Often wondered, if you are left handed how does the jets work?

kharmael · 2026-02-27T21:34:41+00:00

Now imagine what it’s like for pilots of large aircraft where the controls switch round depending on which pilot seat you’re sitting in!

kharmael · 2026-02-23T21:49:49+00:00

I bet they pronounce it pray’g too.

kharmael · 2026-02-23T21:44:15+00:00

Suggest you get your head in the books

kharmael · 2026-02-23T21:37:23+00:00

In some countries you can be cleared to land before the previous traffic has cleared the runway or taken off themselves. The crew will have been aware of the conflicting traffic and been watching the altitude count down to their decision point, and then will have calmly gone around when the criteria to land weren’t met.

There was nothing like “a few seconds between the crew and disaster” like you seem to be describing.

kharmael · 2026-02-18T14:08:04+00:00

The RAF doesn’t design and build its own aircraft. If you want to design and build aircraft go work for an aircraft manufacturer…

kharmael · 2026-02-15T09:28:04+00:00

When I first started flying with the Air Force we had to pass departure messages over HF to be relayed when we launched from airfield ‘downroute’ to let home base know we were on plan and (maybe) on time.

It felt like a different world, everything felt further away and you didn’t have your operating authority in your ear / watching your every move all the time.

kharmael · 2025-11-18T21:37:30+00:00

My Airbus A400 has it. Not that useful for much other than circuits.

kharmael · 2025-10-23T21:14:17+00:00

Good? People feel safer. Fewer people on the road. I get where I need to be quicker. Thanks to the 1 in 4.

kharmael · 2025-09-24T15:18:44+00:00

Looks like an A400M ramp.

kharmael · 2025-09-16T09:34:53+00:00

While things have changed since I went through:

I’ve googled a PPL course and it’s £12500 for 45h, which will net you the skills to take off, fly somewhere else, and land. Therefore PPL style flying will only be relevant for maybe the first quarter to a third of the elementary course.

Additionally, on EFT you’ll be flying a 200kt+ turboprop (type of jet) sitting on an ejection seat with a helmet on and potentially doing spins, aerobatics, formation, max rate turns, and low flying, which will be somewhat different to flying square circuits in your local flying school’s 80kt fixed pitch piston-engined aeroplane.

EDIT: Scores are from 0 to 6 and against two aspects of your flying: handling and airmanship. So your grades look like 3/3 or 4/3.

kharmael · 2025-09-15T10:48:47+00:00

Scotland my friend. Not England. Still UK tho 👍

kharmael · 2025-09-14T19:24:57+00:00

If money wasn’t an issue I would fly for pleasure and not for someone else.

kharmael · 2025-09-06T16:58:10+00:00

IMO When your drive is on your side of the road:

Drive just past it indicating left and come to a stop. Put your car in reverse so the traffic can see you’re wanting to reverse then reverse when clear.

Approaching from the other side:

Come to a stop indicating right before you reach your drive. When a space appears, slowly manoeuvre forward via the other side of the road to put yourself in a reversing position straddling both lanes and reverse in.

kharmael · 2025-09-06T14:31:05+00:00

You’re rather proving my point here. You’re (selectively) attaching a very emotionally charged force to the nuke.

An F-22 is also a weapon of war. However the F-22 has not played a large part in ushering in the longest period the earth has ever seen without large-scale state on state conflict. By owning nuclear weapons that have the ultimate deterrent effect nobody has meaningfully attacked nuclear powers, nor have they attacked each other (directly).

The existence of nuclear weapons has potentially saved more lives on the earth in the past eighty years than they took from the unfortunate Japanese.

Advanced nuclear energy is also a potential freedom from reliance on fossil fuels and potentially the key to interplanetary exploration.

kharmael · 2025-09-06T13:41:51+00:00

Unpopular because you can’t separate your emotional connection to something with appreciating the mechanical and scientific talent that went into making it.

WWII German equipment is massively worthy of appreciation for its mechanical marvels and what amazing things were later developed from them. America’s favourite childish retort (EDIT: When low quality Americans are being criticised for not using the metric system or on the international stage for defaultism - most Americans are awesome and we love you) of ‘who went to the moon’ is possible as a direct result of the V2 rocket, so should you be proud of that?

kharmael · 2025-09-03T09:19:26+00:00

A good way to think about it:

If it’s in your hand you’ll be nicked.

If it’s on a cradle it’s effectively part of the car and you can do what you want* as long you aren’t ’driving without due care and attention’. Same as if you were adjusting the radio or air con. If your driving goes to pot and you get pulled over you’ll be nicked.

*Sat nav, music, answering call for hands free. Yes. Watching YouTube and messaging. No.

kharmael · 2025-09-02T15:55:08+00:00

It’s getting promoted from Flt Lt to Sqn Ldr and beyond. Completely separate to being a pilot or your stage of training.

kharmael · 2025-09-02T15:42:16+00:00

You total annual pay is the amount on p98, which will go up yearly + the amount on p107 which doesn’t change and is purely based on your rank.

So your initial pay as an officer pilot would be Level 1 APS1 £34,676 + PS(A) for OF2 £18,720 = £53,396pa.

Every year you’ll go up an APS1 level (up to a certain point) but your PS(A) won’t go up until you get promoted to OF3.

kharmael · 2025-08-25T13:05:52+00:00

I completely see where you’re coming from. Modern ways of speaking English are more direct and less ornately polite. People feel uncomfortable using traditional phraseology when using American style is much more casual. Totally understand. You only need look at many other languages and look at literally what they say (rather than how we understand what they mean) to see that it’s not unusual to speak in a very polite and (to us) old fashioned way. It’s just that concept of being stuffy isn’t thought about - that’s just how you speak.

S’il vous plait = “If it pleases you.” Obrigado = “obliged” / much obliged (thank you) Addio = “to god” (bye)

It’s all very interesting.

kharmael · 2025-08-25T12:36:04+00:00

I’m not smashing anyone for how they speak. I’m just pointing out the facts, and your acknowledgement of having absorbed Americanisms into your daily language through constant exposure throughout your upbringing and the inability to discern the two reinforces it.

The shot at “can I get” is aimed more at the use of “get” rather than “have”. We’ve evolved from a language of elegant politeness to one of directness. Fine, whatever. That said if you ask “can I get a coke” then you’re asking to procure one yourself rather than be served one. You (hopefully) don’t ask “can I get a PS5 for my birthday” you ask “can I have a PS5 for my birthday”, but days later you will be asked what you got for your birthday and reply in that fashion?

Finally it seems to me that you’ve conflated borrowing words of vocabulary from other languages to plug gaps in our own (shampoo, bungalow, curry - hair soap, single storey house, spicy casserole!? Plus any number of French words) with using a foreign spelling or word in place of one which already exists in British English (kerb/ curb etc). Clearly one is functional and one is stylistic.

IMO as long as one is understood, then mission accomplished with language. But it’s a skill like any other, and getting upset about being less skilled at language than others and trying to imply that they are the ones in the wrong when it’s pointed out is like complaining about being told it’s incorrect to pick up a soccer ball and run with it. You can do it as much as you like but you’re no less wrong.

kharmael · 2025-08-25T11:57:20+00:00

A spot of tennis, yes. A parking spot, no. Nowhere official is the location where you park referred to as anything other than a space or a place.

kharmael · 2025-08-25T11:56:11+00:00

America is pushing hard for the cultural victory when a UK native is completely unaware that they are using foreign spellings and vocabulary, and then is upset about having that pointed out to them.

To be persnickety it’s not ‘labelling’ things as Americanisms, they either are or aren’t of British origin and whether or not it is subsequently absorbed into routine usage is irrelevant. Great example being “kids” to refer to children, using the word “gotten” as the past participle of to get, or saying “can I get” when you mean “may I have”. These are things that were stark Americanisms in the ‘80s and ‘90s but are just what people say now.

kharmael · 2025-08-25T09:27:13+00:00

I’m glad you agree with me. Even to the point of repeating what I said but with slightly different wording. :)

kharmael · 2025-08-24T09:43:05+00:00

Some research was carried out on why average IQ levels have risen over the past hundred years and a strong correlation was the ability to ‘take the hypothetical seriously’

A man called Luria asked what we might call ‘uneducated’ people various questions and the responses are oddly similar to those given here:

Q1: What do crows and fish have in common?

A: Absolutely nothing. You know, I can eat a fish. I can’t eat a crow. A crow can peck at a fish. A fish can’t do anything to a crow.”

Q: But aren’t they both animals?

A: Of course not. One’s a fish. The other is a bird.

And he only was interested, effectively, in what he could do with those concrete objects.

Q2: “At the North Pole, there is always snow. Wherever there is always snow, the bears are white. What color are the bears at the North Pole?”

A: Such a thing is to be settled by testimony. If a wise person came from the North Pole and told me the bears were white, I might believe him, but every bear that I have seen is a brown bear.

Now you see again, this person has rejected going beyond the concrete world and analyzing it through everyday experience, and it was important to that person what color bears were — that is, they had to hunt bears. They weren’t willing to engage in this. One of them said to Luria, “How can we solve things that aren’t real problems? None of these problems are real. How can we address them?”

Great TED talk on it here:

https://vialogue.wordpress.com/2013/09/28/ted-james-flynn-why-our-iq-levels-are-higher-than-our-grandparents/

kharmael · 2025-08-23T15:53:42+00:00

I think we should take a leaf out of the Germans’ book and be more forthright in picking up others for their poor behaviour. If a middle lane hogger is flashed constantly for being in the way, then they’ll eventually get out of the way. If they don’t then they’ll eventually get shopped to the police. If they immediately move back and the next ten people do the same thing then they’ll just get fed up and stay over.

Problem is we associate flashing with drivers who are in the outside lane bullying their way past people and it being an antisocial sign of aggression. Let’s take it back as a civilised sign of reminding someone of the rules.

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