Airshows RIP

[Jeff_S]

I just learned that the Thunderbirds have canceled all air shows starting April 1 as a result of the sequester. Blue Angels are taking a wait and see approach but selectively canceling their events as well.  The air force press release even goes so far as to say that they are keeping their skills sharp so they can resume air show events as soon as "the sequester is rescinded."

 

Well, is it just me, or does this smell like a political decision, akin to canceling the White House tours? Surely there are other ways to find and cut wasteful spending in the military, rather than killing one of their primary outreach activities.

 

I'm on record as supporting the sequester since the nabobs in Congress couldn't cut spending any other way, but I see some very poor decisions being made as to how to effect it. I hope that people will come to their senses soon.

[jsimmons619]

Maximizing the impact of sequester is evident every day.  Why?  I suggest it's to demonize anyone who suggests further reducing the federal budget.

 

My apologies to MooneySpace readers who may be offended by a political comment on this website.

[alex]

To answer your question without spewing my political views (pc police is in full force) it does smell, quite bad as a matter of fact.........really nasty B.O!

[1964-M20E]

Federal, state, local, R or D they all operate the same way when it comes to reducing the size and scope of Gov't the bureaucrats do not want to do it and will do anything to make it as un-tasteful as possible.  Sort of like a 3 year old when you tell him he cannot have a new toy while at the store.  We need to take the castor oil and get rid of the sh&*.  IMHO 2% is not enough we should be cutting (in real cuts) 10% at all levels of Gov't.

[Super Dave]

Enough with the political crap already; this is a Mooney Forum.

[Jamie]

Canadian Snowbirds are going to be in Memphis Sept 28/29.  They have a few other U.S. dates as well.

 

But back up a sec... Blue Angels / Thunderbirds don't fly because I enjoy them. They fly because they're essentially advertising the military. They are one of the most visible (and probably most successful) P.R. related activities the military has. Sure, I want to see them. That's intentional. But they want to be seen.  And they need to be seen more than I need to see them, if that makes sense.

 

Go a whole season without a major recruiting tool? Maybe... but I doubt it.

[Jeff_S]

Enough with the political crap already; this is a Mooney Forum.

 

Well, yes, I do admit that sometimes these political threads can get out of hand. But in fairness, this is the Miscellaneous Aviation Talk forum and I would say that talking about budget cuts and airshows would certainly qualify.  I also realized that I hadn't fully made my point in my first post. By saying they would resume shows "when the sequester is rescinded" the Air Force is explicitly pinning blame on this one event, which is assinine. Who says the sequester will ever be "rescinded"? More likely Congress will just come up with more flexible ways to allocate the spending cuts. But I try to put myself in the shoes of whoever MADE this decision, and whoever WENT ALONG with it.  At least the Navy was willing to play it by ear and do as much as they could.  I can only speculate, but I can't imagine that the Thunderbirds make up such a significant portion of the overal AF budget that they should get entirely canceled.

[John Pleisse]

It's like the White House Tours.....posturing. When POTUS's numbers start to dip, he'll make sure the "popular, fun" programs are reinstated. Remember, Clinton and Gingrich played chicken in the 90's. Going into the government shutdowns, Clinton enjoyed a massive advantage in the polls, spinning armageddon. It only took 4 days for his numbers to tank. Today's White House seems to be stupid enough to do the same thing. Today, Congress is at 12%, lower than a used car salesman, so what do they have to lose? Not only should they attempt to outlast the POTUS, but once they have him down, not take their foot off his neck until the debt ceiling debate......and then......let him have it again. Contrary to popular wisdom, this is likely their only hope of retaining the House in 2014.

 

Oh, I'm sorry....too political?

[alex]

It's like the White House Tours.....posturing. When POTUS's numbers start to dip, he'll make sure the "popular, fun" programs are reinstated. Remember, Clinton and Gingrich played chicken in the 90's. Going into the government shutdowns, Clinton enjoyed a massive advantage in the polls, spinning armageddon. It only took 4 days for his numbers to tank. Today's White House seems to be stupid enough to do the same thing. Today, Congress is at 12%, lower than a used car salesman, so what do they have to lose? Not only should they attempt to outlast the POTUS, but once they have him down, not take their foot off his neck until the debt ceiling debate......and then......let him have it again. Contrary to popular wisdom, this is likely their only hope of retaining the House in 2014.

 

Oh, I'm sorry....too political?

AMEN!....Too religious?

[fantom]

......I can only speculate, but I can't imagine that the Thunderbirds make up such a significant portion of the overal AF budget that they should get entirely canceled.

 

Unfortunately that's the argument that's made about almost any big government reduction.

[co2bruce]

The gag order is in effect, I can not answer, or even give an opinion. I guess its just too bad for the Thunderbirds. Maybe they can go play golf.     

[fantom]

With apologies to our career military guys, one of which I used to be, as well as an aide-de-camp to a Major General, perfumed princes approved by Congress for promotion to Flag rank for the past two decades are now running the services. Unfortunately they are more PC and politically career motivated, then they are maverick warriors, IMHObservation.

 

General officers are nominated for promotion by the President of the United States, and confirmed by the Senate. You can't get more "political" than that. The services hold in-service promotion boards to recommend officers for general officer promotion to the President. When vacancies occur (a general officer gets promoted or retires), the President nominates officers to be promoted from these lists (with advice from the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the applicable service, and the Service Chief of Staff/Commandant).

 

We are doomed...

[M016576]

All our flight hours have been cut... Drastically.

Some of you seem to think that the sequestration is more for show, or that it doesn't matter. Perhaps to you it doesn't matter. To me it does.

The average flight hour cut in the guard is 60%-70% right now. My old bros in the Navy are only flying if they are on cruise or within a few months of going on cruise. All the flight hours are going towards our operational requirements.

If you think we are cutting the blue angels and thunderbirds flight hours for "show", I can promise you that is not the case. Even if it was, would it be worth more to you to fly close air support missions, or air shows? Both serve a valuable purpose... But operational requirements tend to trump all else in our line of work.

Really, the people that are hurting most are the guard Technicians: personnel that wear the uniform, but are "officially" GS ranks... They are being forced into furlough just like the other civilian GS personnel. This whole thing is very trying for our service members (at least in the Air Force, Navy and Guard).

[alex]

MO 16576  "Some of you seem to think that the sequestration is more for show, or that it doesn't matter. Perhaps to you it doesn't matter. To me it does."

 

 

I really am sorry for what you are going through, I think it is reprehensible to make random cuts that hurt so many in such a direct manner without thinking of the ramifications. It seems there are some who are comfortable enough to joke about it with a smug look on their face. (This was in Illinois,Friday 15th of March)

 

http://youtu.be/247-SYVlb9U

 

 

...and then you have reports like this one that just make no sense at all 2 days after sequestration began.

 

 

Kerry says U.S. releasing millions in aid to Egypt

By The Associated Press

This article was originally published March 3, 2013 at 2:20 p.m. Updated March 3, 2013 at 2:50 p.m.

 

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday rewarded Egypt for President Mohammed Morsi’s pledges of political and economic reforms by releasing $250 million in American aid to support the country’s “future as a democracy.”

Yet Kerry also served notice that the Obama administration will keep close watch on how Morsi, who came to power in June as Egypt’s first freely elected president, honors his commitment and that additional U.S. assistance would depend on it.

“The path to that future has clearly been difficult and much work remains,” Kerry said in a statement after wrapping up two days of meetings in Egypt, a deeply divided country in the wake of the revolution that ousted longtime President Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt is trying to meet conditions to close on a $4.8 billion loan package from the International Monetary Fund. An agreement would unlock more of the $1 billion in U.S. assistance promised by President Barack Obama last year and set to begin flowing with Kerry’s announcement.

“The United States can and wants to do more,” Kerry said. “Reaching an agreement with the IMF will require further effort on the part of the Egyptian government and broad support for reform by all Egyptians. When Egypt takes the difficult steps to strengthen its economy and build political unity and justice, we will work with our Congress at home on additional support.”

Kerry cited Egypt’s “extreme needs” and Morsi’s “assurances that he plans to complete the IMF process” when he told the president that the U.S. would provide $190 million of a long-term $450 million pledge “in a good-faith effort to spur reform and help the Egyptian people at this difficult time.” The release of the rest of the $450 million and the other $550 million tranche of the $1 billion that Obama announced will be tied to successful reforms, officials said.
 

Separately, the top U.S. diplomat announced $60 million for a new fund for “direct support of key engines of democratic change,” including Egypt’s entrepreneurs and its young people. Kerry held out the prospect of U.S. assistance to this fund climbing to $300 million over time.

Recapping his meetings with political figures, business leaders and representatives of outside groups, Kerry said he heard of their “deep concern about the political course of their country, the need to strengthen human rights protections, justice and the rule of law, and their fundamental anxiety about the economic future of Egypt.”

Those issues came up in “a very candid and constructive manner” during Kerry’s talks with Morsi.

“It is clear that more hard work and compromise will be required to restore unity, political stability and economic health to Egypt,” Kerry said.

Syria and Iran were topics of discussion, according to officials.

[M016576]

It really is a brutal and nonsensical "slash and burn" (at least from my side of the fence).

Another sign of how crazy the cuts are- all Tuition Assistance for active duty service members has been suspended... Yet I read the other day that Colorado has just approved Tution Assistance for illegal immigrants. Not sure how the pots of money work for that, but to me it just seems wrong.... We're allowing illegals to get TA, but not our serving soldiers, sailors and airmen. Sad days indeed.

[aviatoreb]

It really is a brutal and nonsensical "slash and burn" (at least from my side of the fence).

Another sign of how crazy the cuts are- all Tuition Assistance for active duty service members has been suspended... Yet I read the other day that Colorado has just approved Tution Assistance for illegal immigrants. Not sure how the pots of money work for that, but to me it just seems wrong.... We're allowing illegals to get TA, but not our serving soldiers, sailors and airmen. Sad days indeed.

 

These are very very sad days.  I feel like the guys in Washington are playing games and flushing so much of our investment in infrastructure , people and future down the proverbial toilet. All in the name of saving money.  I think they are really just posturing and playing games and brinksmanship.  Please fox news folks don't jump on my statement as another opportunity for you to blame your favorite side to blame, I am making a global statement for both sides if you please.  I feel in the end all of this game will end up costing way more money than anything being saved at the moment.

 

-M016576 and his kind are losing flight hours but be sure that they will still be expected to be deployed despite less currency.

-Will those GSA technicians being furloughed and the active duty personnel losing their education compensation packages stick around through these games?  Many likely not.  How much investment and years of training did it take to train these folks to take care of your hardware?  A few months of gamesmanship could cost dearly in dollars.

-they are furloughing IRS agents for goodness sake.  I am sure that will save lots of dollars from the federal budget bottom line.

-they are furloughing USDA meat inspectors.  And border agents, and ...well its depressing, but these things ripple through the economy.  These are not my favorite programs necessarily but I read Upton Sinclair and I like meat inspectors.  Without them, but the laws still on the book that meat must be inspected, you need to close meat lines.

 

As for airshows RIP - something happened yesterday and today that made me get off my duff and write this little story.  Something really nice happened to my middle son yesterday.  He won a big regional science fair in the 9-12 grade category as a 9th grader, which is pretty rare that way, and he won a trip to the Intel international science fair in May, all expenses paid by private donors.  His project is a 6 foot wind tunnel he built all by himself.  He read Pope (an undergrad engineering "bible" on wind experimental methods)  (believe me I am no experimentalist!  He did it all - only part I had in his seeing that research is cool), and learned about building a good wind tunnel with a nice laminar flow test section, with carefully designed angles in the contraction and expansion sections, two barn fans as puller motors, ten thousand straws in the opening to straighten flow, a linear force balance he built himself with with some clever tricks I was really surprised he learned and I did not formerly know, a party fog maker rigged to a brass tube for flow-viz to input smoke,....and so many other things I can hardly remember, and validated Cd values for a sphere and a cube to the published NASA values, to START his project which was to design a car with lower drag where he made a tandem seating - measured a bunch of people to get an idea of size... worked with a CAD to make drawings and then to his friends home 3d printer.... tested his design and scaled the results through the reynolds number....some design cycle changes....

 

Okay, where am I going with all that - yes indeed I am bragging and proud of my son, but also....

-in the application to the Intel science fair, one questionaire question is "when did you first get interested in your field of study" and he wrote in that when he was 3 and we were living in Annapolis, the Blue Angels came to visit for graduation (as they do every year) and he fell in love with aeronautical engineering right there.  This is a kid who I think will grow up to be an aeronautical engineer.  By the way folks, that very same year I was teaching at USNA and our very own M016576 was in my math class at USNA!  Talk about long training cycles to train people as we are 12 years later...

-My son used to have a lisp and benefited from speech therapy in the public school, about 5 or 6 years ago.  At the science fair he spoke literally for 8 hours straight to the judges ...and loved every minute of it.  No lisp.  The speech therapist position has been eliminated from our public school as a cost savings major 2 or 3 years ago.

-He used to go to the middle school librarian Mrs Wood who helped him find technology books on airplanes, on ships, the sinking of the titanic, on radios, magnetism (he says next years project will be on maglev!), and so on and so on.  Now my son does his own research and found Pope on wind tunnels himself, and many more.   I think it has been two years now since the middle school library is unmanned as there is no more librarian as a cost savings measure.

-There was a school meeting last week that the middle school is likely to close or at least loose its principle, as a cost savings measure.

 

My two oldest sons are in high school, but my youngest is still in middle school. The education system in this state is crumbling literally all around us.  ANd so many of our formerly important public institutions.  WHo benefits from these institutions?  Are you educating my child as a gift to me?  No!  Its a necessity to have a first world country to have an educated population.  I am convinced I can help bring my own boys to opportunities so they can skate above this crumbling institution formerly known as education in this formerly strong educational state of NY, since I am a professor and I know what it takes to at least look out for my own kids - my two oldest boys were the only kids  from the 3 northern counties in NY at that regional science fair in Syracuse (my other boy won the NOAA prize for top research in the area of environment), but what about all the other kids?  What about our future in a less educated country?  I guess we are self declared poor now and we have decided that we want to slam on the brakes and hand the keys to the other countries for technological leaders.  Lets tell the guard technicians it does not matter if they become educated either.  I remember we used to recruit teachers and now we lay them off with the furloughed GSA workers.  Good luck finding quality and qualified folks to fill technological positions in the future....  And need a doctor in 20 years? Go to China or India for that outsourced service.

[aviatoreb]

Just my two cents.

[Jamie]

The number of voters wanting stuff for free now outnumbers the productive members of society. Once that happens, we're done as a nation.

"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."

Yup. Those contradict. The resolution won't be pretty.

[Dave Marten]

Okay, where am I going with all that - yes indeed I am bragging and proud of my son, but also....

-in the application to the Intel science fair, one questionaire question is "when did you first get interested in your field of study" and he wrote in that when he was 3 and we were living in Annapolis, the Blue Angels came to visit for graduation (as they do every year) and he fell in love with aeronautical engineering right there.  This is a kid who I think will grow up to be an aeronautical engineer.

 

 

Congrats to your son! he's on the right track.

 

I too was bitten by the bug at a young age (T-bird airshow age 3). Stuck with it and made a similar wind tunnel in middle school, CAP cadet, Young Eagle, worked at KFC to pay for a pilot's license, USAFA, mech engineering, pilot training, and now an AF test pilot.

 

Best of luck in the international science fair!

 

When the time comes I highly recommend a tuiton-free university located in the foothills above Colorado Springs that happens to have an excellent aeronautical engineering program!

[aviatoreb]

Congrats to your son! he's on the right track.

 

I too was bitten by the bug at a young age (T-bird airshow age 3). Stuck with it and made a similar wind tunnel in middle school, CAP cadet, Young Eagle, worked at KFC to pay for a pilot's license, USAFA, mech engineering, pilot training, and now an AF test pilot.

 

Best of luck in the international science fair!

 

When the time comes I highly recommend a tuiton-free university located in the foothills above Colorado Springs that happens to have an excellent aeronautical engineering program!

 

Thanks Dave.  Wow yes I am a proud papa!

 

Actually, I was really surprised about 5 years ago that he doesn't want to fly - not at all.  He seems to be one of those people who has significant vertigo with flying.  He throws up every time he flies with me, and even in the airlines!  He had a bit of anxiety about flying airlines to Pheonix, but of course he says he will go and he is able to will himself past it.  So this is a kid who doesn't want to grow up to fly the airplanes - he wants to grow up to build the airplanes.  Not that I wouldn't be interested in free tuition.....  Right now he says he likes MIT and Cornell.

 

USAFA, and eventually AF test pilot, eh?  Cool man.  I formerly taught math at USNA and before that at USMA.

[Hank]

Way to go, both of you!

 

I wanted to be either an F-14 or Test Pilot, but didn't have the required 20/20 or better. So I thought I would build planes instead, and graduated with an ME degree, emphasis in thermo with some AE classes thrown in for good measure, just at the bottom dropped out of the market in the late 80's . . .

 

Dreams are good, but sometimes reality hits. Sure was glad I didn't have an aviation-only degree. "Plan B" is required even when not flying!