Scooter14

Precisely my point. If you read my post, you'll see that it's not me that was offended, I was merely pointing out the fact that my wife (who is no longer easily offended, since she's been with me for 7+years) and other people read this board. We all have the right to free speech and the right to our own opinions, but a little SA is sometimes required. IMHO, I'll tell just about anyone to **** off, but the C word holds a special place in my heart for people I REALLY don't like. Ah, the questions in Polifka Hall. Brings back memories. True story: we had a briefing about the Expeditionary Air Force concept. Some poor Major got up and spoke for about 45 minutes. He had slides, he had implementation dates, he had numbers. He showed what percentage of ANG/AFRC units would be integrated and when. He briefed it all ad nauseum. When he opened it up for questions, some reserve medical guy from Dobbins ARB stands up and asks, and I loosely quote... "So, when does this expeditionary force concept start, and will it include the Guard and Reserves?" The major just looked at him and then politely gave a 2 minute recap of the last 45 minutes of the briefing. We looked at each other and laughed about it for the rest of SOS.

A LtCol much wiser than I had a chat with me one day when I was an Active Duty 1Lt getting ready to put on Capt. He read an e-mail out loud saying that more SOS slots were progged to open up, to which I rolled my eyes and groaned. He quickly spun around pointed at me and yelled, and I quote..."Lieutenant, if you EVER have the opportunity to do PME in residence, you ****ING DO IT! UNDERSTAND!!!!!" To which I responded meekly "Uh, yyyyes sir." IMHO (and I've only been Guard for about 15 months, with 12 of them here at Vance, so take it at face value), PME in residence for a Guard bum seems like a good way to get days, meet people and avoid the ***-pain of having to do it in correspondence. Personally, I had a good time there and I was lucky enough to have cool folks in my flight, but another guy from my squadron was not so fortunate. If it's something you want to do, I don't think it can hurt. BTW, AirGuardian is "living the dream" at Maxwell right now. I think he's actually finishing up, IIRC.

I didn't get one at Vance in '03 either. I did get the G-Shock at Nav school. It did become FOD when the pin that holds the strap on (sts) fell off. I still have the POS. IndiGlo, I believe. Bergman, remember taking the watch apart to make the buttons stick out further so you could actually use it during the nav school Tweet Low Levels? Ah, the memories...

Based on HD's post, I would think the low approach, although not listed in the FARs, is probably an unwritten one. Go-arounds are free, right? If not, I owe the people here at Vance a lot of money

Amen MajorMadMax! I think Zrooster did set the record for the number of C words in a three line post. Four, to be exact, and he used them in varying context. Nicely done! Your 4th grade English teacher would be mighty proud. [ 27. May 2004, 23:45: Message edited by: PAB ]

That's probably why he's lead.

I completely agree that the cap does resemble the anatomy. Those who know me know about my copious use of colorful language to describe things. I've calle the UHF antenna on the SOF truck the "Donkey Dick" and used the term "Tits Up" repeatedly, but in my 30 years on this earth, I've never ever seen a favorable reaction to the C word. Ever. I can say **** all day long around my house (but not on this board apparently), but heaven help me if I refer to it as that. Just pointing it out, best of luck to ya and I hope you never meet my wife in a bar... [ 23. May 2004, 22:00: Message edited by: PAB ]

Nice talk, HD. I'm sure all the future female aviators and spouses that read this board are gonna love to see the moniker you used for the flight cap in your post, because chicks dig the C word. :eek:

Still got all mine through an initial FC1A and a FC1. You never know, I guess [ 11. May 2004, 21:57: Message edited by: PAB ]

Flyinjunky, What did you think of the T-37 Sim program? We had an old version someone gave us, and a couple of the guys bought the new version and we used it at their house. We loved it. It was a helluva way to chairfly, especially during the instrument phase, you could do your fix to fix, fly the arc, full procedures, etc. Kudos to anyone who's talented enough to make suck a product as well, the detail and realism are really good. I highly recommend it to anyone who's Tweet bound. [ 09. May 2004, 19:40: Message edited by: PAB ]

Sweet! All I need is half a kid and a dog, and I'm IN! Hey, wait a minute.... Seriously though, good on you if you can get there. I can't even imagine the interview process or the flying involved.

Actually, officers can sell back leave. You can only sell back 60 days of leave in a career. This becomes a player when transitioning to the ANG/AFRC. When you do a month MPA tour, you accumulate 2.5 days of leave, which will automatically get sold back at the end of the tour. If you sold back all 60 days at the end of Active Duty, you're SOL, so they say. I sold back 30 days at the end of AD and took the rest as terminal leave before joining the ANG. Nowhere else are you going to get this much paid vacation time this quick. And if you start UPT in November, let's say, and you get 2 weeks off in December for Xmas break, they'll let you "go in the hole" or carry a negative leave balance to go see family because they know you won't be taking much more leave till the end and you'll go back in the black.

Ditto on the housing. We came to Vance early and they told us 3 months. We found an off-base place, I moved in on a Tuesday, and on that Friday housing called to tell us a house was available. The only thing that's been a little rough on the baby side, especially in T-1's is the fact that a lot of the sorties ae out and back, which means you land somehwere else, get gas and then fly home. Any time a plane is shut down, it runs the risk of not starting back up properly. Last week, we got stuck in Omaha, but luckily there was antoher T-1 coming back from somewhere else with three seats on board, and we were "rescued". The wife is due on Saturday, so I was cutting it a little close there, and it's kind of stressful up until you're wheels up. The schedulers here have been really good, though. They always ask for my inputs and they were really good about front-loading the work so I could get through my nav check (which went really well, IAGuardWife ;) ) and then be able to throttle back a little bit, do a sim here and there on OB appointment days, etc. BTW, TankerWife is due on the 24th, so any day now...

It's more of a way to keep the traffic flowing, if you're talking about a UPT base kind of pattern. It's kind of hard to explain in words, since it was the most ****ed up pattern I had ever experienced, but on the other hand it made sense, since there is such a high volume of traffic, things need to be precise, or people could end up hurt. It's a VFR pattern. You'll have a release point where you'll essentially cancel IFR and enter the pattern. That will basically put you on a 45 to the runway centerline. Inside of that will be a VFR entry point, which basically lines you up the same way, but a little closer to the runway. The centerline will be called "Initial" if you stay at patten altitude, fly "overhead" the runway and break. Typically 500' below you, dudes will be doing visual straight in approaches. There will be an inside downwind for those breaking/pulling closed patterns and an outside downwind to fly to to "go around the box/container." At any given time, you might need to "break out" to deconflict yourself. You'll go out to VFR entry and try it again. Hopefully there won't be someone coming in from the MOA's through the release points, because they will have priority and you'll have to break out again. I haven't even scratched the surface... There is a whole myriad of rules, procedures, weather mins, radio calls, etc at the base and at the aux field, where you'll do half your pattern work. Half of the difficulty people have with solo flights, IMHO, is getting the pattern procedure down. It's a daunting task at first, but with enough practice in (and out) of the jet/turboprop, it will become second nature. Every flight room has a pattern duct-taped to the floor in multicolored tape. An IP will sit there as the controller and you'll fly (walk) around the pattern. Heaven help you if you don't know the procedures or radio calls verbatim. You WILL look like a dumbass in front of your peers. We went so far as to take my son's sidewalk chalk, draw the pattern on my driveway and walk around it with someone rotating as the controller. Missed calls or screwups cost pushups and . My neighbors kind of look at me funny since we had 9 dudes walking around my driveway with outstreched arms talking to ourselves :confused: ...

mmkk111 (and anyone else on their way to an AF base for Phase III), It will be an adjustment, and you have the right attitude already, you will do fine. Just don't be that guy that always bones the stand-up EP's and blames it all on "Oh, well, I was Navy Trained, blah, blah, blah." Believe me, it happens. Ask for help if you need it. Any one of your classmates will be more than happy to go over it with you. I've seen a couple of Navy trained folks come up, mess stuff up and later say "Well, I really didn't understand/know what they wanted, etc." If you don't know, please ASK! [ 04. April 2004, 19:53: Message edited by: PAB ]

Here's the deal with TACAN, VORTAC and VOR/DME TACAN, short for Tactical Air Navigation, gives you range and bearing simply by selecting one of the 126(?) channels out there, which are UHF IIRC (I left my 11-217 at the squadron). Civil aircraft can get DME from it, but no bearing. VORTAC gives you VOR bearing, TACAN bearing and DME. VOR/DME only gives you VOR bearing and DME. Military TACAN only equipped aircraft can't navigate to it since there is no TACAN radial, they only get DME, the needle will just spin. If you have a VOR receiver with a paired DME, or a VOR and a TACAN receiver, then it's transparent to you. Where it can get squirrely is on a localizer or ILS where a cross-radial is used to define a step down fix. If it's a VORTAC, we'll tune the localizer into the VOR and use the TACAN radial to define the fix where it crosses the LOC course (See ILS 1L at Wichita) If it's a VOR/DME, we have to use the VOR receiver on the copilots side and get cross side information to get the VOR bearing. Not a big deal, we just aren't able to have the LOC dialed in on both sides (See ILS at Hutchinson Muni, KS). Hope that helps

GPS approaches are taught in the sims now in T-1's. Pretty cool stuff.

True statement on the Corpus deal. T-1's gets AF and Navy folks from Whiting and Navy only folks from Corpus. The Navy guys are there to fly the E-6 as a follow on, but I've herad you can put in for a P-3 as well, according to them. Kinda like getting a -130 out of Tones for the AF guys.

From what I understand, there's not a "drop" per say. It's kind of like "OK, you're done. There's a T-38 slot open, and you have the scores (or no slot, or you don't have the scores). Have fun at Vance. Buh-bye" I was AF trained all the way through, but the Navy trained folks we got from Corpus/Whiting had some initial shock and awe from their days on the beach, flying whenever, sleeping till whenever, not memorizing boldface, not saying "I will maintain aircraft control, analyze the situation, blah, blah, blah." I don't fault them...if I was at a place where I didn't have to go in unless I was flying and I could spend as much time as I wanted to at the beach, hell yeah I'd do the same thing, but once you get up here, it's kind of game-over. Nobody's washing out or anyhing like that and everyone's acclimated for the most part, it's just that we're all learning a new plane, and they have the added responsibility of having to learn the Stand-ups, boldface shenanigans and the friggin' gradebook that the Tweet guys have been dealing with for 6 months. Big deal to learn? No. Pain in the *** to learn? Yep. [ 02. April 2004, 23:25: Message edited by: PAB ]

It's ridiculous. 1992ish - "Our service dress looks too much like the Army. It needs to be more distinctive. Let's put sleeve rank on it and no name tag. That way it'll be unique. Just like the Navy!" 1995 - Epaulets come back onto the service dress 2004 - Nametags for the service dress! What a novel idea! Only let's make them silver and more expensive... 1993ish - Our BDU's look too much like the Army. Let's put aircrew tags on (which actually did look kinda cool) and take off ALL the rank, so I have to walk to within 6 inches of your nametag to see if it says CADET, CAPT, COL, or CMSGT because it all blends together in the Texas sunlight. 1994 - Rank goes back on 1995 - Name tapes are back 2004 - Our BDU's look too much like the Army. We need ones that are more distinctive. We'll make them blue, to blend in with the 15 pax vans and big blue busses on our bases. New hats would be unique! Just like the Navy!" I see a trend... The big problem is who they put in charge. In the Marine Corps, where it seems like everyone likes the new Cammies, a trained infantryman who knows what people in the field want and need and is dedicated to his fellow troops and the Corps comes up with the stuff that they need. The Eagle, Globe and Anchor is part of the pattern, a symbol that probably goes back to 1775 (Riddller, I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong.) How long have the Marines had their dress uniform? Longer than 1995 I'm sure. We, on the other hand, have another REMF trying to get promoted by coming up with some groundbreaking idea. Don't even get me started on this new Air Force symbol. Bring back the Hap Arnold wings, at least they tied us to the Army Air Corps. Oh wait, that would make us too much like the Army... I see a trend...

Wait'll they make you an ALO or a staff guy or attach you to a Logistics squadron for some reason, and you're walking around like a blueberry tiger striped popsicle, then you'll care... ;) [ 19 March 2004, 08:02: Message edited by: PAB ]

I know you guys are in it to fly the fast-movers and I think that's great, but consider one thing about a unit like Hawaii. If, for some reason, you get done with Tweets and you don't have the scores to go on to T-38's, or you get done with -38's and don't have the scores to go to IFF, or you wash out of IFF, you're probably going to have to find another unit to sponsor you the rest of the way. That unit won't be a fighter unit, either. With Hawaii, if you have a problem like that, they'll let you stay in the unit as a Tanker/C-17 pilot, you'll go through Tones, you won't have to call another unit to beg them to pick you up, and you'll go back to Hickam. Not a bad location. I don't see this as a drawback, I see it as a great way to keep your options open. BTW, two of the Hawaii guys to go through here so far since I've been here have gone to T-38's. Both good dudes, too.

Ditto what AG said. There are plenty of folks running around down here wearing enlisted aircrew wings, former booms, engineers, loadmasters, AWACS aircrew, etc. It seems like a great way to prove yourself at your unit, and you have the added advantage to learn about military aviation. I don't know a whole lot about the -130 community, but in my experiences, some aircrew who don't spend a lot of time on the flightdeck tend to focus on their job back there (and rightfully so) but they don't get involved with the actual flying aspect. Don't be that guy. Be the guy who asks the questions in the briefings and expands his knowledge about what the pilots and navs are doing, be the guy bugging the engineer about systems and sitting in the jump seat when your duties permit. It will pay dividends at UPT and Little Rock.

We had two fail it, they just had to take it again after Tweets if they ended up going to 38's, so I guess the rules are still the same. I think the strike navs have to do it too... If you are lifting weights and keeping in shape, you will have no problems with it. The biggest challenge is the fact that the reps are so slow. Try it someday and gage your progress. Most of my class got over 200, including me, and if I can do it...

Chestnuts roooooasting on an RF beam.... 6+ years sitting ten feet behind the 1950's vintage APN-59 radar, one boy and one boy on the way.