about back then. But at least back then I wasn't inundated with the viewpoints of hordes of idiots who can't see that my opinion is clearly the only one worth considering.

So where should Star Wars go from here?

ROGUE SQUADRON!!! WOO HOO!! Can't wait! And after that... MORE Rogue Squadron! Considering how great The Mandalorian looks, I'd watch a RS TV series too.

With all the new content that was announced, it seems like Disney's answer to where SW should go is, everywhere. I doubt I'll like all of them, but there ought to be something for everybody. I hope the good ones are successful enough to continue. (And by good ones, I mean the ones I like.)

Why does Star Wars appeal to you personally so much?

It's a glorious mish-mash of all kinds of things that appeal to me. There's adventure, humor, swashbuckling swordplay, flying and dogfights, spaceships, underdogs vs totalitarians, mysticism, mythology, heroism, fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles... Doesn't sound too bad, does it? Try to stay awake. Oops, went off the rails and onto another favorite movie there!

IMO, no other movies combine such disparate themes as cohesively and entertainingly as SW. Somehow, all the crazy ingredients work together and makes a story greater than the sum of its parts. It's magic, and I love it.

What do you say to the “Star Wars is BAD!” fever that has swept the JCC?

A lot of SW is bad. Even the best of SW has its weak points, and it can be entertaining to make fun of the bad stuff. OTOH, I've realized that there's nothing to be gained by convincing people that the part of SW they love is actually bad; that's why I seldom say much about the PT or animated TV shows. If people want to believe those are deep and meaningful artistic masterpieces, let them. I'll take part in good-natured teasing about bad SW, but I have no interest in ruining someone else's enjoyment, and don't pay much attention when someone is trying to ruin mine. Live and let live.


Alright, time a second namedrop question!

There’s an extinction-level-sized asteroid on a collision course with planet Earth. You are called up to duty as a pilot. Your job: flying a select few human beings chosen to repopulate and rebuild after the post-impact winter is over. I may or may not have watched Greenland recently. You have space to stowaway just six JCCers. That’s all. Six.

Who do you pick?

(You’re flying them to a bunker, btw)

Why would I want to live in a world repopulated by JCCers? Sounds like a perfectly good opportunity to drain the swamp. No, I'll just pick 6 people from our Black Sheep RPG so we can keep that going. It's a shame to narrow it down to six. I'll have to choose from the players who have been there the longest, GM @Bardan_Jusik, @Rebecca_Daniels, @Adalia-Durron, @Mistress_Renata, @galactic-vagabond422 @Anedon, @Mitth_Fisto, @Vehn, @TheAdmiral, @Corellian_Outrider. Those are my six choices. I'm the pilot, and if I say those are my six choices, then those are my six choices!

Whattaya mean, they missed the plane and I have to choose 6 JCCers? Trying to find 6 decent people from that wretched hive to repopulate the world, I feel like Diogenes searching for an honest man. OK, I'll go to JCC and just read down the names of thread starters and last posters, and pick the first 6 I find that I wouldn't mind sharing a new world with. @Juliet316, @solojones, @Kenneth Morgan, @Havac, @Master_Lok, @Rogue1-and-a-half. There's a combination of intelligence and humanity that would form a society a whole lot better than the culture we're living in, IMO.

So arbitrary! Probably the most realistic thing about this whole absurd scenario!

Juliet will be busy with the death notices

Tell me a little bit about that Black Sheep RPG...

It's an OT era starfighter pilots game, run by @Bardan_Jusik. Shortly after the Battle of Hoth, the Rebels are in bad shape. Alliance leadership decides to put together a sacrificial squadron to buy time for the rest of the rebellion, so a bunch of rejects and problem children are assembled into the Black Sheep Squadron and sent out on suicide missions. Most of our characters are fighter pilots with X-wings, Y-wings, A-wings, and B-wings. The game has been running over 3 years now, so we've gotten to know our characters pretty well. There are some very talented writers in the group and we've got some compelling stories and characters. This appeals to my love of SW and my experience in military aviation, and I'm enjoying it a lot.

Star Wars - OPEN - Star Wars: Black Sheep (Always Accepting New Players) | Jedi Council Forums (theforce.net)


Should there be a fifth Indiana Jones movie? They’re making one

I only saw Crystal Skull once. I didn't think it was THAT bad... but it wasn't that good either. I'm skeptical that 5 will ever get made; various people are rumored to be attached to the project, then they're gone, and I haven't seen any signs that there has been any real progress on a script. IMO, a good script is the key to whether or not it should get made. If they can't come up with a more compelling story than Skull, please don't try to reanimate the dead horse just so you can keep beating it.

The only suggestion I've heard that I think might work is to have two timelines, one with Harrison Ford as old Indy dealing with something that relates to an adventure in his youth, with another actor playing young Indy in flashbacks. There's a lot that could go wrong with that plan, but it's still more plausible than anything involving Harrison in typical Indy hijinks.

So, contrary to Ford, you’re alright if Indy becomes a Bond-like franchise character with a new actor playing him?

Indy has already been played by multiple actors, at least 5 that I know of. Remember the Indiana Jones TV show?

Ford is clearly the definitive version, and if they replace him, the new guy is gonna have a big fedora to fill.

But the movies are just Ford, though! And I have not watched any of the show.

It may be that someday Ford is to Indy what Connery was to Bond.

Who could wear the fedora as well as Ford has?

Nobody!

There's been some talk of Chris Pratt taking the role; I like his acting, but I think he'd be a more comic take on Indy. And Alden Ehrenreich has already taken a Ford role as younger Han Solo; I thought he was all right, but he's no Harrison Ford.

Tom Selleck was supposed to be the first Indy but couldn't spare the time from Magnum PI. And Tom Hanks can play any role. But they're both getting too old for action roles, just like Ford. So I guess we'll just have to see what Nicolas Cage can do with a bullwhip.

Or, they could gender-flip Indy and let Kate Winslet play the role. They'll have to hurry up and get it filmed before she gets too old.


So you’ve been on the JC a long time—what makes these forums great?

The same thing that makes them awful: the people.

It says something about the universality of SW that it attracts such a diverse bunch of fans who are willing to chat about GL's vision and anything even tangentially related to that vision, and to do so for over two decades. That means SW must be truly awesome... or else we all are in desperate need of lives. Let's go with the awesome thing.

What could make the forums even better?

Get rid of all the stuff I don't like, obviously. Whattaya mean, unreasonable? OK, then, how about no politics. That's probably the most divisive subject here, and it bleeds over into lots of threads that should be unrelated to politics. I know there are lots of weirdos who enjoy arguing about left v right, maybe they could have threads for politics and ban the subject from everywhere else.

What would be your advice to n00bs who want to start posting in JCC?

NNNOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Once you start down the JCC path, forever will it dominate your destiny! You don't know the POWAH of the JCC! It is too late for me, my son. Now go, and don't look back.

Srsly? Lurk for a while, get a feel for what we like to talk about and how we interact. Read the room. Then, run away screaming and never come back.


I’m thinking of a number between 1 and 20. What is it?

17. (For whatever reason, I thought of the WW2 Boeing B-17 bomber, like Memphis Belle. Did I mention I've been up in one of those? The view in flight from the bombardier seat in the transparent nose cone is amazing.)

Eeee, sorry, I was thinking of 2.

Do you have a tattoo?

[secret answer]

[secret question]

All of them!

Coast Guard? You have to be six feet tall so you can walk ashore when the boat sinks.

Air Force? Yeah, more like Chair Force.

Army? Duuuhhhh! Dig fox hole. Shoot gun. Bang! Bang! You're dead!

Marines? Have coloring books, eat crayons.

Navy? Uber for the Marines.


Space Force? Nerds with delusions of being in the military.



All the branches have a lot of fun poking at each other. That kind of thing also happens within all the branches and continues down to the lowest levels; in the Air Force, fliers make fun of non-fliers, heavy fliers make fun of fighters, all the C-130 crews make fun of C-17's and C-5's, the 130 unit at one base makes fun of the 130 unit at the other bases. Everybody mocks Admin. But at the end of the day, we understand that we all have our parts to play and can count on each other when things get serious. And even if we're reveling in taking cheap shots at each other, woe betide a civilian who insults any one of us. That's the moment when we'll all come together in a united front, band of brothers, mess with one of us mess with all of us.

What about the Seals?

I never worked with Seals. I've heard their training is about as tough as it gets in the military. They seem to succeed at everything they're told to do. If they ever fail, I guess we don't hear about it.


Sing a song for us

Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago
'Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley-folk below

On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath the stone
And the valley-people swore
They'd have it for their very own

Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of heaven
You can justify it in the end
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away

So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill
Asking for the buried treasure
Tons of gold for which they'd kill

It came an answer from the mountain
With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain
All the riches buried there

Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of heaven
You can justify it in the end
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away

Now the valley cried with anger
"Mount your horses! Draw your sword!"
And they killed the mountain-people
So they won their just reward

Now they stood beside the treasure
On the mountain, dark and red
Turned the stone and looked beneath it
"Peace on Earth" was all it said

Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of heaven
You can justify it in the end
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away
***

Once again, thank you so very much for reading! And thank you, Sarge, for sharing with us your adventures and life experiences, your time-tempered perspectives and wealth of detailed knowledge.

Next time, which will be very soon, I revisit everybody's favorite grouser.

Past Issues

73. Point Given (scroll to bottom for complete list of issues 1-72)
74. Princess_Tina
75. Vaderize03
76. Ramza, part II
77. 3sm1r
78. Lord Vivec, part II
79. harpua, part IV

~Cor

 

That was one hell of an interview.

Bonus question @Sarge : how the hell did you manage to get Ender back into the flight after dropping him?

 

Thank you for saving me, Sarge!

 

What a wonderful interview! I always delight in @Sarge ‘s Air Force/Medieval knowledge, this was great and not just because I was mentioned twice. Thanks for saving me.

And -yes- I would be bored with the in flight movies and want my foreign schlock, but would wind up stretching in my seat.

 

My dad would of loved to talk to you about ships. He really wanted into Annapolis but was drafted into the army as they didn't allow people with glasses...but then a few months later did but was too late. But we have a whole bunch of ship pictures around cause of it.

Cool interview. Best by far.

Edit: and I'm way past bootcamp now Sarge.

 

Nice job guys!

Bonus question Sarge: what's your best time in a marathon ?

 

What do you do with a plane like the Piper Pacer? Just go up, fly around a bit, look at the view...and come back? How much freedom are you allowed...aren't there a ton of airspace traffic rules to follow?

 

@Alpha-Red Look up “the $100 hamburger”.
Great interview!

 

That was fascinating. I knew Sarge would be an interesting subject for one of these.

I gotta say, that is a pretty fun group to hang out with. Thanks for the shout-out, @Sarge you picked a cool group. That `14 hour flight would be pretty great too.

 

So, what you're saying is, that you didn't like the sand? It's coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere?

 

Good read @Sarge. Have you considered writing a book of short stories documenting your adventures?

 

@Sarge Incredible interview; much of discussion surrounding your military service reminds of a relative of mine who was in the Navy. Also love to see another fan of crab legs around here... what a treat to have in the desert! I'd also imagine that smoking is a big NO on plane flights in the Air Force.

 

Superb interview.

 

This interview began way back in August, so some of my answers are a little dated by now. Kudos to Coruscant for keeping things interesting with imaginative and creative questions. If he offers to interview you, go for it, it was fun.

@3sm1r , the marathon in Kuwait is the only one I ever ran, time was 4:05:33 IIRC. The distance I went was a little uncertain, different cars measured different distances around the perimeter road, ranging from 6.5 to 7.5 miles. I added a couple hundred yards before the first lap and after the last lap, so I'm reasonably sure it was at least 26.2 miles, and it may have been as far as 30.

@Alpha-Red , like @LostOnHoth said, the $100 hamburger is a real thing (make a short flight to a nearby airport, eat, fly back). My Pacer had enough range and payload that it made a decent road trip kind of vehicle; it had 4 seats and range of 500+ miles cruising at 120 mph. On short trips, planes like that can get you where you're going faster than a jetliner. The jets fly 4 times faster, but private planes leave when you want to, not when the airline schedule says, there's no standing in line for security, no baggage checks, and you can probably land at a small airport closer to your actual destination than the big airline hubs. So the door-to-door time can be just as quick on short trips, with a lot less hassle and a lot more fun. As for air traffic rules, at big airline hubs it can be like big city rush hour traffic, but almost everywhere else it's pretty simple and wide open.

@Tunick , smoking on Air Force planes is a no-no, but it wasn't always so. Most of my time was on C-130's built in 1963 when they still came from the factory with ash trays. When that was forbidden, the nicotine fiends would occasionally sneak way back into the tail and grab a cig where the ventilation blows the smoke out the pressurization valve, and then dump the butt through a water drain valve in the cargo door and into the air outside. I flew with a lot of guys who dipped instead. I hate that smell, and if that wasn't disgusting enough, they'd usually spit into empty water bottles, clear bottles so everybody could see all the gross spit and saliva in them. That's a part of flying with a crew that I don't miss at all.

@Obi Anne , my SCA home was the Kingdom of Gleann Abhann (just a principality of Meridies when I joined). I got my Award of Arms so I could wear a circlet and be addressed as "Lord." I was also inducted into the Order of the Combatant Ram for fighting and fencing, the Order of the Morning Star for arts and science, and some local barony level awards as well. I never had any interest in becoming a baron or king, those positions come with responsibilities which I didn't want; SCA was a way for me to relax and blow off steam from real world duties, not add to them.

 

@LAJ_FETT Does the technical possibility to make Sarge a Lord Sarge exist?

 

Not only has @Sarge already had what sounds like a very full life, he comes across as a knowledgeable, thoroughly decent and affable chap as well. Bravo sir.

 

Thanks, @Lobot's Wig , and you're not so shabby yourself.

 

A very interesting interview. I particularly enjoyed the insights into the world of aviation and anecdotes from @Sarge ’s time in the USAF. It’s nice to learn that someone else appreciates old ships and enjoys spending time on the water.