Scooter14

oneagleswings, Thanks for that link. Great site. I had a bracelet I got in ROTC that I broke many years ago in a hockey game. I still remember the name, Frawley, William D., and sure enough, his bio is on the site. I'm printing the form as we speak to order my replacement. FRAWLEY, WILLIAM DAVID Name: William David Frawley Rank/Branch: O3/US Navy Unit: Fighter Squadron 143, USS RANGER (CVA-61) Date of Birth: 14 November 1938 Home City of Record: Brockton MA Loss Date: 01 March 1966 Country of Loss: North Vietnam/Over Water Loss Coordinates: 200700N 1062500E (XH480248) Status (in 1973): Body Not Recovered Category: 5 Acft/Vehicle/Ground: F4B Refno: 0260 Description is lengthy, but it's all right here.

brabus, Let your conscience be your guide

GuardDude, You'll definitely improve your PT scores chasing ambulances when you get your degree. I'll be looking forward to your commercials when we do our joint ORI in a couple of years.

I just got back from "mandatory PT hell" at the Died. 1 Oct it went into effect. I deployed with 2 tee shirts and 1 pair of shorts thinking I could buy the rest there...WRONG. Nothing but small and med shorts and XXXXL Tees. Who the **** wears an XXXXL tee shirt? That's right, folks, FOUR X's. Luckily, the shirts dry in a day after you bring them in the shower with you. At 0001 on 1 Oct, the First Shirt union systematically started kicking non-conformists out of the chow hall. People went nuts correcting other people on the proper wear of the uniform. Thanks, make it suck more. They have this rule there about saluting in the PT uniform...if you see someone of higher rank, you have to salute them. If you are both in PT uniforms, if you know they are a higher rank (like your SQ/CC or something), you have to salute. Well, this was a tough concept for this Guard Guy to grasp. About every 10th person or so would salute me if I was in my bag. I NEVER saluted anyone when I was in my PT uniform. I may as well have been wearing pajamas...I just don't consider it a uniform. My favorite occurence came on my last day. I visited the MUFF Tues nite before I left. Wed morning I woke up with a dry mouth, bad headache and no soap. So, I had to slog over to the BX to buy a bar for the last 8 hours I was spending at the Died. So, off I go, in my PT gear with my boom. I get my $0.69 bar of soap, and am making my way back to the condo. As I approach the end of the walkway by the Dunkin Donuts, I see a fat dude walking in a flight suit. As he rounds the corner, I see that he is the same rank as me. OK, I wasn't really too worried about saluting anyway, but after 4 days of being corrected by every SrA on base, I have just enough SA to actually register that he's the same rank as me. Well, he gets closer and he's got a nice out of regs moustache, he's even fatter now, and he's got some Strike Eagle morale patch on. Whatever, I'm just happy to be leaving soon. Well, he passes us, and we hear someone yell "Hey!" So, I turn around to see who Maj Fatass is yelling at. Just so happens that it's me and my boom he's yelling at. He wants to know, and I quote "...if we've forgotten to salute commissioned officers today?" My boom throws himn a half assed salute, and I give him my best YGBSM look, because at this point I still cannot believe that someone in the AOR, a crewdog nonetheless, is jacking me up and he's the same rank as me. Before I can ask him what his problem is, he says "That's what I thought" and heads toward the BX, presumably to get a Twinkie. As he departs, I see some words stitched into his hat on the back. So, I get yelled at by a fat, out of regs, same rank as me flyer for not saluting him. Thanks, bro, for making it suck more. The best part is, I'm home now, he's still there, and he's still fat.

Offutt=ACC ACC=Wing patches on the left shoulder I was at Offutt on 9/11 in the training squadron while JVBFLY was getting 0 beers a day at PSAB. We started wearing the American Flag that week, and nobody said anything. About 6-9 months later, the shirt sent out an e-mail saying it was OK to wear it. Thanks. Kind of reminds me of the FCIF that cam out during ALLIED FORCE at Offutt. The OG had the majority of his jets deployed, in harms way, the first 2 weeks of the 77 day shootin part. That's probably a good a time as any to issue an FCIF that's concerned with the number of Morale patches being worn by deployed crews, and that it should stop immediately. Anyone old enough to know if this shit went on in Vietnam?

Question #1 - No. I never went. There were a few out there for RC crewdogs, maybe 3 a year or so. There are much more for A-10 and F-16 guys. However, just talked to an AD friend of mine today. He told me the number of remote 1 yr tours is going to go way up. I'm in the Guard now, so it has little effect on me, so I don't know much about it. Typically, if there are no volunteers, the "high time" on station guy gets it. Whoever's been at that base longest, at least that's how they do it in the tanker and recce world. Question #2 - Depends on the airframe. From 97-02, I knew about 5 total people who went remote from the RC community (pilots, navs, EWOs) from the cast of thousands at Offutt. I don't know numbers, but with the F-16 and A-10 wings in Korea, I'm sure it's a much higher percentage. And these #s don't take into account what my friend said today.

2 As long as they don't de-value it like they do everything else, it will be a good thing. Of course, like everything else, if someone hears a gunshot in the distance, they'll be trying to put themselves in for it.

11 years ago they had that pic above every urinal around the 562nd at RND. Nasty. I'm still more worried about watching it drop behind the glareshield when I reach up to grab more Tostitos (or one of those chicken patties at the Died that occasionally crunch...yum)

Ring in the plane? Never. With my luck, it would fall off and roll into the throttle quadrant, thus creating an enormous pain in the ass for all involved. [ 13. August 2006, 23:12: Message edited by: Scooter14 ]

We just held our board. Results are still pending, but I know we don't hold it against anyone if they are interviewing/looking elsewhere. I, for one, understand the process. If I get an app from you, I would hope you didn't put all your eggs in one basket and only apply to us. That's why we select alternates. We make sure that, if we select someone as an alternate, that we would feel comfortable sending that guy to UPT tomorrow. One of our alternates last year went out and got a slot flying elsewhere. Good for him. Our primaries signed on with us, got through MFS and went off to AMS, no problem. I would have appreciated an e-mail from him letting me know that as I tried to get a hold of him this year for the interview process, but whatever. Bottom line, don't hoard the slot. But, you're gonna have your first choice, just like the unit. If your first choice doesn't hold the board until September, but you get hired elsewhere in August, as soon as you find out in September, you should be calling them within a week. Just a perspective from how we run it. Keep Rainman's perspective in mind as well, though. Other units run it differently. You should be able to get the vibe in the interview itself.

I don't know if I have said this one before but... In 2002, I was deployed to Oman. It just so happened that our own services folks were tagged to go there as well. Same folks we saw in our flight kitchen and gym were now running the beer tent and gym there. Kind of cool, actually. We were good to them, they were good to us. Small operation, so it was a lot more tightly knit, and everyone wasn't trying to run the dog and pony show of the AOR. Three years later, I'm eating alone at the "DFAC" and I see a familiar face. It's one of the same Services NCO's. We talk for a bit. She ended up the NCOIC of the DFAC, responsible for making sure everytnig is stocked and however many people roll through there have enough to eat. I'd say that's pretty important. So, in the course of our conversation, she starts telling me about something that, to this day, I still cannot believe. She tells me that last week, they ran out of certain types of ice cream, for whatever reason. Soon after, she began getting e-mails and phone calls from various first sergeants and commanders on base complaining about the lack of ice cream. The lack of ice cream in the DFAC. Here we are, in the AOR. Planes taking off full and coming back empty. Insurgency raging up north, troops in harms way. She's working her ass off trying to make sure thousands of troops are fed hot meals 24/7. What kind of phone calls does she get? Not "Thanks for the hot meal" or "Hey, you guys hooked us up" but "Why are you out of Maple Walnut?" Zzch, you guys get ice cream in Baghdad? You must, because I think national security depends on it, too. Unfortunately, I don't know which commanders and shirts were calling her. Until everyone can focus on the MISSION and leave all of this extraneous bullshit behind, it's gonna go on and on and on.

In basic laymans terms, it's time you are sitting in front of a set of controls that actually make the airplane go up and down. CFI instructing - counts Student watching an instructor fly logging dual time - counts Sitting at the nav table looking at the radar screen - doesn't count Gettin' some behind a minigun - doesn't count

You just made my day. See ya in two weeks!

I can't get that link to work. Anyone else having trouble?

Very nice.

That used to be the case. I think it has changed, from what I hear. *DISCLAIMER* I have absolutely no reference or reg to back it up, and I don't even remember who told me, but I recall someone telling me exactly what C-21 driver said. I think one main reason that was the T-38 qual itself cost even more money on top of B-2 training.

I have been happily married for 9 years, and have been away for a lot of it. How many people are overseas right now, away from their loved ones? How many are coming home and getting divorced. Some, but I would say it's a vast minority. It is what it is. Sounds like someone's a little insecure. Do we go out? Most do. Do we drink? Most do. Do we look at chicks? Sure. I'm not going to sit in my room and study the unabridged dictionary. However, I have stayed faithful for over 9 years of marriage. It's called trust. Look into it. That's one way to look at it. The other is "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." I can't think of anything better in the world than seeing my two kids charge me with my wife just a few steps behind as I walk off the airplane after a deployment. If I was your husband, I'd be worried about leaving YOU behind and who'd be "taking care of my unhappy, unfulfilled wife" when I was TDY. Tell ya what, either talk with him about it, or cut your losses and save yourself the attourney fees, the litigation and the fight for the custody of the dog and get out now.

Grandpa, You laugh, but I went through when EWOs were coming out of PCola only, they started there and finished there. I was in the second to last class to start at RND, and I tracked Nav and stayed there. No clue about navigation. NSTFS, my first trip to Saudi, I'm sitting there, DRing away like a good little nav, and one of the Navy-trained EWOs comes up front. EWO - "So, where are we?" Me - (pointing to my chart) "Right here" "Really?" "Yup" "How do you know that?" "Because I'm a navigator. It's kind of my job to know where we are." "Well, how do you know that?" (we just happened to be on UA1, about to cross the toe of the boot of Italy) "Well, we have this radar here, and that's Italy right here, and this box right here puts these coordinates on our screen, and I know how fast we are going and our heading and our drift so I..." "Oooooh. What's that? (pointing to dividers and plotter)" Yup, those were the navigator wing wearing EWOs of the late 90s. Granted, most were smarter than that, but it floored me how little exposure they got to actually directing an aircraft.

HercDude...Master of the Search Function

The best way to study is to formulate questions. Endless reading off 11-whatever will numb your brain and may even cause you to wish to do harm to yourself. Like gouge out your eyeballs or hit yourself in the nuts with a ball peen hammer

Really? Gosh, that sounds like fun!

He doesn't start until September, I'm sure he doesn't know the self-medication rules yet. Besides, I don't think you can go pick up codeine at the local Walgreens over the counter. If he had it from a previous perscription, though, just laying around the medicine chest, different story. Gotta be careful...codeine is a narcotic. Don't go messing with that stuff unless it's perscribed.

I'd change the time to 2100 and roll with that. That reminds me... I had a brief period of trouble sleeping at UPT, and the advice I got was to close the books about 30-45 minutes before bed and veg out. When you are studying, the mind is active, storing information, analyzing info, etc. If you study until let's say 2230, close the book, brush your teeth and get into bed, the mind is still busy. Couple this with normal pre-checkride (or pre-test/flight whatever) nervousness, and your mind will just keep going over scenario after scenario and it will be difficult to relax. So, my routine in Tweets was this: Monday afternoon... Leave the flightroom 1700ish, go workout for 30-45 minutes. Maybe go with a bro and hit each other with stump the dummy questions or NOTES WARNINGS AND CAUTIONS while you lift/run/ride the bikes. Get home around 1815. Eat. Catch up with the wife/kids. Go study around 1915. Study until about 2115. CLOSE THE BOOKS. Turn on the TV. Watch something stupid for 30 minutes and zone out. Get into bed by NLT 2200. Repeat 3 more times for Tues, Wed, Thurs nights. Friday... Leave the flightroom. Proceed to the club in gaggle formation. Meet wife and Captain Morgan there. Tell stories about how you tried to adjust your oxygen mask and pulled the hose off of the front. Watch the single guys leave to chase tail at Scooters. Laugh at the thoughts of what they will bring home. Cringe at the thoughts of them getting into trouble and having to hear your flight commander chew their ass on Monday. Get home at 0000. Pay babysitter. Drink a big glass of water and take two aspirin. Pass out.

The only thing I'll add is that it gets better. A lot better. DON'T GIVE UP!

Slilock, It's Hardship Duty Pay you're talking about. Nothing to do with getting shot at. FWIW, Hostile Fire Pay is also "Imminent Danger Pay" (like ASUPilot siad). Don't know what that means, I guess it means someone could conceivably Khobar Towers or Beiruit Barracks your ass. Whatever. All I know is that they pay it to me, and I'm not going to go back to Finance with it because I went off base or didn't get shot at. Hostile Fire/Imminent Danger [ 26. June 2006, 07:21: Message edited by: Scooter14 ]