topflightpro

Just read what this is, and it sounds wonderful. I kind of wish I had it.

carpediemracing 

lol. I just called the vendor yesterday to see what color vinyl we ordered.

Privacy on street side, tinted the other two.

carpediemracing 

didn't match kit.

But more importantly, it wasnt aero. Tucked under the stretchy sleeve made me feel better about wearing it.

It was the first time trial I'd done in... 29 years?

burnthesheep

I get that opinions are like a-holes, everyone has one and it often stinks. And that I'm also often wrong. But dang, the rest of BF can be a troll fred-fest dumpster fire sometimes. It's one thing to just enjoy bikes no matter what, it's another to adopt "fred under the bridge" troll status. Some of the crap on the regular part of the forum is exhausting mentally.

I get Slowtwitch has its share, but given the barrier to entry over there is already being an endurance sport participant.........I feel it weeds out more of the troll crap. The signal to noise ratio is better.

gsteinb

we do a pretty good job of ignoring the other parts of the forum and not inviting conflict by trash talking it. historically when it does go on it hasn't met with much success with the moderation team.

TMonk

I will second both of those comments. The 33 has been a pretty high S/N ratio subforum. Relatively speaking, of course. It's a ****show in other parts of bf.net. The quality of this subforum is kinda self-fulfilling in a way, since when we do get some crap that bleeds into here, it often gets reported or otherwise chased out with pitchforks and torches. My threshold for it here is lower than elsewhere.

Doge

Some don't chase away so easily.
Junior got 1st bike in his 1st Triathlon with 500 participants and won his 18-24 age group early this month in TX. Swimming and running got in the way of a better open time. The transitions really got in the way.

He is doing this (front) now 4X a week but still 9 months before he knows what equipment (plane) he will get.

TMonk

Haha never leave us Doge! Glad to hear puppy doge is still doing endurance sports as time permits.

topflightpro

Hey Doge. Has Daniel looked into the Military Endurance Sports team? I don't know much about it, but I do know several guys who are on it. I believe it is open to active, reserve and retired military.

I remember reading about one guy who I think was living and working in a missile silo and he found a way to set up a bike and rollers in there to train while on duty. (I may not have all these details correct.)

Flatballer

T-6 looks like? Does he want to go fighter/bomber or airlift/tanker?

Doge

Yes, T6. Did you fly one?
His competitive self thinks fighter, his practical self thinks some heavy, but not tanker.

Flatballer

Hah, no, I considered it for a while. Was pretty involved in AF JROTC in high school, did week long officer candidate stuff, wanted to go to the Academy. Eventually decided the military probably wasn't for me. But yeah, I wanted to be a fighter pilot, like 90% of boys out there.

Fighter is definitely the fun way to go, airlift is certainly more practical. I have a friend from my JROTC days who flies C-130s, he seems happy. Another friend from those days became a helicopter pilot for black military contractor types. I have no comment on what I think of that.

himespau 

Is it easier to convert to airline pilot from C-130 (or similar) after one gets out than it is to go from fighter jet?

Doge

The word was - yes (source - older ex military pilots). Now, the word is no (source - general discussion and what the military is saying) as there is such a demand for pilots. USAF is having trouble keeping them and offering incentives. The fighter pilots tend to stay in longer (maybe hard to top flight a fighter??). It takes some time to learn the aircraft and get a pilots license. That was news - these pilots are often not commercially licensed.

IMO - it is more about do you want to manage a crew on board and some 300-400 passengers. Some of the ex fighter guys just do completely other stuff than fly. Some are cyclists.

Enthalpic

I'm sure flying a fighter is more fun than hauling around executives and tourists.

Fighter pilot plus engineering or medicine use to be the path to astronaut... now they accept lame geologists.

I would rather board a ship with a captain that knows a lot about flying and a little about rocks than one who knows a lot about rocks and can barely fly.

carpediemracing 

An example of what part of my workday is like (cross post from Facebook):

I try to teach the guys at work general stuff because, you know, kids.
We were making a second batch of coffee and as I was carefully rinsing out the hot glass coffee carafe I asked one guy if he knew not to put cold water into hot glass, really any extreme temperature difference stuff with glass.
"Yeah, I learned that..."
(In science class, I was thinking, because I learned it in chemistry in middle school)
"...from my brother because I used to leave my bongs outside in the winter and he told me not to light that s**t 'cause it'll crack."

And by "kids", I'm talking they're in their 20s.

Enthalpic

Sadly, even heat-shock proof glass like Pyrex has degraded and will shatter if not careful. The old stuff is way better and is actually collected.

TMonk

RE: pilot stuff... yeah I'm a bit confused as to how a geologist is on the shortlist to become an astronaut. I mean all that analysis can be done post-trip and it seems like an engineer or doctor might be more critical to the front-line success of an outerspace mission.

I was actually a declared Geology (BS) major before switching to chemistry. Geology rocks! (pun intended). I thought it would be cool to have a fixed field/lab job where I could collect physical samples outside, and bring them back to a lab for elemental analysis. Turns out that I have become an expert in the elemental analysis part (ICP mass spec), although in a chemistry setting.

Enthalpic as you know, geology is at the top of modern technologies for ICP-MS, requiring high res, multi-collector instruments to use minor variances in isotopic abundance for aging and other determinations. Not to mention the sample prep, REE overlap with mid mass elements and other challenges. We've collaborated a lot with a specific group at the Colorado School of Mines (Ranville group) who helped develop single-particle acquisition and data processing technology for environmental nanoparticles, using bimetallic core-shell or composite structures from us. Perkin now sells a consumable nebulizer standard as well for sp-ICP work that I helped develop.

#geekstatus thread

hubcyclist

I think I've posted about this earlier, but I've just done a soft release of a neat group ride organizing webapp to some members of my club. might not be the best time to release a group ride app in the fall lol, but actually it's a decent way to get a small test group to test and maybe push out to the public in the spring. It supports multiple clubs, and basically someone can put in the ride details and upload a route and folks can see the details along with a map and route profile and then click to RSVP, and see who else has indicated attendance. There's some very basic club administrator stuff in there too (basically just to remove people from their club roster and the ability to add administrators). One thing on my wish list is to integrate payment to allow clubs to allow member registration and pay dues. The big question I'll have, once it's somewhat polished, is what's a fair amount to charge clubs to access this service on a yearly basis, but don't want to put the cart before the horse!

Enthalpic

Functionalized nanoparticles with high resolution MS can do pretty much everything; just attach a antibody or a selective ligand...

Doge

We nudged my son that direction, but no...
My wife was at ARCO for some 14 years and this was a top school to recruit from. They were also in the same collegiate region as my kid's college, so I got to superficially know a few. Also, kid's junior team LUX director, Roy Knickman was accepted there. He chose to be a pro cyclist instead.
That is one of the fewer application based colleges.

topflightpro

Going back to the fighter pilot stuff, from what I hear from friends and former work colleagues, it's not nearly as exciting as it may seem. Yes, you can go fast, and yes, the planes are highly maneuverable, but dog fights like we saw on Top Gun or in WWII, just don't happen.

A buddy of mine was the intelligence officer for F-18s. He said that basically, the pilots took off with their route programmed in. Once in the air, they would just watch "films" while the plane flew the recorded route. Bombs dropped at the scheduled point. Then they circled back to the air craft carrier. In his 3 or 4 years on the air craft carrier during the war in Iraq, he said not a single one of his planes was challenged by anything.

Even on commercial flights now, I hear that most pilots are just there in case something happens. The auto pilot systems are so advanced, the planes can pretty much do it all via computers.

burnthesheep

Had to fix a few leaks on my install. Freaking rain decides to blow at 20mph wind right on the wall of patio windows I put in and found some weaknesses. Just going to maybe accept it since all is treated, rubber, waterproof stuff. It's like 4 oz of water after a 3 inch an hour rain with 20 to 30mph winds. Basically wind blew the rain into the window slide bottoms and it then dripped out inside. My bad installing vertical windows sideways to cover my screened in porch openings. I'll drill a little weep hole on the outside part, done.

Ordered a swivel TV mount for the old 42" tv. Swivel one side, Zwift. Other side, guy's movie night so you can see from couches.

Need to glue up the spare security sensor and will then move the stuff out there. Remote for the fan and heater work from inside, so can take a piss early AM for a morning ride and hit the buttons and let it warmup while I drink coffee when it's cold. I hope first ride in it this weekend coming up.

Doge

As a parent, I hope it remains completely boring and I agree the Top Gun stuff does not happen vs an enemy. The primary F35 is a flying network. The training is the dangerous part.

I think it is a bit safer than bike racing (or training) and right now he is getting some turning rides/and flying. They fly in an area where there are no commercial planes allowed. Same is true near PHX where Luke AFB runs the Barry Goldwater Range (Barry M. Goldwater Range celebrates 75 Years > Luke Air Force Base > Article Display (af.mil)) and then much of N AZ including the Grand Canyon. Junior was scheduling the flights last year for his Singapore squadron and they got to play/train a lot.

Cycling related/unrelated both lung capacity (I don't know why) and lower body mass are seen as positives. I'm told tensing lower muscle mass really helps not blacking out. The mass is too hard to feed now in cycling. In an incentive ride, he got 8gs in and F16 over Grand Canyon. That little T6 holds continuous 4-5g turns and they are also working on stalls etc.

If he ever gets to the Death Valley Star Wars Canyon, I'll be going to seeing that "time trial" (I am aware the Navy lost a pilot here in 2019).

burnthesheep

Moved the trainer stuff to the patio. I got greedy trying it out and instead of waiting on the tv mount from Amazon tomorrow hung it. I had it in the shed stored with some cable ties through a mounting hole. I felt they should hold fine for now. Well, cable tie pulled itself out of the little end and it fell right as I crested the Zwift KOM 20min climb. Somehow it survived and didn't hit anything in the fall. Idiot.

Setup should work nice for the winter.