Leaderboard

You don't have to be a superb pilot to be a great leader. How many people bitch on here about leadership because they aren't great pilots? I haven't seen it yet. You just need to be competent in the jet. One of my observances in *some* fighter communities is that you pretty much have to be a WIC grad to be on the cc track these days...and you get put on the WIC track as a wingman or young flight lead (not always but a late trend I've seen) = we are choosing our future leaders when they are young captains with 300 hours and then grooming them big blue style with school and other BS. Most of the great leaders I wanted to follow were awesome pilots. They were looked down upon by the "official" sq leadership but they were truly informal leaders. Most of them are out now, never made CC. Rarely were they WIC grads (some were), school selects or any other USAF metric measured superstar. Just proficient guys in the jet who hated BS, didn't play the USAF game and therefore didn't get ahead. (I do not want this to sound like WIC bashing, lots of great dudes sorely needed are WIC grads. I'm knocking the current trend I see with WIC being a new container to fill in the way to CC)

Yeah I used crazy Carl's Oakland program. Hard to get a hold of anyone. If you devote a week to the gouge and are ok teaching yourself to fly a seneca in 3 flights with no guarantee of a pass depending on your DPE go for it. Price isn't great, instruction is almost nonexistent but it's a plane to fly for the qual. Send a pm if you want more info.

Ummm... Not sure about anyone else but the first time he pulled his gun out and pointed it at the lady would have been reason for me to put the dude down.

Yes, 18Xers are just as miserable minus the added resentment of "I graduated UPT for this bullshit?". Shiftwork is harmful to your health (physical and mental), the mission is mind numbingly boring and unrewarding, the customers are often clueless and unprofessional, there are incredibly limited opportunities for TDYs and deployments, you have significantly reduced chances for promotion, the bases are mostly in awful locations, and many of the squadron commanders are not credible IPs. It's one thing for a Lt Col who's BTDT to ask you to push the margins a bit, it's another for an O-5 who Q3'd his checkride because he doesn't know the boldface to make the same request. 0/10, would not recommend.

Ten days should be plenty.

That sort of behavior is way worse than this sort of thing.. Or kind of like the CAOC having us take off with 185,000 pounds of fuel (~27,000 gallons) just to have extra gas airborne "in case we need it" and then shrugging their shoulders when we dump 80,000 pounds (~12,000 gallons) of it in order to land. Or even better...coming back to land with 20,000 pounds (~3,000 gallons) too much gas, and rather than granting a waiver to land over the supposed max gross weight, the Og/CC directs you to hold for 3 hours with the gear and flaps hanging to burn it instead, rather than saving it. Not that two wrongs make a right, but why is it that finance people typically act like it's coming out of their damn pocket?? In all seriousness, I wish every person who works in a finance office could "ride along" with a mobility crew for a week or two. Stay where they stay. Work when they work. Sleep when they sleep. Eat when/what they eat (cold meals for two weeks straight, anyone?) I think the tune would change. Could it be that billeting is terrible compared to off-base lodging? Also, trans is not nearly as good as you seem to think. How many times have you ever waited out on a sub-zero (or 120+ degree) flightline for 30+ minutes for trans to show up? Sure, it looks great when 3 aircrew hop out of the crew bus in front of lodging, but you need to realize that it rarely works as advertised and certainly isn't "a good deal". Not to mention that the crew you just saw has probably been at work for 16+ hours. Again. Exactly! When I am paying my own way, I make sure I am getting the most of my money...and that would rarely be billeting. I have also NEVER conducted personal travel without a rental car authorized, FWIW. A good example: this summer, I was in sunny Altus, OK, for 6 weeks. The gov't preferred method of travel was by air, from my town to Atlanta, and then to Lawton, which is 40 miles east of Altus. No rental authorized. When I asked our travel office about this, they said, "Well you're SUPPOSED TO TAKE THE BUS and then WALK AROUND THE BASE"...for 6 weeks! That is insane. They would rather have paid $1300 in airfare to fly me into Lawton, rather than $400 to fly into Oklahoma City and another $500 for the rental car. These are the same people who are telling ME to be a good steward of the taxpayers money? UFB.

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