Good question. Also appears not to have the safety flag in the chamber.

There not only is no safety flag, but the bolt is closed.  If that rifle is loaded and the safety is off, it's ready to go.   I'm amazed they didn't AT LEAST put a cable tie through the ejection port, if not actually remove the bolt. 

In other news, some idiot kid in Georgia was building up and selling 80 percent ARs (I won't call them "ghost guns".)  He accidentally shot and killed his sister while shooting at some other kids who stole one of his rifles.

https://nypost.com/2021/12/03/georgia-teen-accidentally-killed-sister-with-ghost-gun/?utm_source=yahoo%20mail&utm_campaign=android_nyp

I have to admit the 80 percent lower idea has, contrary to my predictions, turned out to be a huge problem.  I simply did not think that our criminal element had the brain power to complete a lower and build a rifle on it. 

Tim

SMH And it still happens. 

I wish I had a nickel for every time I found a tool or rag (my own or someone else's) stashed someplace in the plane.  On top of the cylinders seems like a favorite location.  I bet non-pilots would never believe that such things are even possible.

Tim

I don't doubt that, but I also don't find it encouraging.  Reason being, of all the democrat front-runners, Biden seems to be the one who would do the least damage if, God forbid, Trump should lose the election.

Sorry to necropost, but I just have to get this off my chest...

I apologize for making the silly post above.  I really had no idea that Biden, or anyone, for that matter, could fuck things up this badly. 

Tim

Being discussed on PoA with the usual calls for more regulations.

Interesting how pilots criticize the broadcast "news" channels when they put some pseudo-expert on the air to speculate about an accident minutes after it happened, but then they themselves get on social media for their own speculation-fest.

Anyway, if wreckage is never found, how does the NTSB come up with a report?  Without wreckage they can't actually prove that an accident even took place.  (Yes, I know--radar tracks, etc.  Theoretically a pilot could descend to wavetop height and then fly to his ultra-secret hideaway landing strip and begin an insurance scam, maybe.)

Understand I AM NOT suggesting that's what happened here.  I think this really was a terrible accident.

Tim

Some thoughts, given that I think this is a solution in search of a problem...

Since we are in the GPS era, I suppose (I don't have a state-of-the-art GPS, so I don't know) most GPSs nowadays will give you a true heading to fly if you want one.  Otherwise, since it knows where you are and probably knows the local variation better than you, it can give you a magnetic heading to fly if you want one.  I presume the GPS unit will display your heading, true or magnetic, as you desire. (Or maybe course rather than heading.  Can these things figure out what the wind is doing, too?)

If you are flying a Luddite plane like mine, you can always dial up the true heading on your directional indicator if you want.  Otherwise, pilots have somehow managed to get where they're going using magnetic compasses for over a hundred years.

Will airports be required to paint new numbers on their runways if true and magnetic aren't close enough together?  If not, then we'll have a system that mixes the two, which is bound to be a source of confusion.  Oh, and since the aviation system is standardized world-wide, everyone everywhere would have to paint new numbers; otherwise that would be another confusion source.

If they really want to change something, how about making the radios be FM rather than AM?

Tim

However, from a legal perspective, if you state in print in a public forum that someone is guilty of a crime who has not been adjudicated guilty, that can be the tort of libel.

Fair enough, but if Baldwin actually sues all the people on the web who are roasting him over this incident, he might collect one or two percent of the money he's going to have to pay out in settlements as one of the producers of the movie.

Tim

All those millions of years, our ancestors watching birds in the sky and longing to fly like them. And all the men trying and trying to find the way, dying in the process, to get us to now

Once the technology became available (mostly lightweight gasoline engines, I suppose) the ideas came fast and furious.  The Wright brothers' historic flight took place in 1903; by 1936 the piston-engine airplane was virtually perfected in the Spitfire.

Tim