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But guys... we get to roll our sleeves up now too!!

I'm gonna use the extra $50/month to pay for Emerald Coast. Thanks Air Force!

Should have been at least $350 to account for inflation since 1999 for the $650 bracket. Something above that would have been a positive indicator, but this just shows how out of touch senior management is.

Shack. It's more insulting than helpful.

Ah the ultra high fast flyer. DCA red air just got a whole lot more fun.

Yeah I'm quoting myself from the ACP thread. Quotes within quotes got stripped so see how it should actually look here: Nobody should be blindsided that this increase is a joke.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing

This is not a step in the right direction. This is another attempt from the air force to get out of this jam on the cheap. So me, as an O-4 with 10 years of aviation service, high time IP/EP.... $50 dollar a month bump? Yeah, no I'm out. It's really insulting actually that they tried to pass this off as a revolutionary incentive to get us to stay in.

Too bad that's about one year after most guys are eligible to separate. $50 probably isn't changing many minds

Since starting as a USAF mx officer in 1995 I've had a Pitts S1S, Luscombe 8E, Kitfox 4, Clone of a 135hp SuperCub and now a RV-6. 12 yrs active total, C-9As and C-17s, then AFRC C-17s with part 121 cargo. Gave my AFRC O-5 pledge pin back 5 years early this past Feb as at 23 total they'd pegged the funmeter. More time for GA! Just turned 14 hours of driving into 4.5 of flying. North of Louisville to South of Atlanta, round trip. 180mph at 9 GPH, and mine is a slower one. I've had the same $35k out of pocket in planes, only did a note for a while on the Pitts. I help with the mx, so annuals are about $350, plus parts. Insurance is about $1k a year for 2 seats with enough hours. Plan Fuel burn $ x 2, $50 in the tank, $50 in the fix-it bank, plus hangar and insurance and you'll be close in the right plane. There are no cheap planes. An oops, woops or "what's that" costs about $300 per fist coverage, hopefully including labor. Need a Magneto? 2-3 fists. Carb? Same. Hope you have yuger hands. Mechanics and their schedules can mean huge downtime, which deflates the fun and family support system if you all fly together. Mechanics are slightly easier than finding a good, local hangar. Hangars can be a nightmare, find that first. I split with another RV, $120 each, but it's 35 minutes away and pretty dead. Good for getting work done, not so much for hangar flying and extra hands. If you don't fly 50 hrs/yr, RENT, if you care about the $ side. I do not pretend it makes sense to own, even in partnership. Buy a good one, under 300 hrs and 3 years since overhaul, but not too fresh to avoid infant mortality and A/Ds on defective new parts. Do not buy old panels if you need IFR, pay up for current to MAYBE 1 gen old, if supported. I dig on experimentals, known types that are easier to inspect and check vs. plans and standards. I'm as happy in a cub, door open at sunset or sunrise as flying acro in a Pitts or travelling mad miles with a digital autopilot, good tunes and the frau in the RV. Sure I jumpseat, fly airlines and drive- sometimes a GA plane makes a trip possible, sometimes it's a drag if worrying about weather/hail/FBO hangars/icing, etc. It's not hard to know when the car or airline tickets are best. Think mil space A. It's also about the folks in flying GA, we're ready to make the hangar-home move next. Any background of pilot can yield a great friend, probably similar to many hobbies, good enough for me so far in flying private GA. If it will get you to family, friends, second homes- great, no further people-side needed. But, it's the EAA folks, chapters, fly-ins, Oshkosh, etc that put it over the top for me. Look at a radius calendar on eaa.org or similar and see what happens near you year round. When I was at CHS I met folks that years later put me in touch with the FFO area crowd. At work, trips where I fly with another GA pilot of ANY background go by 9 times in 10 like paid time off. Now, I soloed in gliders at 14, and already knew this is what I was in to. Did not know what I was in for, but the $ in GA has been some of my best spent.

Not trying to take this off on a whole other tangent, but anyone else feel like this bureaucratic construct we're operating (in both OIR and OFS, albeit under a much tighter leash in OFS) under was a giant counterdoctrinal mindfuck by the land component to take over not only CAS, but interdiction as well? e.g. Back when I was a hardened nuclear warrior who only did "CAS" in imaginationland, I'd hear stuff like "They have CAS on a tight leash out there because can't have CIVCAS and 'no one target will win this war' and dangers of relying on indigenous forces for targeting" etc. And then I get out here and what I see is: (1) deliberate targets developed well outside the 72 hour ATO cycle tasked by the land component via 9-Line as "CAS" with little/no visibility by the CAOC, (2) clearly offensive targets (i.e. interdiction masquerading as CAS) assigned under defensive ROE in order to circumvent CAF TTPs for avoiding CIVCAS, (3) JTACs who want me to ignore what my sensor is telling me and be a BOC machine because some Army 1-star standing over their shoulder staring at an FMV feed (pushed by a contractor whose idea of a far scan is to go WFOV) must have more SA than I do, and (4) occasionally actual CAS. Oh yeah, (5) Laser JDAMs and SDBs for terrain denial. Watching what the Army mentality has done to both our strikers and ISR makes me both more convinced than ever about the foundational need for airpower to be controlled by airmen... and also more SMH than ever at our so-called leaders that over a decade later still haven't learned how to say "No" to terrible ideas from the land component.

The fact that stone age AFGSC is ahead of another MAJCOM in something is unbelievable.

Academy cadets are the baseline scores. They all have to take the AFOQT as a junior/senior on the weekend, but it doesn't count for anything for AFSC selection.

Newbies listen up... This thread is GOLD. Thanks for posting guys. Chuck

I am sure many have done better than me at UPT and many have also done worse, so FWIW here is the advice from an "old" ANG Captain that got tankers on track select night: You have got to want to be there! I know this sounds stupid, but you would be amazed at how quickly the "new" wears off and people start b1tching about UPT. The same thing happens right before assignment night - people forget just how lucky they are to be flying ANYTHING in the AF. Thus, you get someone literally CRYING IN PUBLIC about getting an A-10 instead of an F-15. WTF!? Anyway, I digress. You must be willing to put in the work. That means generally no Halo marathons, no drunken parties during the week, and no constant jabbering to your girlfriend who is 1200 miles away. At least during the week. I'll get to weekends later. Remember why you are at UPT - to learn to fly AF airplanes. There is only a finite amount of time in the day, and if you don't prioritize it well (see my examples above) you won't do well at UPT. You have to be consistent with your work ethic. There are TONS of things that need to be done on a daily basis. Academic exams, EPQs, stand-up, briefings, plus usually 2 or 3 actual flights per day. Toss a checkride in every few weeks just for fun. In order to keep everything straight, you MUST keep your nose to the grind stone. For me, I spent at least 2 hours a night studying (except Friday and Saturday). I would get home, spend 1-2 hours with the wife (eat dinner, walk the dog, f*ck, whatever) then study for 2 hours, shower, and go to bed at 10pm. Up at 5am and repeat. EVERY NIGHT. For the entire year. There is no shortage of things to study, so you must study/read something every night just to keep up. If not, you will get behind quickly and the pace of UPT is such that once you're in a hole in one area it is very difficult to recover (to the point where you do well vs. just getting by). I will caveat this by saying that you need to study and work hard, but don't panic about it. There were many nights that involved a few beers while chair flying! Gotta keep it real. CHAIR FLY - CHAIR FLY - CHAIR FLY. I can't stress that enough. As the SRO of my class, I was fortunate enough to be one of the 'go-to' guys when folks had trouble. I was always amazed that guys would tell me "Yeah, I know the procedures for a no-flap straight in" but when I would sit them down in my living room and say "Talk me through it - in excruciating detail. I want to know every single thing you are going to do...every switch, radio call, where you're looking, etc." and they could not do it! They would miss steps, forget checklists, or not know the radio calls. If you can't chair fly a mission at ground speed zero, you will never be able to do it at 200 knots with an IP staring you down. As a side note, helping others chair fly is one of the best ways to study, IMHO. If you can teach it to others, it shows you have a command of the information. Again, there is a never ending amoung of information to cover so you had better chair fly every night (esp. in T-1s when you're shooting 6-8 different approaches every flight. Lots of details to remember, and the more you know before you step to the jet the better you will do in the air.) There's an old saying that goes something like "Never let the airplane go somewhere you mind hasn't been to 5 minutes prior". Chair flying gives you the ability to rehearse everything the day prior. Sure, things will go wrong or change, but if you've practiced the "perfect mission" 3-4 times before, you'll be able to focus on the changes and not get wrapped up worrying about the basic profile. The ability to remain calm and excel when the profile changes is one of the things that will set you apart from the rest of the class. Perhaps some of our FAIP mafia on here can comments on that...but in my experience, that was the case. Anyone should be able to fly the profile as briefed. But how people react when the feces hits the rotating oscillator is when you find out how they really perform, IMHO. Balance. You must balance the day to day stress of UPT with your life. For me, I would stop worrying about UPT stuff on Friday after our last event. Party it up at the club, drive to San Antonio, whatever. We'd go boating, travel, or BBQ on Saturdays and Sundays until about 5pm. Then it was time to eat dinner and hit the books again to get ready for Monday. Use the weekends to catch up on your life...spend extra time with the girlfriend/wife/kids, go do whatever you do for fun. The people that never let UPT go soon self-destructed. Those are just a few things you can do to improve your chances. It's true that natural ability plays some part in success, but it's more mental than anything else. You can learn the monkey skills of actually flying the airplane. It's keeping your SA and being able to answer IPs questions that is the real b1tch - and the part of the equation you have direct control over by studying/chair flying. You will never hook a ride for a firm landing [hand-eye stuff] but you certainly will if you bust out of the MOA [brain power stuff]. That's where work ethic, consistency, and attitude come into play. I know some folks reading this will say, "He's full of sh*t! Everyone has GOT to study! Everyone has GOT to chair fly!" You'd be surprised how many people I knew that spent 0 time outside of the flight room studying. And they all got what they deserved on assignment night. Whew. Guess I got off on a rant there. Sorry if I was long winded, but that's my perspective.