riggerrob

Agreed! Some of the best flying footage every published by Hollywood. Most of the F-18 footage is real. Back when Top Gun 1 debuted, I was wrenching on CF-18s at CFB Baden-Sollingen, West Germany. The only CGI seems to be the Sukhoi 57s and the F-14 Tomcat. Mind you, Sukhoi 57s are so new and so few that not even the Russian Air Force is flying them in Ukraine. ... and I doubt if the Iranian Air Force rents out their few flying F-14s for filming.

I am not following your math. ?????? Most shotgun shells are more than 2 inches long.

Okay, if you want to get "picky" there are no magazine size limits on .22 caliber rifles. I guess that Canadian police do not fear being killed by .22s. Please don't tell them about Bobby Kennedy's assassination.

I was merely suggesting gun laws that have worked well in Canada versus the failed American gun laws. My pet peeve is that Americans brag up their Second Amendment Rights while ignoring the phrase about "a well regulated militia." In Canadian slang, the "militia" are Canadian Army Reservists who report up a parallel chain-of-command - as the Regular Army - all the way up to National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa. Canadian 'militia" wear the same uniforms, carry the same weapons, attend the same courses, etc. as regular soldiers. Canadian "militia" also often sign contracts to serve with the regular army during NATO and UN missions.

Good point Wendy, Wise men use new data to question their pre-conceived beliefs. OTOH Stubborn people merely use new data to confirm their old prejudices. Like you, I read USPA accident reports religiously for 20 years. After 20 years, they started to blur together. But USPA accident reports did cure me of a few bad habits (e.g. no RSL or AAD) and USPA accident reports have had the net effect of lowering fatality rates.

Canadian laws restrict pistol magazines to a maximum of 10 rounds and long gun magazines to 5 rounds. Anything longer must be pinned to limit capacity. There are a few loop-holes that baffle Canadian gun owners. For example: there is no limit on shotgun magazine capacity, but that part of the law was written when tube magazines were the norm on shotguns and tube magazines are generally limited to the same length as the barrel (minimum 18 inches).

Agreed. Fully-automatic are great at converting ammo into noise when you spray-and-pray at full auto. Back when I was a young soldier, I was trained to fire fully-automatic weapons in 3-round bursts, because that is the most that the average soldier can keep on target. The 4th, 5th and 6th bullets just fly off away from the target. I did experiment with firing full-auto, but without a tripod or pintle mount, they were jsut a waste of ammo. Mind you, the average gang-banger does not understand the difference and jsut wants the noisiest gun to intimidate potential rival drug-dealers. Bottom line: there is nor reason for civilians to own fully-automatic machine guns and most are also hopelessly inaccurate with handguns.

Police are armed because they represent the state. For the state to claim sovereingnty and absolute control, the state mush have a monopoly on border access, currency, violence, etc. If only police (soldiers, border guards, president's body guards, etc.) are armed, then they have a monopoly on violence. If only police (prison guards, etc.) can kill some one (via, bullets, hanging, electric chair, lethal injection, etc.) then citizens will resort to courts to settle their differences. Mind you, citizens need to be confident that only police are armed in their neighborhood and only police are likely to kill some one in their neighborhood.

You and I may understand the difference between (non-restricted) semi-automatic firearms and (prohibited) fully-automatic weapons, but the general public do not. Instead, the public panics and runs around "like chickens with their heads cut off" screaming and fully-semi-automatic assault style weapons" or some other vague foolishness. I prefer to keep terminology at a level that the public and "nerdy, narrow-minded, anal-retentive, control-freak" technicians can understand. I may be a "nerdy, narrow-minded, anal-retentive, control-freak technician" but I have also published a few technical manuals and graduated from journalism college, which makes me want to use the precise terminology. I am currently reading Professor John McWhorter's book "Words on the Move" to try an understand how word meanings change over time.

Please keep your terminology straight. FULLY-AUTOMATIC firearms are PROHIBITED for civilians in Canada and severely RESTRICTED of PROHIBITED for American civilians. FULLY-AUTOMATIC machine-guns can dump an entire magazine or belt of ammunition with a single trigger press. Yes, a handful of Americans go through the whole background check process to apply for an NFA license to own fully-automatic machine-guns, but they are only a tiny percentage of the American population. In most countries, only police and military are allowed to own FULLY-AUTOMATIC machine-guns. OTOH SEMI-AUTOMATIC rifles and shotguns are NON-RESTRICTED in Canada and non-restricted in most American states. They are SEMI-AUTOMATIC because they only fire one bullet per trigger press. SEMI-AUTOMATIC pistols are RESTRICTED in Canada and legal in most American states. In Canada, you need to pass a firearms' safety course and apply for a federal firearms POSSESSION AND ACQUISITION LICENSE before you can own any firearms. State rules vary in the USA. I am comfortable with trained people (military, police or at least a federal PAL course) handling firearms, but un-trained amateurs scare me. At a minimum, American gun laws should be amended to require - at minimum - a course in the basics of safely handling firearms. The National Rifle Association should be able to figure out how to turn a profit teaching the basics of firearms safety. There! I just told American show to revise their gun laws. Let the flames begin! Hah! Hah!

Dear billvon, If that Russian sailor did not die in the initial fire, the two next most likely causes of death are hypothermia or drowning in the cold Black Sea. If Mr. Poutine can blame the Black Sea, he avoids political responsibility for the sailor's death. Perhaps he can blame the sailor for not full-dressing before he ran up on deck. Did "Moskva" even carry enough cold-water immersion suits? Sarcasm alert!

This reminds me of a conversation with another Tandem Instructor Examiner. He was asked to train a licensed skydiving instructor (IAD) to do tandems. He had heard that the prospective TI had been sentenced to prison. He quietly asked some unofficial, off-the-record questions of prison guards that he knew casually. Prison guards were not supposed to talk about details of prisoners' records. When it emerged that the prospective TI had been imprisoned for sexual contact with minors, the TIE refused to train the guy. A few years later I also refused to train the guy, because he played one too many head-games with me. I also refused to train another prospective TI after he free-flew too low, scared his Cypres, landed his tiny reserve HARD and broke a few bones. I figured that he needed a few more years of maturity before we could trust him with students' lives. He eventually matured, earned his tandem rating - in another province - and has been doing tandems well for a few years. Bottom line, sometimes TIEs need to refuse to grant TI ratings based upon behaviour "that cannot be discussed in polite company." Privacy laws prevent revealing all the evidence.

I suspect that Mr. Poutine and the Russian Orthodox Church fear LGBTQ+++++ because of Russia's shortage of young men of military age. Ever since Communists seize power circa 1920, Russia has suffered a series of slugs in birthrates. Any baby boy born in 1920 had only a 20 percent chance of surviving the end of World War 2, what with all the famines, Holodomor famine, Stalin's Purges and a few million citizens slaughtered by invading Nazi Germany. Given the shortage of young men, Russia did not enjoy a "Baby Boom" after WW2 ... compared with the huge numbers of babies born in North America between 1946 and 1964. The communist gov't tried to encourage un-married young Russian woman to bear children, btu with limited success. These two slumps in male population caused a series of cycles of low birth rates in the years following. There was another slump in birthrates during the confusion after the collapse of the USSR circa 1990. Aging, alcoholism and abortion continue to limit Russian birth rates. Cheap alcohol causes brewer's droop, makes Russian men undependable fathers and kills them too young. Faced with non-existent or drunken husbands, too many Russian women opt for abortions, often the only form of pre-natal, post-natal care or birth control available through gov't sources after the collapse of socialized medicine. One of the reasons that Mr. Poutine launched the current invasion of Ukraine is that he knew that waiting another 5 or 10 years would mean too few young soldiers. Another odd factor is that we never see female soldiers in Russian parades or combat footage?????? Was Russia so traumatized by WW2 casualties that they no longer want to send women soldiers into combat? At the end of WW2, the Red Army was almost 1/4 women soldiers. Granted, few female Russian soldiers fought in the front lines, but every modern army needs 3 times as many support staff: mechanics, cooks, signallers, truck drivers, supply clerks, medics, etc. as combat troops. We wonder what the Russian Orthodox Church's atitudes are towards LGBTQ++++, female soldiers, etc.????

But "they gave a f$#@! 9 months ago." Shouldn't they be held responsible for their actions?

Did you just call me a "sucker?" I am openly hostile towards all forms of Maskirvoka, miss-direction, legal boilerplate, election campaign promises, advertising copy, half of the public announcements made by the Trudeau gov't, etc. I am doubly sceptical of Mr. Poutine's public announcements because they contradict data from most other sources: Manchester Guardian, India Times, Kyv Independent, Toronto Globe and Mail, Paris Match, der Spiegel, New York Times, CNN, FOX News, Steven Colbert and most NATO, EU, First World heads of state. I just spent the last hour listening to an old interview with journalist Julia Ioffe. Every week I consult a dozen other news sources. How many news sources does our resident monkey consult? A few years back I got in deep doo-doo for criticizing a gov't document as "a prime example of bureaucratic double-speak" (see George Orwell for definition). The other party - in the lawsuit got furious and bullied me outside of court. But I was proven correct in the long run because an Ontario magistrate censored them for "contempt outside of court" and denied their lawsuit. The fact that no-one has died near there (site of the lawsuit) since 2013 proves my point. I often offend public figures by calling out their MASKirovka ... er ... public lies.

If anti-abortionists were serious, they would donate their dollars to adoption agencies, pre-schools, kindergartens, after-school programs, etc.

If it is any consolation, the majority of Canadian and American skydivers believe that the current Russian invasion of Ukraine is foolish. You should direct your letter to the Parachute Industry Association who supply the majority of parachute fabrics and hardware. If they stop selling materials to Russian parachute factories, Russian production will soon suffer. Technodinamika Group will no longer be able to brag about building "stealth" parachutes.

Dear dudeman17, ... a bit of historical background. Almost 40 years ago (1983-1984) , when Ted Strong and Bill Booth were trying to get FAA approval for their new-fangled tandem system, they copied a standard recently written for new-fangled two-seater ultra-light airplanes. By writing a standard slightly higher than any the FAA might propose, they forced the FAA to grant them a waiver for their new concept. That FAA waiver stood for more than 20 years until a new TSO standard (F?) was written that allowed two people to hang under the same canopy. Since the old standard for tandem instructor medicals ahd stood the test of time by minimizing fatalities, manufacturers, the FAA and USPA just continued with a standard that worked. As for this most recent case, USPA is respecting the individual's privacy by not revealing any more details. IF the TI was ingesting banned drugs, then USPA is obliged to suspend his tandem instructor rating. Privacy considerations prevent us from hearing "the rest of the story."

Jean Charest is from my home riding of Sherbrooke, Quebec. I distrusted Charest the first time he ran for office and I still distrust him. He started as a lawyer = 1 point against him. Then he became a career politician = 2nd point against him. Then he switched parties = 3rd point against him. Then he suggested a return to Quebec's fascist attitude towards gun control = 4th point against him. By "Quebec fascist" gun control, I mean that Quebec was the only province against cancelling the federal long-gun registry. Then Quebec asked for all the data on Quebec gun-owners. Ottawa refused to hand over that data. Quebec's attitude towards gun-control is the exact opposite of American libertarian conservatives. While I may not agree with the NRA, I still see Charest's attitudes as un-conservative. Quebec gun-control attitudes are tied to the Quebec Provincial Police not wanting to be out-gunned by criminals. I left Quebec after I learned how professional the Quebec Provincial Police are ... circa age 20. Bottom line: I instinctively distrust career politicians like Charest.

Typical bureaucrats prolonging the grief of the family of a casualty of war.

What is HIPAA?

Dear olofscience, While the Soviets/Russians were perfecting airplanes that could dog-fight at 6 to 9 Gs, the West was perfecting missiles that can turn at 30 Gs ... far more than a human can stay awake. Also consider that missiles can fly at 4 or 6 times the speed of sound ... velocities at which parts start melting off of conventional airplanes, so that modern missiles can easily triumph during tail-chases with manned airplanes that can barely exceed Mach 2. Also, while guided missiles were crude, inaccurate and unreliable during the Vietnam War (19?? to 1974), the USA has been steadily improving their reliability and accuracy.

Sounds like Texas needs to upgrade power system cooling systems to handle greater temperature ranges.

One rumor has it that Ukrainians bombed a fuel depot just across the border inside Russia. Another version of the same story blames the flames on an industrial accident. It will take us YEARS to sort through all the MASKirovka.

Etudes Francaise Aeronautique. They were famous for introducing the Papillon class of high-performance round canopies during the 1960s and 1970s, but they faded during the 1980s.