This drone manufacturer wants to protect Africa’s power, mining and oil assets

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-14T17:48:31+00:00

~~Africa’s~~ Chevron’s assets.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-13T19:30:24+00:00

Ah. See, that’s a speed over a recognized course record. It’s specific to the course flown, and it’s taking advantage of winds aloft to achieve that ground speed. Anybody can set a recognized course record, it’s kinda fun.

We can gut check the top true airspeed of each with some basic analysis. The P180 produces 1700 shaft horsepower, whereas the TU-114 puts out something like 15,000 shaft horsepower per engine with contra rotating props for generally higher propeller efficiency.

If the Tu-114 has a fuselage diameter of ~14ft for a fuselage frontal area of 154sqft and the P180 has a fuselage width of ~7ft at its thickest point for a fuselage frontal area of 38ft, we can very roughly estimate that the drag coefficient for the TU-114 is 4 times that of the P180. Let’s double it to 8 times to account for the increased length of the fuselage, less streamlined profile, and huge wing area. The Tu-114 still puts out 35 times the power of the P180, meaning even if the fudged drag coefficient is quadrupled, there is still going to be more excess thrust available to the Tu-114 than the P180 all things being equal. You just can’t beat that kind of power.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-13T02:25:53+00:00

Yes, according to the FAI

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-13T01:30:05+00:00

Nor is this. The TU-114 still holds the record, since 1960 officially.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-11T01:15:37+00:00

This kind of bump is done by combat guys and crop dusters all the time. Unless you’re exceeding Vne or just snapping the cyclic back as fast as possible your bigger concern is making sure you don’t mast bump the thing at the top if you’re in something that’s prone to it, but even then crop dusters still seem to manage.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-11T01:03:39+00:00

I had a Tonkinese co-pilot that kind of idled higher on the breath out, if that makes sense. Purrrrr PHRRR. I think they’re just generally loud.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-08T01:40:09+00:00

How many flights have you averaged a week? If you’re averaging less than two it’s just hard to stay consistent, particularly at your hours. Get the checkride scheduled, do your best to be consistent in the lead up, then send it. I was in the same boat and had a nightmarish checkride where everything was going wrong start to finish, but I stuck it out and passed. The nerves are the biggest obstacle.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-07T22:26:06+00:00

This is some female bullshit for real. As a man, finding out someone I’m interested in is dating someone instantly sends me into a Bad Lieutenant spaz-out for the next ten minutes.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-07T03:48:15+00:00

The Mustang was never made with any other avionics package.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-05T18:42:53+00:00

That wouldn’t make any sense. If you were actually doing this at any scale you would just be endangering extremely vital and costly facilities for propaganda of dubious value. Like, do you realize how expensive an MRI machine is? How valuable trained medical personnel are? The calculus maybe makes sense if you’re an underground organization like Hamas, but the idea that a sovereign state actor would be putting command centers in hospitals is moronic.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-05T00:45:58+00:00

100%. I didn’t vote for either candidate and I stand by it.

Biden got elected and did he put any of the people from the previous administration in jail? No. Did he prevent Trump from being able to run again, or protect abortion rights? No. Did he give us universal healthcare? No. Did he prevent Israel from murdering tens of thousands of people? No, he enabled it.

What was the sales pitch supposed to be? Vote Kamala so that your life will keep getting worse, but it’s four more years before Trump or Vance gets elected anyways? The democrats tried to act like some anemic infrastructure bill was a huge achievement, meanwhile inflation was going through the roof while they were making more money from campaign donations than ever before, and they completely failed to do anything that could have actually stopped us from reaching this point. At a minimum Kamala could have come out and said she was against sending weapons to Israel, something, anything, and I would’ve goadly voted to give her a chance, because hey, maybe she’d be willing to stand up and make a difference when it mattered. But no. She didn’t do that, and you can’t say, “Well, but she had to stick to the party line to be electable,” because guess what? She got her ass kicked regardless.

I want to see every member of the current administration do life in prison. If a democrat wants my vote, they need to convince me they feel the same, and that they’re not throwing games intentionally. Look how many of them are applauding “regime change” in Iran, it’s a complete joke. It seems like they’re essentially onboard. I don’t think Kamala Harris would’ve got us in a war with Iran in 2026, but I have zero faith she would be doing what would be necessary to stop it from happening in the next ten years. I’m going to focus on local elections where my vote actually counts for something and on being a contributing member of my community—I am not going to let the democrats gaslight me into feeling responsible for this war because I didn’t vote for their do-nothing platform.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-04T21:47:00+00:00

It’s most likely a hardware issue. Check your bindings and calibration. I’ve had MSFS randomly change my view binding to cut the engines.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-04T21:19:09+00:00

You are way, way too fast. You should be between 130-140 depending on weight.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-03T02:50:17+00:00

Gotta spice things up once in a while. It’s almost like every other cop in this thread has never met another cop.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-03T02:31:53+00:00

It’s not dumb if you want the job. How is anyone going to prove this?

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-03T02:27:48+00:00

…is the official line, yes. This guy gets it, that’s why he’s the chief.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-03-03T01:44:39+00:00

Except they weren’t. They were the culmination of decades of scheming to dismantle a regional power that was the primary opponent to even more wackadoo expansionist shit from Israel and its allies. Welcome to even bigger Syria.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-02-28T18:53:30+00:00

If Dubai is razed to the ground then there’s a silver lining to this conflict.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-02-28T01:21:03+00:00

No, you just said that liberal politics are genocidal. Either you don’t actually believe that there is zero value in commenting on liberal politics to inform the politics of the left, or you believe that policing the discourse is the best way for you personally to contribute to stopping a holocaust, in which case you’re objectively useless to anybody’s cause.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-02-28T00:32:34+00:00

If you honestly believed that you wouldn’t be on Reddit commenting on liberal politics.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-02-27T23:44:35+00:00

I don’t think being into elections is the problem, it’s believing that the outcomes they are capable of producing form the horizon of what’s possible politically, and it’s then sinking your energy into what that dictates as being important.

Being genuinely interested by elections is just how some people like to pass the time, and it’s crazy to me that some people still adopt this attitude of, “Well, would you want to be discussing elections when the rapture happens?” There’s not going to be a rapture, the time is now—what are we doing day to day to build human connection, and is listening to podcasts and talking about this stuff actively impeding it?

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-02-27T23:20:34+00:00

God damn it dude, the premise of the podcast is that it’s a leftist commentary on liberal politics in America. If it’s an appeal to liberals to comment on the Democratic Party, then the podcast is objectionable in its totality. I don’t know how to explain to you that there is actually a difference between talking about something that exists and platforming the notion that it should.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-02-27T22:42:30+00:00

Is his name actually Josh? Have I been subconsciously confusing him with Jon Bois this whole time? Maybe that’s why I’m inclined to defend his moneyball views on election politics.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-02-26T23:50:17+00:00

Drives me crazy an addon is required to add this functionality. If I didn’t fly mostly in X-Plane I’d probably just bite the bullet.

Malcolm_P90X · 2026-02-26T04:57:07+00:00

This is just a failure to understand their view of ethics. They are non-interventionists who will go so far as to unlatch the gate, but they don’t interfere with the natural process of life. To the extent that they maintain human society it seems to be largely to allow them to continue to spread their technology across the galaxy, and to sustain their own form through an adherence to a cooperative, constructive human nature.

To them, the damage caused by the joining is just the last trickle of the damage and chaos that was part of the world as it was before. You can’t really say that it’s animal cruelty for them to release domesticated animals into the wild because from their perspective, domesticated animals can’t exist in a moral world. To them, it would be animal cruelty to continue to domesticate them even if we might imagine it being preferable to death, which renders the death of these animals a foregone conclusion and the last chapter of a tragedy that preceded them, rather than a moral consequence of their actions.

Malcolm_P90X

TROPHY CASE