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Free financial/marital/medical advice from senior captains?

Stupid money. low bullshit. gets me out of the house.

Agreed. However the context is vastly different. The overwhelming majority of the population in 1860 was intimately familiar with warfare, combat, death, and hardship at the individual level. Simply living anywhere west of the Allegheny Mountains was hard. Death was commonplace, and owning lethal weapons was a demanded way of life. Fast forward to our modern culture where life without toilet paper is considered difficult and owning a lethal weapon is actually a debated topic. A civil war, true violent cessation, and the attempt of one part of this country to break away from the other would require hardship to be endured by all individuals. Most importantly would be the economic hardship. Imagine trying to live in California or New York without the US federal presence or without the food provided by the midwest. Yes, cali produces things, but not the things that could support them independently. New York doesn't produce jack shit. We need each other. Any kind of real state fracture will readily expose that fact, and pressing into it will require serious endurance and privation at the household level. You think white suburban women came out of the woodwork to vote against trump? Imagine what would happen if you actually deprive them of their soy lattes and avocado toast. Frankly, modern American's don't have the balls for that kind of hardship...at least not over neighborhood politics. Southern Californians DEFINITELY don't have the balls for that. Modern Americans are all about kicking someone else's ass so long as that person is on the other side of a pond and can't actually hurt us. People in 1860 knew what blood spilt on our soil felt and looked like (1776 was less than 100 years prior, and then war of 1812), and were prepared to live through privation in support of a belief, and a patriotism they held dear. Modern Americans, writ large, are not. Less than 10% of our population has experienced combat of any kind, and less than that in our governing bodies. Our fractures will stop at political action, and I believe any re-organization (greater Idaho for example) will be largely peaceful and political, with any violence being restricted to localized policeable actions such as protests and riots. Militias are not about to start fighting each other or the federal military. Americans are both too smart and too comfortable to do that. Our country is not going to try and break apart. Re-arrangement and re-organization is possible though. My bet is that an international action sometime in the next five years will put all that to bed anyway. As a country, we galvanize like no other.

The city of Lima is basically floated by AA line numbered blue passport holders..... 😄

Manchester.

Hmmm….paid sick leave, free non rev travel, 4 weeks paid vacation, an extra paycheck each month, if I want to make more money to buy that boat/airplane I have the OPTION to do so, company pays 16% into 401k. Anything else I missed?

I honestly don't know, but I do know they are not celebrated like BLM and ANTIFA. Remember "mostly peaceful" protests that burned U.S. government facilities all over the country. Sadly the extremes on both sides suck up all the oxygen from folks like you and me that reside in the middle. Unfortunately for me the media is dominated by liberals and most of the networks focus on one side and make excuses for the other.

I have a big block of Doge I bought on a whim and dirt cheap...only Crypto I've ever played with. If I lose...oh well, if I win I will sponsor the first annual Baseops hookers and blow convention.

Wasn't bad although we were limited in the number of bases we could go TDY, luckily your mom was working the juicy bar at each location.

As a non prior service airman your time will be regimented in tech school and you will not have time during the week for outside activities like college classes. Expect to take 1-2 semesters off of college to finish basic training and your training pipeline. The good news is the connections and experience you will make being enlisted will give you a huge leg up on pilot hiring boards.

No. Article 6 ("An armed attack on any party under Article 5 includes an attack on the territory, forces, vessels or aircraft of any party") specifies the agreement considered only European and North American territories "in the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer," otherwise known as the "Tropic of Cancer loophole." According to the language of the treaty, the Soviet Union could have bombed Pearl Harbor without technically invoking Article 5. The same affects Hawaii. Other NATO-allied possessions that fall outside of the alliance's protection include a number of Caribbean islands, Puerto Rico, French Polynesia, Guantanamo Bay, Guam, the Marianas, Samoa, French Guiana and (still) the Falkland Islands. To note, the language of the treaty has been stretched before, given the entry of Turkey into the North Atlantic alliance...

I went to the Reserves in 2014 and AMEX covered my fees. All the TR’s in the squadron had their fees waived also with just an easy phone call.

I wish you were joking

Yeah it’s pretty lame SWA does this, and especially dumb because reserves rarely go unused. A new hire here could go straight to a reserve-only line and still hit consolidation without having to subvert seniority in the process. I guess management would make a case that a legacy who buys off an FO so that a new hire can consolidate is being less efficient cause it’s paying two people for the same trip, and hey it’s SWA so we need every cent we can save for, oh I dunno, updating our scheduling software, among other things?

All of the people kneeling in this picture have been in some form of government power for over 20 years. They scream about changing the status quo. They've had over 2 decades (sometimes more like Biden) to solve the problems that we are so divided as a country over. The common American on both sides of the political spectrum needs to wake up. We're fighting against each other when we should be fighting (voting out) the politicians who kept us here.

Man I love librarians.....

Following your logic train for a minute here. What are the specific barriers to entry into the pilot world that are filtering out women and minorities? How is DEI removing those barriers? Is placing people in jobs due to skin color or gender not racist or sexist? Are you just as concerned that the overwhelming majority of coal miners are white men too? We're looking for equity of outcome, right? So it would stand to reason that you also want to see an even distribution of women and minorities into the oil fields of Texas and in the welding career in North Dakota. Why is the focus only on the high paying career fields and C-suit perceived disparities. If we're going to level the playing field, then actually level it. As it stands, for example in the C-suits of america, women are actually paid higher then men in those same jobs. Fact. I say good for them! Oh, but that's not the stat we want to push because it's counter-narrative. Hell, you know how many women are in the night-cargo flying business? VERY FEW. It's not because they can't hold the job. It's that very few people actually are willing to sacrifice their body to the sleep cycle murder that's involved. Or does that make night cargo-flying sexist? Perhaps it's time we recognize that different cultures have different values. Perhaps there are less women entering into the airline business, because, per-capita, there are less women that want that job then there are men who want that job. During the hiring process at the 8 airlines I interacted with, I witnessed all of ZERO barriers that filtered out anyone by race or gender. In fact, being a minority or woman upped their chances of getting hired (hear that straight from a hiring pilot's mouth). A qualified candidate was a qualified candidate. I'm sure the process to get to that point still has some problems. Fine. Get to a 90% solution and go to press. But perhaps there's credence to a culture where women are the primary care givers to children while men go earn the living. Can you imagine if they ACTUALLY CHOSE THAT LIFE?! CRAZY! It's almost as if we have some inboard instincts and characteristic that make the genders unique in their ambitions or something. Is that the ONLY way it should happen? Absolutely not. But there appears to be absolutely no credit given to that as a viable way of life. DEI is clearly intent on making some people more equal than others. Go re-read animal farm if you want a refresher on that. I say remove the prejudiced barriers to entry, retain the ones that enforce quality, and let people vote with their feet. Forcing change with DEI bullshit is just a distractor, and really is another form of tyrannical power grabbing. It's been done. Forcing everyone to be equal never ends well. Talk to anyone older than 50 and from east of Poland and you'll find out how it went.

5% female. Have you ever considered that maybe they don’t want to do the same jobs as men? Why are their so many male construction workers or mechanics? Why aren’t the women equally represented? Are there other possible answers other than sexism or racism to your perceived problems? And are those reasons way more likely to answer your why question than the system is broken and racist, sexist or some sort of ist? Do you understand that equity is more likely actually racist or sexist than it isnt? And do the groups who you claim are under represented feel this way too in actuality or is it just you being offended on their behalf instead of what is the most equal and right thing to do? I’d wager it’s what makes us American in the first place. The best thing is opportunity to succeed. And someone else hit it on the cranium. Why should a poor, black, female, who worked her butt off to get where he is at and in this example might be just as experienced as a male or majority race be held back because of his skin color and genitalia . The answer is she shouldn’t. And to do otherwise is racist and or sexist. Switch the roles around in that example of female to male and black to white and ask yourself the same question. The answer is DEI the way it’s marketed and employed is racist and sexist. It seeks to hold one group down at the expense of another.

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.

Study with your buds. Keep a positive attitude as best you can Be where you are supposed to be on time Keep your gradebook immaculate. Help your classmates - to teach is to learn. The more you explain a system/procedure, the better you know it. Attention to detail. Push it up Friday night through Sunday morning, go to church or whatever you do on Sunday, hit the gym then buckle down for the week. The Air Force doesn't have to make you a pilot, it is a privelege to be there. Remember that. "What can you do that everyone else in your class isn't doing?" is the absolute wrong mindset to be in. I cannot stress this enough. If you are the guy that is trying to be better than everyone else, the following things will happen. First, you will alienate your flightmates. If you are the lone wolf, eventually study groups will be formed, nobody will call you to go out, etc. Then, the flight IP's will notice that wnanna takes off before everyone else, he's not there at the club, he sits by himself at the flight room table and reads while three other dudes are drawing the Tweet fuel system on the board trying to figure out what lights come on when the float switches move. Your flight commander will ask your SRO wht's up. He'll say "I dunno, wnanna just goes off on his own on the weekends, I guess he has more important things going on." Then, at the end, after you kick ass in Tweets (or maybe not) it will be time for peer evals and the flight commander ranking. You won't be at the bottom, the jackass who ****ed his buddy and caused him to show up late to formal brief will be there, but you'll be bottom third. Maybe there are 4 T-38 slots, and you are neck and neck with the guy who stayed up until midnight on Sunday night helping a guy get ready for his midphase ground eval, or made up a gouge sheet with the changes to 11-217. Your test scores are identical. Who do you think is gonna come out on top? [ 25. May 2005, 22:22: Message edited by: PAB ]