Lord Ratner

I'm interested, but I can't see any of the pictures No Texas flag for me, but the FAIP mafia flag would be awesome Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

How does continuation work? Is there a minimum ADSC with it? Can you accept continuation and decide to separate six months later? Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

Wow! Continuation offered? That's surprising. Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

I may be wrong, but I do not believe it accounts for people who quit during the window, which is why the number of eligible members drops. So if you 3 day opt out of a 365 during the window, you would drop out of the eligible pool. It makes the numbers look better, which is scary considering how bad they look Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

Yet... When offered the chance, every fighter pilots will...

Pilot training was easy. You'll do fine Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

They have a twin Comanche now as well. They send a sheet with all the plane-specific gk they want you to know. The rest of your gouge was solid Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

The best advice for Downtown Aviation I can give you is to always, always use the phone. Corey is a good instructor, and the program is solid, and very affordable. But he's terrible with responding to emails. On a side note. Doc (the primary eval pilot for ATPs there) was audited by the FAA very recently for having a huge number of check rides. They dug into every aspect of the operation and found zero discrepancies. So you can go assured the program is legit. Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

I'm no stranger to Air Force programs. If you think I'm getting DG, you should have a chat with my Flt/CC here. And since my promotion board to O-4 will be completed before I finish SOS, it wouldn't do much anyways. I'm doing it because I raged long and hard for years about the title of this thread. Period. They scrapped the original think tank and targeted this one to the CSAF's letter, and I like most others here thought the letter was a spot-on representation of the things we've bitched about for years on BO.net. I'm no fool. I had dreams of unicorns and magic carpet rides when the last CSAF got rid of Blues Mondays. I will not be similarly enraptured by mere letters from the new CSAF. But after being here for only a week and listening to the various levels of leadership at AU talk about the problems, I haven't found much to disagree with. I spent all day yesterday in Destin with a beer in my hand soaking up some significant skin cancer fuel. Friday we ate crappy tacos and watched our classmates hit each other in the face with padded sticks, Thursday we went to trivia night at a bar, Wednesday we ate brats and watched a baseball game. Again, all with a beer in my hand. Classes have been almost entirely focused on leadership theory and application, which pilots often lack based on our limited CGO leadership opportunities. And the geeky "think tank" instructions were to use whatever means and methods we choose to gather unfiltered opinions from across the ranks and figure out how to begin solving (it's only four weeks, after all) the single greatest issue fueling bitch-fests in every flying squadron heritage room AF-wide. Maybe I'm just the luckiest pilot ever to go through SOS, but I gotta say fellas, if this is the experience we've been raging against for so long, maybe we really have lost touch. I wouldn't have turned SOS down three times if I knew it was like this. Anyways, /rant. Not attacking you, Duck, but I've been facing an existential crisis here because I was expecting to be the lone naysayer in an ocean of shoe-clerk Kool-Aid, and even when the SNCO Academy students came over to "cross-talk," we had a hard time finding topics to disagree over. Maybe things are so bad that everyone at the squadron levels, officer and enlisted, are finally aligning against the same malignancy. Or maybe they gave me a Kool-Aid enema on day one and I don't remember it. Either way, I could use the help from the one forum that has done more to articulate the problems we face than any think tank or focus group Maxwell could ever assemble. And all you have to do is click some up and down arrows in a website.

Wanna help? I'm at sos now and we're doing the "think tank" on that very letter. Think tank sounds lame, I know, but they have at least given us free reign to design the process. I set up a Reddit page for people to add ideas and vote on others. The more we get, the better. You'll need a Reddit account, but if you're like me and have been bitching about this topic for years, this is a way to be heard. Anyone here who knows me knows I won't sugar coat the feedback for staff officer consumption, and we are presenting the info to at least two generals at the end of the month. https://www.Reddit.com/r/SquadronFocus Please at least go and vote on all the ideas in there. Thanks, Seth Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

Let us know how it goes. I'm scheduled for the beginning of September.

Push promotions O 1-5 down to the wing commander level. Some will get it wrong, but at least those with the big picture can stop doing stupid things (patch wearers as execs) just to satisfy the great faceless promotion board. Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

Oscar-worthy...

Exactly. They (CC) can order you to stay on base, and you can ignore them and follow the JTR on refusal of govt quarters. They have to pay you the prescribed amount, but your CC can also write you an LOR for article 92.

Except that the last time you were TDY to MacDill, the Spanish still owned Florida.

Think of how many permanent schedulers, planners, training managers, equipment custodians, building custodians, deployment managers, records managers, voting reps, security managers, resource advisors, purchase card holders, and DTS reviewers we could hire for 60k per year...

Pigeons are the pilots you have to throw rocks at to get to fly. Penguins are the pilots that won't fly no matter what you do to them.

I've been carrying two passports (tourist and official) for years now and have yet to have a problem other than remembering which one I used to enter the country... I have the exact opposite experience. No border agent will be confused by someone with an official/diplomatic passport also having a tourist passport. You don't present them both, but having both has never caused a problem for me. Now, there are cases of border agents being very interested in the visas contained within the other passport. If you are going to a country with such concerns, carrying only one is prudent. Not sure if they still do it, but you used to be able to get a second passport if your travel involved Israel and certain Middle Eastern countries, to keep the visas separate. Exactly. Thinking about it a bit more, the real threat would be two civilian passports. The circumstances for having two are very rare, and I can see a border agent getting spun up. But one red and one blue? No issues.

I have the exact opposite experience. No border agent will be confused by someone with an official/diplomatic passport also having a tourist passport. You don't present them both, but having both has never caused a problem for me. Now, there are cases of border agents being very interested in the visas contained within the other passport. If you are going to a country with such concerns, carrying only one is prudent. Not sure if they still do it, but you used to be able to get a second passport if your travel involved Israel and certain Middle Eastern countries, to keep the visas separate.

Here's mine. I searched back a few years, but with the changes to the JTR and long-term per diem, hopefully someone has some recent experience. I'm going OCONUS to CONUS, with a CONUS TDY-enroute. My DEROS is in May, and we are leaving the country on May 31. The class start date for the TDY enroute is 9 June. (Mildenhall - Altus - Fairchild) What the hell am I supposed to do with my wife? Does she get per diem and stay at Altus with me? She can't stay overseas While I'm at the TDY due to DEROS, right? Or is she just expected to go ahead to Fairchild without me? Unsurprisingly the FSS folks have been... ambiguous. Any other warnings/advice based on past experiences with the OCONUS-TDY-CONUS PCS are appreciated. Thanks

Pretty solid, though not so much I'd bet my wings on it. Info is from someone in a very logical position to know it. Not surprising these days. I've been hearing similar stories, though this is the first 100% decline rate I've heard of.

So what's your plan?

UAVs. Those are easier to fly, are often even lower in the UPT class distribution than AWACS and KC-135s to McConnell, and fit the rest of your criteria. As for qualifying my position, I've been a T-6 FAIP, MC-12 MC, Tanker pilot, flown a couple civilian puddle jumper planes, and some seat time in the C-17, A-10, and KC-10 simulators flying patterns. I've also had my three carnival rides in the U-2, which would have gone much better had I done the interview after 500 hours in the -135. So far you've been wrong about Shell 77, obnoxious in your fervor and posting rate, and unwilling to clearly state your flying history, so until those conditions change, I'll go back to lurking. BREAK BREAK I posted in the promotions thread, but it's relevant here. Allegedly, all six school selects at Lakenheath had declined school. Since school is a similar commitment as taking the bonus, this is another bad sign for retention, with the notable difference that these six are ostensibly the top six dudes according to the AF. If the promise of an easier path to O-6 isn't enough to keep them, I doubt an extra 10K will change the tide.

You strike me as either a troll or an idiot, but in any case, having flown a few different planes now, and a few more in their simulators, the tanker (135) is probably the second hardest to land in the AF. I haven't flown a fighter, but I have yet to meet anyone who has flown both fighters and stratotankers and thought the fighter harder to land.

Interesting data point I heard. Apparently all 6 school selects at Lakenheath have declined. Rumor has it a council of the elders was called to figure out how this happened... They must not read BO.net