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I can attest that SoCal Approach will "assist" you by keeping you high prior to your turn to final even to this day. Flaps 40, medium brakes, exit at Taxiway E. "No problem, GI!" But there's something fun about putting a 300,000-pound fatty into 5700', then cocktails in Newport Beach in an hour.

It just comes down to what you want out of life. If you want to fly military jets, realize there's a limited window to do that. While you can do med school whenever, realize that the longer you wait, the harder it gets as other commitments enter your life (spouse, kids, retirement/financial planning, etc). If you went the med school first route: Undergrad by age 22, 4 years med be school puts you at 26, and a typical 3-4 year residency program puts you at age 29-30. So technically feasible to go guard/reserve on the backside. But then you'll need to balance relevancy/currency in your primary medical career with being out of medicine for 2-3 years (likely with a pretty high debt load in the $200-300K range). This also assumes you get picked up for med school on your first look (my brother took 3 years to make the cut). Also, some specialties may be more conducive to gaps in your medical career than others. If you go the military flying route first and got hired right away: undergrad by age 22, UPT grad by 24, 2-3 years of seasoning at your unit puts you at 27ish. From there, going to med school would mean having a unit that fine with you completely min running participation and flexibility in scheduling for 7-8 years while you get through med school/residency. Or you put in the 10 year commitment with the flying unit, putting you at 34 starting med school and finishing residency around 41 years old before making any real money (again, with about $200-300k in debt at 41). It's attainable, but there's a good bit of financial risk (if you end up in family practice, you may not be able to unload that debt while saving for retirement without living pretty austerely. It's hard to do both; there are people that do and they are pretty exceptional people. Another option is the AF pilot physician program, where you become an AF flight doc first and apply for the program. But I think it's less than one a year that gets picked up for the program, but they go through UPT, and maintain basic flying currency while doing aeromedical research. Another option to consider if you want to do both is fly military, but go the nurse practitioner route instead of MD/DO. No residency requirement, lower bar to entry, less competition to enter programs, and end up doing a lot of the same day to day things as a MD/DO (at least for family practice and similar fields). I will say that if you want to go the military route, do it because you want to serve while also flying jets. And that you can also serve as a doctor as well if you end up choosing the medical path if you do desire. Best of luck to you in your decision. But remember, luck and timing are important as well, despite the best laid plans.

By the time my college friends exited residency, I’d lived in 2 other countries, gone to war, shot and dropped most things the viper could carry at the time, flew around a bunch of countries and worked with a lot of foreign partners, made more lifelong friends (and lost more friends) than my college buddies will probably do in their lifetime, and overall had done a lot of shit that 99.9999999% of the world will never be able to even imagine. You are not even remotely “far” down the road of anything, plenty of time to change your idea of what you want to do. Granted I never had the inkling to do anything but fly, but you can do med school later, you cannot do this stuff later. Do well in school so that you do have that med backup in case flying doesn’t work out, but sounds like you will regret it later if you don’t try now. Also, most guys don’t want to stop after ten years (assuming guard, fuck AD!), so don’t assume you’ll want to make a clean cut after ten, chances are you won’t. But 6-9 years in could also be a good point to go part time and do med school/become a flying flight doc...but you may just as easily have no desire to do med after flying.

C-17 legacy HUD is certified as an IFR PFR, with the limitation of having an extra PFD up (essentially for unusual attitude recovery). It's not a VFR only or SA only device.

He’s saying that he’s tired of the liberal mind set. The one that creates lazy, self interested, victim hood, virtue signaling, making up facts, rioting when I don’t get my way and call it a protest , everything must be equal but I need to be more important than most everyone else type mentality. Same kind of mentality found in today’s feminism also. Being a CC ain’t what it used to be because of people like that. Thanks for your post. Hope you feel better.

This was very true especially at Whiting before big AF robbed people of that opportunity. Worked 3 hours a day in flip flops and the squadron tee shirt (navy always wear sq colored shirts) cooking burgers on the flight line, then going to the beach and chasing women. Life didn’t suck then.

Yeah, ultimately this is a class war being disguised as a reaction to racism. The use of race as a canard to to distract these useful idiots as the corporates/globalists/etc... obliterate the working and middle classes with open borders and abusive work visa schemes while simultaneously allowing unlimited amounts of cheap goods into our country made by slave labor in China is one of our main ailments. If we had throughout our government people who realized internet monopolies, bad trade deals and massive conglomerates using media arms, lobbying firms and disinformation factories were actually the ones killing our country and crafted economic policies to combat those negative trends, those disaffected idiots would have two nickels to rub together, a decent job and a material reason to keep their shit straight, but they don't and we don't have many leaders who actually like the country they purport to represent and here we are.

The HUD in the C130J is certified. I assume because in a rare scenario where it throws out bad info like that it turns off and forces us to use our PFD in our HDD.

I'm not sure why there is a negative opinion of going around in the fighter community, but it's there. A few months before the Eglin mishap I was going around the final turn and ended up too high. The F-35 does not like to slow down when descending, even at idle with full "virtual speedbrake." I was aiming short of the threshold to get on the wire but it still wouldn't slow down. I took it around approaching the overrun and am very happy I did considering that I would have been in the same low AOA landing situation that occurred at Eglin and another incident that happened around the same time. Nobody I know knew at that time about the different pitch response that occurs in that situation. When I landed the tower told me to call the SOF. I said what's up and he was like "everything okay dude, you hit some wake turbulence or something?" I said "no man, I just couldn't get the jet slowed down." Taxiing back it occurred to me again how uncommon it is for a dude to go around when he calls full stop. So much so that the SOF felt he needed to check up on me to make sure I was okay. Landing is definitely an emphasis item for all F-35 pilots now, and we now have to take it around if not on speed approaching the threshold. I also fly at the airlines and have never heard the term "stabilized approached criteria" briefed in an F-16 or F-35 squadron. I remember my first approach into SNA in the 757. During the approach brief I set autobrakes to either 4 or Max, can't remember now. The captain looked at me with a half grin and said "you sure?" I was like yeah, the runway is like 5,000 feet dude. He said okay and started strapping into his seat, making sure he was pretty secure. We touched down and I almost went through the window. Apparently there was a lot of bags, phones, and other items all over the place too, but hey, better safe than sorry.

Sometimes, one just needs a carriage return. On a separate note, "unfornicate" is not a real word, but passes muster here, as we like alternate ways of saying things.

I'm going to utter some words. I don't post on here often. This liberal, "I'm a victim" crap that is running rampant on here is unbelievable. I am so glad I am out of the military. I worked with and was in command of the victim people. They all, without exception, sucked at their job. Because they were victims, they didn't have to meet standards. Every single one of them, didn't have to meet standards. And I couldn't do anything about it, because the victims always have a medical issue that took all of my time. Some of them were white, some were black, some were asian, some were probably eskimos or heaven forbid Canadians. But the victim people always sucked at doing their jobs. And they drained my time for ridiculous crap. Some clown in here posted their "racist" experience was when they were pulled over because they were driving the same car as a drug dealer. Not a car that I drove when I was paying my way through college, but a car with jacked up tires and a ridiculous paint job - same as the drug dealer. Dude, or dudette, if that's the best you got for racism, you are mildly retarded, how about do it my way and not drive the same make model and ridiculous paint job car as the drug dealer. Easy stuff, easy decision. Must be white privilege. There are about 2200 squadrons in the AF. Chances that you got a racist commander: don't take those odds to vegas.

Is there a “just fly like a regular jet” mode?

Terrible, isn’t it? I’ve ceased being amazed by all the ridiculous things acquisitions/contracting/LM has done in relation to the program. Don’t get me wrong, the jet is awesome and extremely capable in many ways, but there are so many overlooked things when it comes to basic shit like flying an ILS, not having a HUD, a disaster of a helmet that is not even in the same league as Scorpion/HMIT, etc. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen “do some pilot shit” to salvage a poor approach. I think culturally in the fighter world there is a lot of lip serviced paid, but reality is going around on a full stop attempt is an “emotional event” for most. It shouldn’t be, but it sure seems that way. Guys are so against diverting (fear of unknown/going somewhere new), don’t want to be “the one guy” who couldn’t land on first attempt out of the entire go (ego), etc. It’s a bad cultural precedent and it’s been around my entire fighter career. I don’t know how to fix it, because saying “just go around if it doesn’t look right” or “no worries if you guys have to divert” isn’t cutting it. Maybe actually having defined criteria to meet by X AGL/distance to runway or else go around would be good (ala Airlines). Never seen anything like that published or definitively talked about in the fighter world (but certainly have in the civilian world).

Here’s my informed viewpoint: - There are no excuses about corona, family stuff, etc...AIB/SIBs love to list everything, including which brand of knock-off cheerios he ate at breakfast, so don’t read too much into things of that nature. The AIB overemphasized these things/people are reading too much into them. - The RC is a breakdown in crosscheck from ~FAF and in. It is standard to use speedhold, it is not standard to keep speedhold on for landing. Normally you discontinue use of speedhold at some point prior to landing, but he was distracted by his fucked up HMD (e.g. “HUD”) and he lost crosscheck of his airspeed/fact speedhold was still engaged. He did in fact transfer to a visual approach (i.e. “no HUD”), just as many of you have lamented him for “not doing,” but the downfall was dropping AOA out of his crosscheck. Had he cross checked, he would have realized he was fast and made the appropriate correction. There is some negative transfer from the Strike Eagle that contributed to the above problem; but might be SE Priv...don’t know. - The “HUD” issue: It sometimes gets fucked and displays invalid attitude information...so yeah, think about the main attitude reference you look at being out of whack at night, flying an approach over the black hole of the bay. It’s pretty disorienting. There are other options and you can ignore it, so not an excuse, but it is not just a “millennial” thing. Trust me, I grew up on no datalink/helmet/9M only/visual formation (including takeoff/landings...yay!); also still use a 1:50 map in CAS and am more efficient/accurate than all those young guys trying to keep everything digital on their displays. So I get it. But, the first time I saw this shit in the TX, coupled with LM’s flippant attitude towards it, sent me ballistic. I honestly can’t believe we haven’t crashed more jets due to this problem. It’s a massive safety of flight issue, yet who knows when/if ever it’ll be fixed. If someone dies with one of these things as a CF, I hope LM gets sued for billions. - Nobody knew about the portion of control laws he got into, except a few folks at LM holding their cards close...literally not written in T.O.s, etc. Another “go fuck yourself LM” thing. When he landed and immediately realized what was going on, the jet did not act like he thought it would; his control inputs were normal/as any of us would have done in the same situation. He was unable to go around due to the jet essentially ignoring what he wanted. So, while he could have avoided this situation by the earlier cross check discussion above, its ludicrous the jet would not react properly to your control inputs at such a critical phase of flight. Checks in the mail how this might be changed in future S/W drops. For now, at least the community knows this can happen, and frankly it was only a matter of time before some guy in the CAF unintentionally played test pilot and lost. Huge foul on this not being a warning in the T.O.s or something to that effect. Bottom line that every pilot can take away: This was not so much an over reliance on technology as it was a distraction that led to fixation, and a break down of basic instrument crosscheck (at night, with no peripheral vision). Establish solid habit patterns that will keep your instrument crosscheck from breaking down, while actively ensuring you do not fixate on a problem and drop the rest of the crosscheck. Remember the guys who were trying to change a light bulb and crashed in the Everglades, or just about every pilot who has CFIT’d? This loss of SA due to basic speed/altitude/position crosscheck breakdown is the the type of thing that has caused tens of thousands of aviation accidents at this point. It is agnostic to airframe and every single one of us is capable of distraction leading to bad/no crosscheck. God knows I’ve been in countless situations where I “broke the chain” in my own cockpit far too late for comfort, but here I am, wiser and alive. So many times it could have been the other way around in a matter of seconds. So, I took something from this mishap, and it wasn’t “fucking SNAPs and their reliance on Gucci shit!”

The entire point of The Enlightenment was that logic and reason could be used to transcend individual human experiences and thus individuals could have empathy for that which we did not experience ourselves. So, it doesn't require a person of another gender, another race, another [insert characteristic here] to be present for any other human to comprehend, understand, and empathize with their perspective and/or lived experiences. You don't actually have to feel childbirth to understand what it is like. You don't have to be a "POC" to understand the experience of what it must be like, whatever that is supposed to mean. If you want to argue that people of different *cultures* bring different perspectives to the table, that's perfectly valid...but to say that immutable characteristics are responsible for (or an avatar for) differences in thought and character is precisely the kind of "logic" that was used to undergird actual tribalism (or racism, if you'd rather frame it that way) for hundreds (thousands?) of years. No two humans are alike, regardless of immutable characteristics, so Enlightenment logic on the issue is a truism for all humans to be able to form social groups. People of the same immutable characteristics can have a widely divergent set of experiences, beliefs, and character, just as people of a wide variety of immutable characteristics can all believe in the same orthodoxy. Diversity of immutable characteristics is not an avatar for diversity of perspectives, simply put.

You mean an SII that says "stop f*cking up" doesn't actually do shit?

Genus: Russianitis Species: Schiff

I'm glad we can agree on at least one thing.