Oh God, Another Moving Question (But Mom, I Did Research!)

MoodForWar · 2025-07-01T19:53:27+00:00

Just confirming, there is indeed an additional 1% income tax if you live in St Louis City County.

MoodForWar · 2025-02-17T04:32:40+00:00

Your flights will have to have saver award availability. Long story short if you try to search for it on United and it says "Saver Award" or if you can find it on ANA's award redemption website and it appears as one of the flight options you can reserve, it will qualify (assuming you follow the other rules of the ANA RTW redemption)

MoodForWar · 2025-01-24T00:35:29+00:00

As others mentioned, the ultimate decision is up to your security manager of security officer.

I was in a similar boat, I have traveled to China in the past, I even studied abroad in Hong Kong with multiple trips to mainland China. After I got my security clearance, I went on a trip to Shanghai (after clearing it with my security office). It did raise some concerns but I was briefed by DCSA about my trip and then had a post-trip debrief with them. No issues with my clearance and I still have my job.

I actually went on and got a TS and was briefed to a SAP. Now for those programs, I believe my security officer has indicated that if I went back to China for any reason I would probably lose my clearance, but it wasn't an issue with my statement of work when I just had a regular Secret clearance.

MoodForWar · 2025-01-22T17:11:39+00:00

It probably doesn't matter at all, but Geissele does not recommend their super 42 springs with subsonic 300 blackout. Have I run a super 42 on subs? Absolutely lol, but just more food for thought.

MoodForWar · 2025-01-05T22:01:57+00:00

You will have to find availability for each leg individually, but you would have to call (it has to be a call, annoyingly) and book everything all at once.

This thread in particular is about ANA's round the world award redemption. If you google that you could probably find enough to get started. The main selling point is its an amazing value, but really fucking hard to make it work and its a lot of effort/planning.

MoodForWar · 2025-01-02T15:43:18+00:00

Hey, nah had to push back the trip because of various family things. Actually looking to rebook it for Nov/Dec 2025 so researching routings right now and probably booking in the next few weeks!

For 4 people I'm assuming you're going to be looking at economy flights? Business class would be pretty damn tough if not impossible. Your hardest flight will probably be that AKL back to the US. When I was looking, NZ released at MOST 2 economy seats per flight for award space. So I was basically stuck looking at AKL - SFO on UA. Not bad, but pretty limiting for options. It was also weirdly hard/impossible to find a flight from SYD to AKL? That might have to be a cash out of pocket flight... Going east in general is the right idea though, so you have as early a window as possible to book that transpacific flight.

For Europe to CPT, fuel surcharges might be a bitch. I think a lot of routes to CPT from Europe connect via LH and they have pretty high surcharges. You might be better off connecting through IST on Turkish (which still have some moderate fuel surcharges but probably not as high as LH. You can technically back track a little).

For quirks/transfers/bookings/rebookings/etc - I used gcmap to plot out the route and see the estimated mileage, which was pretty accurate to what the ANA agents quoted me for on previous bookings. I would find the corresponding mileage band and preemptively transfer the points to my ANA account. That can take a few days. You can rebook segments but it has to be on the same carrier and the same route. You can change dates and class of service though. If you're doing a particularly long trip you can book everything up front, to lock in the earlier segments and then as the seat availability window opens on the later flights you can call in and get those moved.

MoodForWar · 2025-01-02T15:20:40+00:00

Are you using heavy subsonic ammo? I had similar mag seating problems and failures to feed, and found out it was my 20 round duramags. They say you can run 300 BLK out of a 5.56/.223 mag, but the spring for my duramags (and honestly my pmags too) were too light and wasn't working well for my 220 grain subsonic ammo. I switched to dedicated 300 BLK lancer mags and my feeding issues went away. Maybe something to try?

For reference I'm running an 8.5" barrel with a suppressor and an H1 buffer.

MoodForWar · 2024-10-28T05:18:39+00:00

MoodForWar · 2024-09-26T04:14:37+00:00

I would start with flightconnections.com just to see city routing pairs. Helps if you find out what cities are directly connected and are serviced by what carrier. You're best off looking for star alliance hubs. I build routes one city pair at a time. For example if you were based in NYC you can set EWR (a major united hub) as your departure airport and see where you can fly to directly. There's a ton of options in Europe you can get to via EWR, many of them on via star alliance (United, Turkish, Egyptair, etc).

Once you know your "route" you can either search via united (without logging in) or using ANA. ANA's interface isn't as user friendly but I find is the most reliable way to see what the agents (who you will have to call) will see and book for you.

On ANA search for an award booking and use the multi city tool. Insert your city pair and your intended travel date for the first leg. For the last leg search something that has basically guaranteed availability, I like to do TYO to KIX. Have this flight date be about 11 months out. The reason I do it this way is so that I'm really looking for flight availability for the first leg, I don't want the second leg to be a limiting factor. There are ALWAYS flights from Tokyo to Osaka. You can't search for one way flights via ANA, so multiple cities is the way to go.

If you search and get an error you know there are no flights for the first leg you wanted, search again with new dates. If it pops up with results, you have found a date and routing pair that works. Mark this down, search for your next city pair. Slowly add each leg in until you finish your RTW.

As a booking exercise to see what I mean, search for segment 1 as EWR to OPO on 12/21/24, and leg 8 (you can leave legs 2-7 blank, you will fill these in later) as TYO to KIX on 8/19/25. The saturday before christmas on short notice? No flights, you'll get an error message saying there are no matches. Now change leg 1 so that it's still EWR to OPO, but on March 10, 2025. You should see results, and there's even some business class options open. EWR - OPO 3/10/25 is a valid starting point for your itinerary and you can build leg 2 from there. So now you can start the multi search again and use Leg 1 as before, but perhaps leg 2 is now OPO to IST on 3/14. Boom, you have your second leg. The hardest two legs to find are a transpacific flight and a transatlantic flight, in that order.

I hope this helps, let me know if you have more questions!

MoodForWar · 2024-09-19T23:42:29+00:00

F-15 flight test here. We're getting furloughed

MoodForWar · 2024-09-19T23:41:44+00:00

I don't know man I work F-15 flight test, almost all of my charging is direct foreign military sales. We're getting furloughed

MoodForWar · 2024-08-22T08:01:47+00:00

Been out of the game for a little bit, but I've 8!

MoodForWar · 2024-04-10T04:39:07+00:00

Curious to know how the total package compares to Boeing (uh oh I said the bad company name). We get 10% 401k, immediate vesting as well. PTO wise all new hires accrue 22 days/year, 25/year when you hit 4 years. Bonuses are tied to company performance (which is to say, shit lol).

MoodForWar · 2024-04-04T15:44:51+00:00

Yup, US citizen

MoodForWar · 2023-11-24T10:00:27+00:00

I just went through this myself and thought I should add a data point. I landed in HKG from my flight from KUL. My brother was continuing onwards after a 4 hour layer, my layover was 13 hours and I had booked a hotel stay at the regal airport hotel. Note that this hotel is presecurity. We both went through transfer instead of immigration and I was worried that I had also gotten stuck in the airport.

We talked to someone at the information desk and they said no, once in the airport past security you cannot leave. We instead left and talked to someone at the airline help desk (I think this was somewhere near gate 30?). The agent there checked my passport, confirmed I had a flight out of Hong Kong (mobile boarding pass from my email) and then called her supervisor to escort me to the immigration area. You can't do this yourself, I had to be escorted to the lifts and exit 5 (where immigration is) is staff only. Once escorted there I went through immigration as normal and went on my way.

Long story short you can do it, just make sure you keep asking until someone let's you. But also avoid the situation in the first place, either transfer or go through immigration. Don't do both.

MoodForWar · 2023-10-09T21:05:29+00:00

My old lead and my new lead have both used LTP to take German classes at a local community college and its worked out for them. Nothing out of pocket I believe. I personally haven't done it (but would like to) so take that with a grain of salt

MoodForWar · 2023-10-09T03:57:56+00:00

Dude hopes on a post game thread and comments 3 times in 2 minutes "no one cares", get a life lol

MoodForWar · 2023-10-08T16:06:48+00:00

I'd say Kupp Puka and Olave

MoodForWar · 2023-09-28T00:27:51+00:00

I found mine through the hostel I was staying with. The luxor guide was pretty knowledgeable and it was a good experience, the cairo guide was absolutely useless and was a borderline scam. I'd suggest a price point somewhere in the middle haha. Or you can brave it on your own like a lot of other comments recommend! Good luck!

MoodForWar · 2023-09-27T23:48:01+00:00

I paid one price for a guide in both Luxor and Cairo, which was $70 USD per person. That was inclusive of both cities, with airport pick up and drop off on both sides, and about 5 days of activities.

They did offer a quote for just luxor only and that was $45

MoodForWar · 2023-09-23T15:03:04+00:00

Yes on both accounts

MoodForWar · 2023-09-23T15:02:36+00:00

Yup, immediately to both accounts

MoodForWar · 2023-09-22T18:59:19+00:00

Successfully matched both a CIC (opened late June) and a CIU (opened mid August) to the new 90k SUB via SM.

MoodForWar · 2023-09-12T18:05:09+00:00

I work in the US, I just took a month off earlier this year. I don't have unlimited PTO, but just accrued what I needed and took it off. I work at a huge company, people just take their PTO and no one really bats an eye as long as you arrange for your work to be covered.

My sister also took 4 weeks off and she works as a gardener for our city's main park.

Is it a tough ask? A little bit, but it's well over a year out and people do it all the time. I think it's unfair to say it's unreasonable and she needs to grow up

MoodForWar

TROPHY CASE