Leaderboard

Here ya go.

If your goal is to teach SPs the skills they need to fly a modern fighter then the T-38 isn’t it, and hasn’t been for 40+ years. When we were flying super sabres and Thuds it was great. When you waste a third of your phase 3 teaching an SP how to land you’re wasting everyone’s time/money/brain bytes. How long did it take you to learn to land effectively in B course? 2-3 rides (assuming 11F). Define structure issues being “remedied.”Without getting into CUI think about the areas you needed to inspect on the jet specifically for structural integrity issues. Or how about the go cart wheels/brakes/the new brakes.. Pilot error is easy for an AIB to attribute when you’re flying a thrust deficient A/C that’s within an RCH of the backside of the power curve in every critical phase of flight. When not only the SP but the jet is constantly trying to kill you, the learning suffers.

With the other two contenders of consequence both being COTS. That's the real criminality here. I pretty much threw out my T-7 swag already. With a first retirement eligible date of mid-late 2020s, I'm settled in the fact I'm gonna retire in my grandfather's ol timey ride. That is if it doesn't kill me first, or cost me a second divorce. The weef already got smart on the airline "trade", she's now on the "100% you're just taking a gratuitous risk now" camp. Jest aside, it's not hyperbole when I say I have more than one former co-worker who lateral'd back to the T-6 or went back to a heavy, citing these concerns. Though I never had any interest in the 121 thing, it does not escape me that the income vs bodily risk ratio went lopsided a while ago for me as a multi-thousand hour in type grey beard in this enterprise. The consideration does weigh on me at times. What I'm also confident on, is had we gone T-50 or T-100, we'd have tails on ramp last summer. It was the height of malfeasance what Boeing did with that shtick of unserious underbidding. Not so much that they threw the number, but that the AF entertained it with a straight face. I still carry the memory of Stuck with me. Human factors notwithstanding, he didn't have to die that day. These are losses squarely in the camp of the right side of the MTBF curve, aka the bathtub model. To say nothing of the fact we've exceeded Northrop's projected airframe life by thousands of hours and multiple decades, pacer classic potato or not. It doesn't have to be this way. And as much as it pains me to say this, there will be more losses stemming from *aging-structures (*term in engineering grad school for this issue) related failures, mark my words. Acceptable as it may be to HAF, it needs to be said anyways. Because for those of us who are in the community, nothing could be more personal, AVF platitudes be damned. Boeing has blood on their hands as far as I'm concerned. Everybody stay safe out there.

The Congressional staffing happens after public release. Two sets of boards have been released that convened after the 04 board. This is completely the AF's/DoD's fault at this point.

Also, a radar intercept/Bullseye call is also a fix-to-fix basically. Which is why I felt like a dummy when showed how to use the ack symbols on a B scope to shack fix to fixes instead of pencil method.

The T-38A I fly still has 1 TACAN, 1 ILS, and that's it. Pencil-method, Rule of 5s... bring it on!!

Gotta love the 4-ship NDB procedure turn off a shitty SKE scope in the wx.

Nothing like a rolling ETIC… from the factory! https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2023/05/tardy-training-jet-reveals-limits-digital-design-air-force-says/386687/

I think they're busy at work designing the next software that will make life even harder on the force (pex 2.0, dts 6.9, mypay 2020???). We have a few guys trying to retire right now and myFSS certainly isn't helping their blood pressure. I'm within a month of retirement and thankfully I submitted, and received, my retirement order before the switchover. But now I'm trying to get my early retirement stuff finalized before I lose my CAC, but something that only took a few weeks years ago, now is on month 4. Reason? myFSS switchover (supposedly). Yay, "advancement..." How is myEval 2.0 working out? I've said it numerous times on here, very few "improvements" the AF has rolled out over my 22 years has actually helped me. Mostly it's just dumped the duties of others onto me and has caused me to spend more and more time doing admin, and less time on my real job. Get off my lawn!

As others have mentioned, the utility of a F2F in the real world is limited, however as a screening tool in UPT to see what studs could hand fly, calculate, and hit the intended fix within parameters was a discriminator. Half of the maneuvers we did at UPT were designed to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Asking for a friend…what’s an RMI? I’ve also heard that people used to fly things called NDB approaches but I can’t find anything in my 787 company manual. /s

I graduated UPT in 1987. I can tell you the F2F was the cause of a large percentage of checkride busts. Take a look at the Tweet cockpit and try to do a F2F using the RMI only. Doing them in T-38’s was so much easier with a proper HSI.

😂😂😂 such a good edit but actually.. fix to fixes, while completely outdated and illegal, are a pretty good litmus test for whether you have the aptitude to learn basic instrument flying concepts. If you can't get reasonably close on a F2F, you probably don't have a good grasp of where you are in time and space, or what the course and bearing needles are trying to tell you. We're quick to throw basics away these days because they don't directly translate to the ops world anymore, but we do new student pilots a disservice depriving them of basic aviation building blocks. The same idea as why you teach kids arithmetic by hand before using calculators.

To name a few: -The relatively common occurrences of airframe mounted gearbox failure -wings de-laminating -extreme susceptibility of the engines to birdstrikes -century series fighter era TOLD on runways that are irresponsibly short -low altitude compressor stalls which PMP was supposed to fix

Quite a bit apparently. Suggest you do your yearly FCIF review in earnest. Because that 4.4G under 5k limitation has quite a bit to do about wings falling off than you appear to be aware of.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/mcmaken-three-lies-theyre-telling-you-about-debt-ceiling Good article about current clown-show.

Think those two convinced a wide swath of aircrew to separate when they were wing king and grp/cc. Helped me make up my mind as a young captain. If you weren't part of the 'mentor' or 'groom' top 10% of CGOs, you were expendable. And that was from an 'officership' perspective, they couldn't care less about your tactical proficiency... Unless it made them look bad. Then Q3. If they did care, definitely not message received.

My opinion only— AFSOC has an unusual internal power dynamic due to unique COMREL creating distinct officer cultures with different career incentives. AFSOC has two masters: Big Blue and SOCOM. The more senior you get, the more difficult to serve both and you eventually pick your tribe. SOCOM is harder to compete for senior leadership and requires combat credibility in an officers pedigree. Big AF is easier and doesn’t require multiple forward tours. Currently the Big AF inclined officers are leading AFSOC & the current MAJCOM/CC has to overcompensate for his lack of combat credibility; thus he finds Big-AF type endeavors to champion and shuns anything (and anyone) who is of the warrior tribe within AFSOC.

On a healthcare note, took Tricare a month to approve me to see a PT…after going to the ER and being unable to do much physical activity (including flying) this whole time. Govt healthcare is so great, why doesn’t everyone want it?! Also, SS is theft…there needs to be a completely new “social safety net” developed.

FAIPing, while not nearly as bad a dick punch as drones, causes very similar resentment and near-universal 10 yr ADSC punch outs. Join the AF to fly jets and see the world! Or alternatively.. Spend the first 5 years of your career flying around the flagpole in one of the 4 sh!ttiest towns in the country, probably single too! Experience the best squadron, group, and wing leaders their respective MWS communities didn't want to keep for themselves! Get strung along in a 4 year rat race with your friends who were all also better than average in UPT only to get a drop list measurably worse than average! Then finally show up to your MWS as a senior captain to get immediately relegated to queep centric jobs because your tactical knowledge/experience is far behind pipeline dudes in your age group. But one time a FAIP became a general so it's probably an honor and an amazing opportunity

IDK who posted it: but the The Cold War: What We Saw is ENTIRELY WORTH LISTENING TO

If anyone ever has any questions about an FEB, I now consider myself an expert. I was reinstated into formal training today from an FEB.