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Throatwarbler posted:Why would firing a missile twist the structure of a ship? Every Harpoon launch I've ever seen has featured a tremendous amount of flames and smoke. So I'm guessing that the force of the missile leaving the launcher is significant.
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# ? Jul 21, 2013 16:16 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 14:47 |
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Snowdens Secret posted:70's panic du jour was global cooling. We were all going to starve to death because the crops would freeze. I forget which mortal sin man was committing in his hubris that was hastening the new Ice Age. They didn't switch to panic over global warming until I think early 90s, with an intermediate 'ozone layer hole will exterminate life via radiation' phase. Sorry to quote from so far back, but this is a Rush Limbaugh talking point. Global cooling was a real concern, because most emissions remained of the Victorian style sooty large particulate type, which do contribute to cooling. When we cleaned things up, we reduced that sort of particulate by a massive degree, but we continued emitting tiny particles that contribute to the greenhouse effect. It's just a matter of the unintended consequences of removing a lot nasty emissions. Lots of the wild Bond Villain style climate engineering proposals to reverse global warming involve smoking chemicals from ships in the ocean to create massive particulate bunches in the atmosphere.
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# ? Jul 21, 2013 16:44 |
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Every Harpoon launch I've ever seen has featured a tremendous amount of flames and smoke. So I'm guessing that the force of the missile leaving the launcher is significant. Pretty much...when a ship is designed from the ground up or is properly retrofitted to carry armament like that, the designers make sure to strengthen the areas where the launchers are going. The story I've always heard is that the "coastal defense" mods (Harpoons, CIWS, sonar, torpedoes, etc) they did to the Mellon were pretty rushed, so they didn't strengthen the structure appropriately, and when they fired the missiles it buckled. The reason the mods were done was so the USCG Commandant could play Navy (he had a hard on for "coastal defense" like it was 1942 or something), which was the reason they were rushed through. Like I said, that's the story I've always heard...can't independently verify it. The scheme the USMC put on their D model Broncos in the '80s was pretty rad. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Jul 21, 2013 |
# ? Jul 21, 2013 17:22 |
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Going back to sub chat for a minute, a combination of watching Das Boot again and dicking around in Silent Hunter has got me wondering about how quickly modern subs like the Astutes and Virginias move through the water while submerged. Obviously the time for surfaced to submerged is going to be shockingly less than say a TypeVIIc, but once you're actually under the water I've been under the impression that moving up and down the water column has more to do with pumping ballast around than engine power? Is that the case, or can you just angle your diveplanes down and kick the reactor to flank speed and force yourself deeper? I know the old Alfa's were so famously fast and deep diving that we developed the mk48 and spearfish torpedoes to chase them down, what was it that allowed them to get deeper so quickly? I may be totally off base on how subs actually work, my total experience with submarines consists of pushing buttons in SH5 and touring the Albacore and the Lionfish.
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# ? Jul 22, 2013 00:05 |
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Speed, depth of climb/dive etc are all going to be classified, but you climb and dive with propulsion and with the bow/sail and tailplanes. In general ballast is kept neutral, except during surfacing / submerging or during fuckups.
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# ? Jul 22, 2013 00:38 |
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I've been wondering for like 20 years about this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyj_YNZEGkg What is the Ghost doing here with the engine?
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# ? Jul 22, 2013 01:08 |
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Groda posted:I've been wondering for like 20 years about this scene: Here's a better look at the engine of another Type VII U-Boat:
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# ? Jul 22, 2013 01:49 |
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Snowdens Secret posted:Speed, depth of climb/dive etc are all going to be classified, but you climb and dive with propulsion and with the bow/sail and tailplanes. In general ballast is kept neutral, except during surfacing / submerging or during fuckups. Thanks, giving it more thought that makes a whole hell of a lot more sense than what I was imagining. Whenever I watch Das Boot, I always cringe when they show Ghost in the engine room. It looks so loving easy to lose fingers/hands in those exposed engines whirring about. Edit; Just watched The Lives of Others for the first time after reading a bit about the Stasi. God drat that was creepy as gently caress. Diabeesting fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Jul 22, 2013 |
# ? Jul 22, 2013 03:06 |
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Here's what I've always wondered about - in Down Periscope (I'm going somewhere with this) - there's a part where the old salt tapes a string to each side of the engine room and tells the tough guy that the water pressure will squeeze the boat like a lemon (?). Anyways, they dive and the string goes crazy slack and blah blah...did that happen on those old boats?
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# ? Jul 22, 2013 03:37 |
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" U.S. Submarines are built with a specific type of steel that contracts with pressure, and expands. A little known fact of submarine construction is that the decks are actually "floating" - they are suspended and do not actually touch the hull for this reason. "
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# ? Jul 22, 2013 08:10 |
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Munnin The Crab posted:Going back to sub chat for a minute, a combination of watching Das Boot again and dicking around in Silent Hunter has got me wondering about how quickly modern subs like the Astutes and Virginias move through the water while submerged. Obviously the time for surfaced to submerged is going to be shockingly less than say a TypeVIIc, but once you're actually under the water I've been under the impression that moving up and down the water column has more to do with pumping ballast around than engine power? Is that the case, or can you just angle your diveplanes down and kick the reactor to flank speed and force yourself deeper? I don't think there are any solid numbers on it, but I'd be somewhat surprised if a modern nuclear submarine could come anywhere near the crash-dive times of a WWII diesel/electric. Nuclear submarines spend so much of their time already-submerged that a crash dive simply isn't terribly useful, anymore. Also, a Virginia or Astute is much, MUCH larger than any common WWII submarine. Virginias are ~7900 tons, Astutes are ~7400, and a Type VII was ~870. So, huge mass differences probably means unlike dive times. Also, modern nuclear submarines are generally ballasted to neutral buoyancy, and then "flown" through the water using control surfaces. The Alfas were extremely special machines. Built with a titanium-alloy pressure hull, and utilizing a liquid-lead bismuth cooled reactor, they were absolute maintenance nightmares, but extremely formidable at sea. (When they weren't broken.) The wiki page is pretty informative.
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# ? Jul 22, 2013 12:23 |
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A 'crash dive' only takes you down about 100 feet or so, and it's still used today, for instance if you're at periscope depth and think a ship is about to run you over.
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# ? Jul 22, 2013 13:49 |
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mllaneza posted:If you don't at least get good pictures of the Vulcan you're a bad poster. Delete all the apps off your smartphone and just shoot video all day. So I hosed up and was standing in a bad place when it arrived, and I also hosed up and installed a custom rom on my phone that crashed when I tried to shoot video so I had to use a crappy digital camera. But I don't want to be a bad poster so, uh, here's a really crappy video (with typically British commentator and sentimental music): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zSHzNpa9iU This is as close as we were allowed to get when it landed: For what it's worth, it was definitely the most impressive plane we saw that day (read: loudest). Bonus "Commando Raid", which was good fun (the pilots and marines kept ruining the illusion by waving and smiling ): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGY8fGMQa6Q
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# ? Jul 22, 2013 14:47 |
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Alex Wellerstein's NUKEMAP just got updated to 3D but the hype has already caused his site to go down. Here's the news from Polygon, the app itself which I hope will be up again soon, and the excellent Nuclear Secrecy Blog which was the basis for all of this.
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# ? Jul 22, 2013 20:15 |
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Koesj posted:Alex Wellerstein's NUKEMAP just got updated to 3D but the hype has already caused his site to go down. Here's the news from Polygon, the app itself which I hope will be up again soon, and the excellent Nuclear Secrecy Blog which was the basis for all of this. Well goddamn that's a whole different perspective. SAC had how many of those things ready to go in Lemay's days?
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# ? Jul 22, 2013 20:18 |
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LeMay's days as head of SAC were from '48 to '57 so that'd have been somewhere between 50 and 5,543, with hundreds of megaton range thermonuclear gravity bombs at the tail end. e: also, I'm pretty sure that's 'just' a low kiloton device in the pic there. Here's what the notional 100Mt Tsar Bomba cloud over DC would have looked like: Koesj fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Jul 22, 2013 |
# ? Jul 22, 2013 20:34 |
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Somehow we made it this far
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# ? Jul 22, 2013 20:35 |
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Rats, I was going to post about the new NUKEMAP and forgot about it. The mushroom cloud shots are neat but the fallout spreads are the real nightmare generators.
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# ? Jul 22, 2013 21:19 |
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Did any Soviet era targeting plans ever come out? How many were pointing at NYC alone? Does each airport get one? Each dock facility up and down the Jersey coast?
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# ? Jul 22, 2013 23:48 |
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davecrazy posted:Did any Soviet era targeting plans ever come out? How many were pointing at NYC alone? Does each airport get one? Each dock facility up and down the Jersey coast? Depends on what period of the cold war you're talking about. Basically, as both sides get more nukes and the ability to target them more precisely you start to get into more precision targeting of poo poo trying to disrupt communications networks, C&C, etc.
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# ? Jul 23, 2013 00:07 |
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Pablo Bluth posted:The first of the Royal Navy's Astute class subs have apparently completed their trials and are being prepared for service. The Telegraph posted:The Astute class submarines have cost more than £1 billion each and are among the most advanced in the world. They can circumvent the globe without surfacing, carrying a payload of dozens of cruise missiles and torpedoes. They... can sail through space? MrYenko posted:I don't think there are any solid numbers on it, but I'd be somewhat surprised if a modern nuclear submarine could come anywhere near the crash-dive times of a WWII diesel/electric. Nuclear submarines spend so much of their time already-submerged that a crash dive simply isn't terribly useful, anymore. Also, a Virginia or Astute is much, MUCH larger than any common WWII submarine. Virginias are ~7900 tons, Astutes are ~7400, and a Type VII was ~870. So, huge mass differences probably means unlike dive times. This is basically correct. A modern USN SSN is much more massive but also much more powerful than a WWII fleet boat. It really has no reason to be on the surface except when piloting in to a harbor or channel. There is an equivalent to the old crash dive called 'emergency deep' which is usually conducted from periscope depth if a close-aboard contact is discovered that might collide with the ship. Since the ship is already submerged and trimmed to neutral buoyancy, it rings up a flank bell and drives down as steeply as possible without broaching the screw. Old-timey crash dives are hard for modern boats because they have huge main ballast tanks to provide buoyancy to counter their mass, and the MBT valves are basically the same size as the WWII boats'. Also, a modern bridge is rigged with a bridge box (internal comms, compass/engine order repeater, etc), radar repeater screen, safety rails, windscreen, commercial radar, and other junk that needs to be disconnected and stowed before the whole sail is re-rigged for dive. Crash diving from the surface just isn't a skill that's needed anymore. hogmartin fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Jul 23, 2013 |
# ? Jul 23, 2013 00:53 |
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hogmartin posted:
each Astute class comes with a Holtzmann drive and Guild navigator.
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# ? Jul 23, 2013 03:43 |
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:each Astute class comes with a Holtzmann drive and Guild navigator. Would an English Guild navigator float in a tank full of tea? THE TEA MUST FLOW
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# ? Jul 23, 2013 20:41 |
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grover posted:Cleaning the oil-water separator glass to inspect fuel flow, it looks like. Or do you mean the other guy? I don't know who ghost is. The Ghost is the character making flames shoot out of the engine. Is that what you were referring to?
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# ? Jul 24, 2013 10:17 |
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In the movie Wargames launch control officers refuse to launch their assigned missiles. How realistic was that? Was there ever a simulated launch where the launch teams believed it was for real? And if yes, which % did launch?
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# ? Jul 25, 2013 14:53 |
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karoshi posted:In the movie Wargames launch control officers refuse to launch their assigned missiles. How realistic was that? Was there ever a simulated launch where the launch teams believed it was for real? And if yes, which % did launch? You could get fired for just saying that you'd think about it - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Hering I'd guess that they trained people so that it was entirely rote - get order, check launch codes, turn key, don't even think about what you're doing. Beside chances are that if the US is firing missiles, the other guy's are already in the air and everyone and everything you've ever loved is about to go up in radioactive smoke so... Might as well go out fighting I guess?
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# ? Jul 25, 2013 14:59 |
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FrozenVent posted:everyone and everything you've ever loved is about to go up in radioactive smoke Not to mention your rather inevitable fate, as everyone was targeting a truly crazy amount of ordinance at each other's missile sites. I don't care how far underground you are, all that megatonnage detonating above you is probably going to either dig you out or collapse your bunker on your head. Presuming it doesn't you now get to eat emergency rations for a few months then go up top to probably die of radiation poisoning in the middle of a field that was carpet bombed with nukes.
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# ? Jul 25, 2013 15:07 |
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Keep in mind, Wargames (like many contemporary films) very unfriendly to the idea of nuclear deterrence, showing people failing to pull the trigger was part of this. There's the famous tale of the Russian missile commander who got a legit-looking launch order due to some technical screwup, and decided instead to get drunk and go to bed.
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# ? Jul 25, 2013 15:07 |
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Are you thinking of Stanislav Petrov, or someone else? It's sobering to think about how many times an all-out nuclear war could have been started in error.
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# ? Jul 25, 2013 15:23 |
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Snowdens Secret posted:It seems less an issue with the airframes and more the weapon systems themselves. .50 cals were obviously obsolete by war's end, and even 20mm cannon are of middling use at jet intercept speeds. Plus trying to take down a bomber wing by hosing them down one by one is time consuming and dangerous. Effective air-air guided missiles were decades off. Nukes (the eventual fix) weren't small enough. So mounting a big rack of unguided rockets seemed like the best hope. Unguided air-to-air rocket systems were developed further in the 60's in some places. One of the primary weapon systems for the Swedish J 35 Draken interceptor (other than first generation Sidewinders and AIM-4's without the nuclear warhead) was a pod that contained nineteen 75mm air-to-air rockets. The plane had a fairly complex analog sighting mechanism that could present an appropriate aiming point based on a lot of inputs such as the aircraft's speed and altitude, the distance to the target, the target's speed, the ballistics of the selected weapon (guns or the unguided rockets) so the pilot had a lot of help with lining up an appropriate intercept. The trigger mechanism for the rocket pod could also be slaved to the aircraft's FCS, so the entire 19-rocket salvo could be fired automatically when the FCS thought it had a good enough firing solution (usually the distance when firing was between 600 and 1000 meters). Most of these things had previously been tried in the US, but I don't know of any operational USAF aircraft with this kind of armament.
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# ? Jul 28, 2013 16:32 |
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Bud Day died today. ETA: Col. Day in an F100 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9s6t1whZp8 Craptacular fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Jul 28, 2013 |
# ? Jul 28, 2013 18:08 |
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Nukemap has stabilized a bit. Drop the Tsar bomb on Toronto, you kill or wound literally everyone in the greater GTA and irradiate all of Quebec's north shore. Montreal was in the 'red' fallout area Also, here are two articles from old Life: On what should happen with civil defense in the fifties. Interesting stuff, especially as the author wants an amount equivalent of 10% of the 1956 defense budget to implement these ideas. Safe in the Atomic Colon Also nuclear secrecy found an article from 1945 life with some eerily accurate speculation about the future of war, where missiles armed with atomic warheads eliminate whole nations hours after war is declared. So grim no wonder 'big belts' was the cover story... http://nuclearsecrecy.com/blog/2013/04/05/the-36-hour-war-life-magazine-1945/
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# ? Jul 29, 2013 02:17 |
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So in may the current events thread in GiP got into a small cold war derail about listening devices and bugs. I mentioned that we have a "cold war relic" in the form of a small sculpture of some kind of horn from some Soviets, intended as a gift for the Norwegian minister of defence, that was given to my wifes grandfather for fear of it containing listening devices. Caconym posted:My wifes grandfather was a Lt. Gen in the RNoAF and was in a meeting along with the secdef with some high ranking soviets during the height of the cold war. This.. sculpture thing of carved horn was gived to the secdef as a gift. Because of the fear of it containing listening devices it was promptly passed on to my wifes grandfather (because a lowly Lt. Gen in the AF can't be worth listening to I guess) and has now ended up as a mantlepiece with us. If not for the history of the thing I doubt we'd keep it. There's an inscription on the thing is in russian that reads. Sculpture posted:From Soviet sailors in memory of a visit to Oslo, 1971 year, september. The response in the thread was to have it x-rayed, and my wife happen to be a radiologist... Well, we finally made it happen, here's the CT-scan currently in the patient record of patient "no_name_5790" at a certain Norwegian hospital... No bugs I'm afraid, (unless they made a bug with the uniform and exact density of the material ) the red things are the screws holding the birds to the base. Cold war paranoia routed this to us from the highest of places, and I shall treasure it always.
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# ? Jul 29, 2013 10:28 |
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It's still cool, just not quite mind-blowingly awesome.
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# ? Jul 29, 2013 17:12 |
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Caconym posted:Well, we finally made it happen, here's the CT-scan currently in the patient record of patient "no_name_5790" at a certain Norwegian hospital... Congrats on making your soviet listening device radioactive!
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# ? Jul 29, 2013 17:28 |
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FrozenVent posted:Congrats on making your soviet listening device radioactive! Maybe that's what the ruskies wanted
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# ? Jul 29, 2013 17:31 |
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Nebakenezzer posted:
Can't even look at that without this song and video running in my head: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVy0ZVQcl7E
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# ? Jul 29, 2013 18:06 |
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Cyrano4747 posted:Why bother? What does hauling around your own helo provide, other than a maintenance nightmare and the need for a full time pilot killing time below decks? Anyplace someone like that needs a helicopter he can charter one, be it to fly out and pick him up off his boat or to fly him out to his boat. Fyi this is the entire crew for at least 40 weeks of the year. A dive instructor i was talking to had a buddy that got picked up to be a resident instructor on a super yacht. He got to spend nearly 6 figures on top of the line gear for every single potential passenger and then spent 99% of his time being bored and teaching random crew to dive.
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# ? Jul 29, 2013 20:06 |
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What do pilots for private aircraft do when the owner isn't traveling anyway? Does the owner hire a pilot for like, a weekend or something?
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# ? Jul 29, 2013 22:46 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 14:47 |
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Mortabis posted:What do pilots for private aircraft do when the owner isn't traveling anyway? Does the owner hire a pilot for like, a weekend or something? I was once at a motorcycle track in New Hampshire for a track day and I met a really cool South American dude who was the personal pilot of some bigwig (in my mind: drug lord of course) who was in NYC on business for the week and so he was just hanging out and traveling around New England doing cool stuff. Guy was awesome.
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# ? Jul 29, 2013 22:59 |