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Hasn't been my experience. My wife has wanted to start a bar/restaurant forever and so we decided to go ahead and do it concurrent with my retirement. In preparation, I read a couple "how-to" start a business books and attended a Boots 2 Business course on base. Now I understand why many entrepreneurs say you have to fail a couple of times before you become successful. Running this business has been the steepest learning curve I've every experienced. I've also been floored about the amount of red tape and expense involved in getting business licenses, meeting code, etc. from the local government. For example, we rented a place that already kitchen equipment installed and when we went through the initial health inspection we were told the code had changed the previous year and we ended up spending an un-budgeted $20K on getting it up to code. I mean, FFS, the science in restaurant health and safety is so immature that such big code changes are necessary year to year!?! We also had delays getting licenses due to the slow pace of the city in processing them. I've also seen some unexpected things like the cops showing up repeatedly saying there was a report of a fight at our establishment. Probably our competitors trying to scare customers away.... Also, everything for business costs twice or three times what it would if you bought it for yourself. For example, deposit for electrical service for a business was $2000 and the monthly bill is $500 (1500 sq ft restaurant) and water is $450/month. It's also disheartening when you run into all of the rent seeking and rigging that goes on. We had to spend $500 for an alcohol survey to a surveying company to prove the restaurant/bar isn't within 500' of a school or a church. It probably took that surveying company all of five minutes to figure that out using a geographic information system (my undergrad degree incidentally) and I'm 90% sure they used GIS data from the city or county. Sweet deal for them... Also, only being allowed to serve alcohol bought through select alcohol wholesalers (was a real pain to get any of them to call us back to set up an account) doesn't help the bottomline either. Granted my wife picked the riskiest kind of business to start, but it's been 95% stress and 5% reward and we aren't even remotely close to breaking even after 9 months either. From my experience, if I was to do it again, I'd buy an existing business or I'd go into a business that catered only to other businesses as that seems like where the real money is.

You own a plane because it's what you love to do and don't mind spending your hard earned cash on it. With the right airport community, you're also getting into a community filled with great people. There's always someone hanging around to BS with, go fly with, that knows how to fix something you need fixed, or someone willing to share flight time in each others planes. I've spent many a cookout by the hangar, drinking beer and talking shop...good times. But what you're ultimately paying for, is the convenience and the ability to stroll out to the hangar and go fly, anytime you want. You don't worry about availability, hours of operation, taking it out of town for a week, or dropping into a local grass strip. If you're worrying about pinching pennies and running a CBA on it, then renting will save you lots of headaches. Also, for insurance reasons, I don't think any FBO would let you instruct in their planes.

Spot on! EAA is a great deal, we have guys flying RVs, light sport homebuilts and classics such as a beautiful 1947 Howard DGA (looks brand new) and another guy with, I kid thee not, a 450 Stearman, the only flying Boeing 40 in the world and just finished restoring and now flying a 1943 Grumman Goose. I have been very active with my local EAA Young Eagle program in the last four or so years. In the time I've been involved, our chapter has flown just over 431 kids. Sent one kid the EAA Air Academy in Oshkosh, he went on to college for an Aviation Business degree with a minor in flight and just learned another kid who we gave an Eagle ride to years ago just earned the gold wings of a Coast Guard aviator. Good times inspiring the next generation of recreational and professional aviators. Just for the record, I work as a "crewchief" escorting the kid, mom/dad out to the plane and back. Being retired MX guy I don't miss the BS of active duty, but miss being around the airplanes. I however, am spending the elephant dollars to earn my PPL so maybe next season I can do some flying as well. Fun being back on the ramp even if the environment is completely different.

sounds like a typical recruiter

I wonder if hacker knows how many eagle dudes he let down by quitting. I bet they would be happy to crowd fund a sequel.

A little off topic, but I'm not sure what you propose is any different than it is now. Guys get selected for school out of their major's board are auto leadership track unless they decline (which you can do now without being a 7-day opt). Others get picked up for school on later looks and join the leadership track. Want to be on the flying track? Don't go to school. Done.

The so-called "24 hour rule" has never existed the way aircrew try to apply it. Looks like the fixed the glitch.

Gay porn didn't work out for Hacker, so he says.

Surprised no one has mentioned starting / buying a business. Military aviation is actually a very good training ground for entrepreneurial activity - whether you realize it or not, all of us have acquired skills in calculated risk taking, assessing the enemy (competition), solving problems on the fly, task prioritization, time management, etc. Pick something you're passionate about and be your own boss. I'll bet anyone posting on this board would do much better than they imagine.

Can't I have a well organized history Hacker? Although "vile/dirty/squalid/ filthy" is not too far from the mark during some of it. Correction noted ATIS

Yea, and with the news that we're making another push in afghanistan, there's no flipping way that deployed billets or ops tempo will go away.. I imagine all those suggestions we made for reducing deployments just got flushed. On a different and likely highly unpopular note, I know this forum is largely full of disgruntled types and we all come here to b1tch about what's wrong.. but some of you guys may need to step back and think about something positive in your life. :D We all just got an unscheduled pay bump and anyone but the most deluded dunce would know it wasn't going to be significant.. There's really no reason to piss and moan about it, IMO. The NDAA was signed.. even if CSAF wanted to give us a million each, he's still tied by the budget. Given the facts, I would say the only change I think I'd have made is to give earlier guys a larger bump (i.e., 6 yr guys would be much closer to 1k/mo) since those are the ones coming close to a decision point of get out/continue at 10 years. Otherwise, each of us with a decent flying record is still basically set for life, barring any long term economic meltdown, and we're doing what we love. I say all this as a guy who recently left one of the best flying locations in the AF for a "staff" job (in hopes of better promotion potential) that is quite pointless and borders on fraud, waste, and abuse and my 3yr old son lost one of his feet a few months ago.. Be thankful for the small things, they don't come often enough. Ok.. back to complaining about coffee that isn't strong enough, a/c isn't cold enough, and hotel housekeeping didn't leave a mint in the right spot on our pillows. :D

So there's got to be a better way to sell this bonus pay problem. Let's go with nice round numbers: to pay an extra $100k/year to 6900 pilots would cost a cool $690M. That's kind of a lot of money, but it's only about 0.69% of the Air Force's annual budget. Literally a drop in the bucket. Imperceptible. Budget dust. BUT! The non-flying officers and Chiefs would have a shit fit at the pay inequality ("No Comm No Bomb!", etc), and while they should be told, "When it costs $69M to produce a competent Finance Officer, I'll pay you more also," that doesn't work in the real world for troop morale. Those guys would be even more depressed and hate us even more. This has to be approached as a financial benefit. I paid extra to outfit my house with LED bulbs (experienced pilots) because in the long run I save money on the time and effort spent on buying way more incandescents (new pilots) and - most significantly - save a shit-ton of money on electricity (upgrade training). Pay $100k extra to keep your experienced pilots and save $Millions per pilot on backfill training for his/her replacement. For very simple math that only takes into account the cost of replacing your experienced guy with a new SNAP fresh from UPT, that 8 years worth of $100k bonus money would only pay for 69% of a new UPT grad. Add in the immeasurable costs of continuous upgrade training for that new guy, and the benefit is astronomical. Next consider the time lost by the experienced instructors to train new guys that could be used to refine TTPs - you get the picture. This shit is easy, but I feel like there's a glass ceiling WRT mil pay. Congress - and our own mil leaders - just can't stomach the idea of having rich military guys. I think it's a jealousy thing rather than a level-headed financial one.

Until you address the countless useless deployment billets, and near certainty of filling a 365 no amount of money or QoL will matter much. While most people I know are not completely dreading 6 month deployments, its the future of 2-3 of those on top of a year long that has them voting with their feet. You can't be in a constant state of war for so long and expect people to be gun ho supporting of the fight any longer. Especially with no end in sight. The future is grim for service members, when I joined it already was a quagmire and now 12 years later zero has changed beyond it getting worse. You can't sell retention off of that landscape beyond a few fence sitters.

Ideally, everyone would be on the same (be good at your primary job aka flying) path until majors board at which point people would split off into a leadership v flying track. The flying track would include only squadron level and some group level necessary flying jobs (OGV.). These would be your WOs, ADOs and they would top out at 0-5 max and as DOs. Leadership track would play the Air Force game and go to school, work staff and command. I think there should be opportunities for flying track folks to jump over to the leadership track and those on the leadership track to jump over to the flying track when circumstances dictate. Not sure I would go for it for 20 years but I would seriously think twice about staying in longer.

Keep your TS/SCI current and see if you can get your 6 year (formerly 5 year) clock punched just before you leave...mo better. You may not use it in your next job, but it keep other avenues open. Get online and take whatever free DAU courses you can ACQ101/Test 101/SE 101 type of stuff. I have a long sorted history but have ended up at a mid-high step GS-14 level in a program that has skin in the game and is on the front line every time things in the world get a little crazy (TLAM). The contacts I made flying Operational Test as a 03 started the networking that lead to where I am now. I still get to go out on ships and evaluate aviation folks in my Reserve gig (and I haven't polished my Bates flight boots since the early 2000's), and fortunately the folks at Bragg have let me come back on occasion to play their game as well. That ability to sit in a room and "talk the talk" with folks, still have POC's in warfighting areas helps a lot. There are a lot of former Navy types (mainly surface/Black Shoe) in the program offices that support our product, which helps a ton. If you leave AD before you retire and take a GS job....buy back your service into FERs, and make sure you let them know of your prior service for leave calculations. For those that are retired, they know the game they have to play with double dipping. GS-15 and above. Folks have been pushing me to "put in your KLP package and reach for the ring". I have seen very few 15's (Test and Program Management types) that are actually working systems and problems vice PPT's and managing time cards. SES, it's all management of money/people, and "no in the trench" work. Price you pay for moving up (just like the military). While every acquisition problem has its issues of the three legged triad; Cost/Schedule/Performance....and it drives me crazy, I can honestly say I am happy to be at the highest level possible managing the testing and the teams that put a terrific product out to the warfighter and results are clear. I see a lot of folks dying in three sided cube farms at many of the bases I travel too just pushing tin and waiting for 20. The hard truth of DoD acquisition: "Leave for a day everything changes, leave for a year, nothing changes". If you can roll with that in mind, the security of a GS DoD job isn't bad. Stay away from the P-gon. Those folks look like they want to suck start a shotgun. ATIS

Yeah not a chance, 0-3 Pay tops at $6583.50 at the 14 year mark. Even in a high-ish BAH area of $2400 thats still only getting you $107k per year. Granted $28k of your income is non-taxable, but still. The bonus would have to be >$60k and limit deployments to 90 days every other year for me to even consider something like that.

No. At least guarantee O-4, if not O-5. No way O-3 pay, even into the 15-20 year mark, is enough to keep guys around. Even if you're just flying airplanes, the airlines will pay you more to do the same thing and work fewer days.

Granted, I sit in a dungeon with no windows when I fly for work, but I love GA. My buddy (a fellow FTU instructor and Buff IP) lets me fly his Comanche, and he was my CFI for my commercial ASEL last October and we just finished my CFI a couple of weeks ago. I think military aviation makes me a better civilian pilot. My big thing over the past few months has been to find ways to make my weekend aviating useful and not just burn holes in the sky. I did a couple of Pilots n' Paws trips, flying rescue dogs to adoption agencies. I also did an EAA Young Eagles event, and flew five or six plane loads of kids over the course of a morning. Some would've never had the chance to fly in an airplane otherwise, and some were very much into aviation and want to make it a career, so this was just more motivation for them.

I was curious whether Google Translate would be able to detect this incoherent smattering of words as English. I'll be damned, it did.

177th FW/ 119th FS Interview notifications are being sent out

I miss my iPhone app