Scooter14

We go to TA in our Prep for Contact checklist. As for our APN-69 beacon, as they fail they pull and collar the circuit breakers, so we are no longer using a 3 digit beacon code. In fact, the first two steps of the checklist used to be 1. Radios-Monitor and 2 APN-69 Beacon-Operate (both were to be accomplished no later than 30 min prior to the ARCT), but now step 2 simply says (deleted) What is this other beacon you're talking about? Is it a KC-10 specific thing, or is it something my jet automatically does, because I have no reference to it other than our receiver info of our -3 says you have an APX-105. I know we don't turn anything special on for a RZ with you guys, unless I'm missing something (entirely possible)

Pacer is some sort of name for avionics related stuff, I've seen it before (PACER Coin, PACER CLASSIC was some sort fo T-38 thing, etc). CRAG stands for Compass, Radar And GPS. People pronounce it "Craig", but it's spelled CRAG. From the Altus workbook: The PACER CRAG program involves the integration of a number of maor avionics systems into the KC-135 fleet. The MAjor subsystems include: -Compass replacement system -FMS -MFD systems -color wx radar -E-TCAS -EGPWS -FSAS -RVSM Almost all of the KC-135's, even the E models have it now. I don't know of any straight up tankers that don't have the mod. RCs have a different mod, the OC's are Pacer CRAG, don't know anything past that. We can tag a squawk with our E-TCAS. All the white diamonds will be floating around out there, but yours will be blue, in a little box with your Mode 3 code underneath it. So when we're up over Halifax at 0330 so you guys can get home and get a little lovin before the kids get home from school, we're just trying to make it easier on everyone. ;) I'll pass the word around that you guys don't need it. I'm actually surprised you don't have that capability being as new as you are. Any FRED drivers out there, can you tag a Mode 3? [ 26. May 2005, 14:14: Message edited by: PAB ]

It's a sharp forward motion on the stick. It usually takes whatever is not strapped down and sends it to the roof. Hopefully it will advance the baserunner in a 0 or 1 out situation into scoring position. [ 26. May 2005, 11:49: Message edited by: PAB ]

I know personally, I won't get annoyed over the radios unless it's really bad and we need to complete a checkride or something, but we will talk bad about him or her cross-cockpit. "Tanker 24, extend downwind for inbound traffic, we'll call your base" click "Tanker 24" click DAMMIT! WTF, that dude is like 12 miles away, we can totally beat him. Holy **** it's a Coast Guard H-60! We're gonna be halfway to Cape Cod by the time this guy gets here. I will also start using aaaaaaaaand a lot more often, just because everything is so jacked up anyway.

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 ]

...aaaaaaaand At UPT, the Tweet runway has a mini tower called an RSU. In addition to controlling the pattern and verbally bashing the students in the aircraft and working in the RSU box, the controllers would write down little acronyms to be debriefed the next morning or by the Sup after the flightif you were solo. FT=Firm Touchdown IF=Incomplete Flare, etc. There was a legend in your flight room to decode all these 2-4 letter codes. One guy gets back from a solo, and in addition to all his comments, has HPOR on his card. He searches to no avail. He goes back to the Sup who informs him that it stands for Heavy Panting On Radio. Apparently, he keyed his mic inadvertently on downwind and sounded like an obscene phone caller. He was solo, so who knows what he was doing. [ 23. May 2005, 06:58: Message edited by: PAB ]

Being off formal release in Nav phase is almost transparent. Sure, you don't have to show up if you are not flying, but I know I flew 4 times a week, it was usually at least a 10 hour day anyway, with the lunch and back, debriefs, etc. and on the "off" day I was usually at baseops building my VFR leg chart and preparing a low-level chart for my checkride, as well as running Form 70's and trying to pick out which field I was going to do my approach work. I did try to do as much as I could before "crew rest" time so I could come home and relax for a couple hours, play catch with my son, have a beer, talk with the wife and then hit the books a bit before bedtime. For me, Nav phase was about 2 months long, give or take. Like Vistar1 said, it's as good as done once the Nav check is behind you and you guys can coast into graduation, chillin like villains. Good luck!

On the flip side, if you read this board and take it as gospel without referencing the reg, you are equally at fault. No gouge supercedes the source document, trust no gouge at face value.

I'm gonna go real basic with this one for everyone's benefit. It took me a while to figure out how to post a picture. You'll need to have it on a website and then you post the URL of the picture using the IMAGE button on the full reply form. For example, This pic was on af.mil today. I right-clicked on the pic, went to properties, copied the Address and then pasted into the pop-up window after I clicked on image. If you right click on the above image, it should give you the full URL address off of af.mil under properties. There is a website called tinypic that lets you upload images for this purpose, if you don't have a personal website. It'll be out there for the world to see, though, so keep that in mind. [ 17. May 2005, 07:15: Message edited by: PAB ]

I'm just a copilot, man. If you're talking about my IN days then I'll let blkafnav and Bergman comment on that one. (This oughta be good)

I'm gonna be the biggest dick instructor EVER! I think I'll make the students wear a helmet just so I have an oxygen hose to grab onto when they screw up their turns around a point. They are gonna think R. Lee Ermey is a social worker compared to me. Slye, Thanks, I remember that now (61 vs. 141). It's a moot point for those done with UPT, since you get a commercial equivalency anyway, but still good info. [ 16. May 2005, 09:26: Message edited by: PAB ]

Hey now... I'll have you know that when we ran the PT test at UPT, three of the top 5 were 30 or older. 6th-lastplace were reserved for the Twinkie eating Playstation playing 2002-2003 commissionees.

Funny, I have to get a hearing re-test this week. Maybe we can get a bulk deal on the miracle ears. Oh yeah, turned 30 at UPT. It's no big deal, unless you try to talk to the kids about things like "The Brady Bunch" (they had no idea what that was) or seeing two of the first three Star Wars movies in the theaters. [ 16. May 2005, 07:57: Message edited by: PAB ]

Comanche, You need to be a commercial pilot (250 hrs)to exercise the priveleges of being a CFI, do you not? I'm starting my CFI soon (enrolling this week, hopefully) but I am horrendously out of touch with civil aviation.

Someone's gotta get rid of this "different pots of money" bullshit so we can use shoe clerk funds to accomplish the mission. It's amazing what we spend money on "just because." I think I have about 7 pairs of long underwear in my basement that I never wear, because Life Support at my last base kept giving them to us. Web Cams, blackberries, oooh, new toys! They should read the Gadgets thread, then they could really go crazy. The old BDU's ain't broke, but the planes are, so let's fix the BDU's first. Service before self, my ass. Someone's getting promoted while MX is busting their ass trying to keep these pigs flying. It will get even better now they cut everyone's flight hours to pay for stuff. I don't know about other aircraft, but -135's love to sit on the ramp for days on end with a heavy fuel load. They won't leak or anything, and will be ready to go when you kick the tires and light the fires (sarcasm). At least the F/A-22 will be easy to maintain when we have 3 bases left, since we needed to close them all to pay for it. Rant switch - off

Sleepy, After a few months in AETC, things begin to break down. Twitching, involuntary flatulation, drooling. Kind of like the movie Airplane when Capt Over gets sick, but much worse. Just look around at the FAIPS, you'll see what I mean. In all seriousness, I had the same thing happen to me twice in the last week or so, and it drives you nuts, and I would love to know what causes it.

It would be a beaurocratic nightmare, but you would have all of the legal docs proving she was in fact your spouse as of the date she got sick/injured, so she would be covered. You would most likely spend lots of time on the phone and faxing documents all over God's green earth, but eventually it would be settled.

Ulcerative Colitis? Holiday Inn Express last night...let's see if it paid off.

Funny, not a lot of people were, until 290,000 ecstacy pills landed there a few weeks ago. FP, hang in there. I can't imagine a problem that went away two years ago could cause this much ass pain (pun intended). I got KO'd (out for a few seconds max) in a hockey game my senior year of high school (1991), passed a FC1A, flew as a nav for over 6 years, took a FC1 in 2002 and AETC/SG had a cow. Even though the reg said if it was over ten years ago and there were no symptoms it should be OK, they classified it as a moderate head injury. Sent me downtown to a neuropsychologist, asked me a bunch of questions, the doc downtown was like "Do you know how much it's costing the AF for me to tell you that you are fine?" I got a waiver and am flying today. The only person who cares about your flying career is you. Keep trying. See if they can work a deal with another unit willing to take the waiver route. Sounds like someone might be either lacking knowledge or lazy on the Newburgh end of the telephone. [ 07. May 2005, 20:26: Message edited by: PAB ]

He is a good officer. I don't really like him, though. All kidding aside, this has been an excellent discussion for me (and others on this board) to learn a great deal from. There is a whole lot more to the ANG than showing up 2.5 hours prior to takeoff, grabbing your helmet bag, briefing it up and heading out to Laser North so the Hogs can cancel (saw the shot, had to take it ). There are AGR/Tech slots, MPA tours, civillian employers to deal with, PME to complete, retirement point calculations, HQ jobs, non-flying billets, etc. etc. It can be very dicey and very confusing. Compound this with the fact that nobody ever goes anywhere in a Guard unit, most folks stay in for 20, 25, 30 years unitl they pry cold, dead hands off of yokes and sticks, and things get tricky quickly. So you've got Bergman with the plight of the Guard bum who can't get enough work at his unit who's halfway to an AD retirement and sees a way to get there (AGR slot, Guard Bum's wet dream, right?)in a very unorganized unit (Bergman's right, I've got a lot of first and second hand knowledge of this fact) and Rainman with the manning nightmare that all Guard units wrestle with on a daily basis and the "view from the top" so to speak, and the drama unfolds. All you ANG wannabes out there, learn from this discussion. The Guard is a great place to be, but it's not all hunky dorey all the time. [ 28. April 2005, 08:58: Message edited by: PAB ]

They might work it, but chances are better if you've got rings on. That you gave to each other. When you got married. To each other.

You did a search? What is this search you speak of?

The Wichita Mts are about 45 min to the north, just west of Lawton, OK. I've never biked there, but the Ft Sill outdoor rec guys may know. Tons of wildlife reserves and such, and a kick ass burger joint in the town of Meers. Sheppard outdoor rec could probably clue you in as well.

Just flipping you shit, scoobs. If you sit back and read these threads, at the tail end of every discussion you ask about 4 or 5 loosely related questions. Bergman do you fly or drive?Do ou take the same route every time?Who do you have your frequent flyer account with?All your base are belong to us.

Go talk to the ops officer or chief pilot. Totally informal to let them know you are interested, the formalities will come later in the interview process. Keep your MX supervision in the loop. They should not find out you are trying for a pilot slot with a call from the ops squadron "Adamj is applying for a pilot slot, do you recommend him?" If you don't feel comfortable approaching the squadron leadership, talk to one of the engineers/booms out on the line when you are getting the jet ready to go - they should be able to give you the skinny on who to talk to. Units typically like to hire from within, it shows the unit is committed to rewarding hard work with professional advancement, it gives people an incentive to put their best foot forward, and it's lower risk for the unit, since they already know you and know you're probably not going to pull a fast one and quit, switch units or be a shitbird. I'm assuming you are about 25-26 years old, so you have some time, but don't wait. You may have time to interview this summer. Giving up that ART job will be tough, but you'll have to cross that bridge when you come to it. Finally, do some searches on this board, TONS of good info. Look at the top of the page for some FAQs as well. Good luck! [ 20. April 2005, 19:42: Message edited by: PAB ]