olevelo

Lear, that sounds like terrible reasoning for someone sitting on the board. You give a promotion to someone who doesn't want it and someone else deserving gets shafted. You can say they had a "lesser" record, but they just scored below the quota. If the board was purely a score cutoff that's the same every year without regard to quotas, I could see this as a valid argument...score above the cutoff and you have nothing to complain about. But with a quota system the scores are purely arbitrary and you are just screwing over someone who may be just tenths of points "lesser" than the last guy who got promoted. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Back in '03-04, the limit was -4.5. I was -4.25 and -4.75 and they wouldn't waive it for pilot, but would for nav. Of course a couple months after I finished UNT they raised the limits and I would have been eligible. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I heard the 6th is getting rid of the C-145's already and going back to more of a similar mission of a few years ago. Anyone know anything about that? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

They changed that a couple of years ago and it's any active duty orders (excluding annual tour), and they don't even have to be TDY. So for example last year I did over 100 MPA days, which made me eligible for a 90 day early retirement. Unfortunately it's only 90 day increments though. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Nope, prior active duty time does not count. I don't have the reference handy, but it basically says "active duty time served as a reservist or guardsman". Trust me, I'm a guy on the Internet. :) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sorry I'm a little late responding with useful info, but I was an IMA for the last year (long story), and I think it's one of the best deals around. You get all the perks of being a reservist while generally working less (most IMA positions I've seen are cat B, with only 24 IDT's versus 48 for traditional), and never having to give up your weekend. There are a few considerations though. First, there are no longer any flying IMA positions. It requires AFRC/A3 approval to fly now. Since you belong to an active duty unit, who generally don't work weekends, you have to work your days during the week. I see this as a positive because you don't lose your weekend, but it could be an issue with some jobs. I was a civil service employee, so I got a boatload of paid days for military leave, then I could use regular leave or unpaid leave if I needed. Plus I worked both jobs on the same base (actually across the street from each other!), so there was no travel involved. Some units will let you do some or all of your IDT's via telework. I know one guy living overseas but is an IMA stateside and does as much as he can remotely and then knocks out the rest when able. Then there's the jobs where you can knock it out all at once. There was a nav job posted for awhile in Germany where they wanted you to do all your days at once each year. The advantage for you is that since the IDT's are in conjunction with AT, all travel is paid for. Free trip to Europe each year! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That's funny, since I'm '02 and was RIF'd last year. (I got un-RIF'd, but that's beside the point.) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I wouldn't count on it any time soon. For one, it takes years for the beauracracy to catch up to reality. Anecdotally, I was RIFd last year and submitted a case to the Board of Correction of Military Records claiming that I shouldn't have been eligible, and AFPC recommended approving it and returning me to active duty. I've been waiting 5 months for a decision and still nothing, so if they can't even decide on that, I don't see them doing a recall anytime soon. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I read all of that very differently. It sounds like if you're closer to the 16 year point you're more likely to get continued, but if you're closer to 15 you have a chance at TERA unless you're on one of the critical lists. And there's no chance of involuntary separation. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Just checked and yes it is KG. It actually is called Military Furlough. I swear it wasn't a couple months ago though! One thing I realized though is that when I started LWOP-US they had to do an SF-50 action to put me on unpaid status and then I'll have to do another when I go back. I remember thinking this will be a bit of a pain in the ass if I want to do it for just a day or two at a time. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You're absolutely allowed to use LWOP-US. Not sure what they're smoking. KG sounds like the right code, but in our system (JOCAS) it's not called Furlough. It's not called LWOP either though...I'll have to try to go in and see. I was worried it wasn't the right code either because the description was weird. But I've been on LWOP-US for 3 months. And it shows on my LES properly. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That was basically the issue I reported when the board upgrade happened, except on the mobile site there was no arrow, the thread title just took you to the first unread. However, I've alleviated the problem by downloading the tapatalk app and it has the feature and seems to work well enough (by going to the unread posts section). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Are you sure about that, or is that just a rumor floating around? All the W guys I knew went to LR, but admittedly it could have changed. First I've heard that though. MC/HC-J navs don't go, for obvious reasons (first I heard of EC-J guys going too).

It didn't work on NIPR for me today. Maybe the SSL updates will help though. I searched for any info about "go to last unread" for this new software, and saw several requests for it, but couldn't tell if anyone actually got it working.

I can't remember if it was a setting or not. It worked that way (going directly to last unread post) for years now. They layout on the iOS browser is also much busier, so it's not quite as easy to read a thread, but that's not a deal breaker. But yeah, the not going to the last post is what I consider a major downgrade. If I go more than a day without visiting the forum, with the old feature it was super easy to pick a thread back up without having to think about "what the hell did I read last time??". I'll probably just skip to the last couple posts now and miss out on any earlier discussion!

This seems like a huge downgrade on iPhone using the browser. Before, I could go right to the first unread post in a thread. Now I can either go to the beginning of the thread, or the last page, which may or may not be where I would've last read. Maybe there's something I'm missing to get the old functionality back, but this makes it MUCH harder to keep up.

Probably tougher to guess since they kind of realigned everything the last two years to get a shorter time between selection and pin-on. If I had to bet money, I'd guess next year's will be closer to this year's.

I can't really see them not offering TERA while it's still authorized after the shit-show of 2011. I'm pretty sure the answer is no, but can you take TERA?

Any other word on whether this was actually the case? As I mentioned before, I heard of a case last year where a guy wasn't eligible for TERA, but they have to be pretty unique cases.

I heard of a guy last year who did some sort of delayed entry program. So he met the promotion board with his year group he graduated with, but his delayed entry meant his tafms clock didn't start clicking till almost a year later. So he didn't quite have 15 years at the deadline (I believe the 7th month after the board). Again, I heard it from someone who heard it, but it seems like the only way it could happen. Or, I also read that the Chief of Staff can set an earlier date for folks to separate, which would presumably also affect who meets the 15 year requirement (those who entered late in the year), but that would be royally screwed up if they ever did that.

In regards to the early retirement for active duty days since 2008...no, active duty time does not count toward that. It has to be active duty days earned as a reservist or guardsman. AGR time also does not count. The good thing is they changed it so it doesn't have to be deployed/contingency anymore, nor consecutive. There are a lot of little 3-6 month gigs both conus and oconus for folks really trying to rack up the points.

So here's a summary of what I've been able to find out between all the different sources: Leave accrual: I can only continue to accrue leave while in a pay status, ie mil leave. Since I'm a new employee, and will be on orders for over 3 months, I don't have any annual leave to use, and just the 15 days of mil leave. After that's used up I'll go on LWOP-US (leave without pay - uniformed service...that's what the Air Force calls it in myPers...I'm guessing that's the same as MLWOP mentioned above), and leave accrual will stop until I return to a pay status. Retirement/seniority/conditional/etc: After returning from LWOP-US, all of that time has to be credited like normal service, so the time will count toward retirement, and toward fulfilling my one year on conditional status. Health care: If I had already enrolled in FEHB, I could suspend/terminate it while on orders since I get Tricare Prime, and then have it resume automatically once I come back to civilian status. Or, if the activation results in TAMP benefits for 180 days, I could submit a waiver request to allow FEHB reinstatement to be delayed until TAMP is over. However, since I'm already getting TAMP benefits due to the RIF, I'm not even enrolling in FEHB yet, and once I'm 31 days from that benefit ending, I can submit a request and be allowed to enroll in FEHB at that time. TSP: This one I'm still not completely clear on, but the short of what I understand is that the 1% deposit will continue to be made the entire time. After I return from LWOP-US, I can submit a request and make catch-up deposits and still get the 5% matching for the time I missed. Which is a pretty great "free money" deal. There were lots of words explaining all of it and it sounded like there wasn't much to do until I come back from LWOP-US, so I didn't dig too deeply, but that's what I got from it. As for promotion, again I believe the time counts, but I'm in the AcqDemo program so there's no steps for us. We get yearly appraisals (in Sept/Oct) and get raises based on that. So shouldn't be a factor (not really expecting one this first year even if I was working all summer!). Thanks for the help...please let me know if I'm missing something or made a mistake!

What exactly is the retirement and health care issue though? From what I can find, the time has to still count for retirement even if it's all straight LWOP. I'm not sure what the healthcare implications are. The thing is, I have Tricare for 6 months anyway due to being RIFd, so I don't even want to be paying for civilian health care at all. But I'm not sure I can do that due to the 60 day enrollment limit though.

I still haven't gotten a definitive answer here or elsewhere yet, but from further research it looks like I'm SOL on the leave accrual. It seems that that when you hit any multiple of 80 hours in a pay period, you earn no leave in that period. So the best I can do is use my mil leave all at once so I earn pay and leave for those two pay periods, but all of the other periods I won't accrue leave.

Looking for any civil service Reservists in the know. I'm starting a new federal position next week, but after one week I'm going on Reserve orders (IMA) for 3.5 months. It's not ideal timing but the General over both positions has approved the plan so it is what is for the GS position. My question is in regards to maintaining my federal time/benefits/leave. My understanding is that even if I'm on LWOP status for the duration, the time still counts toward retirement, correct? However, I won't accumulate regular leave or sick leave days during that time. I have heard though that as long as you have "some" time accounted for during each pay period, leave days will continue to accumulate, such as by taking a day of leave during each pay period, and then LWOP for the rest of it. However, since I will only be working for one week prior to starting my reserve duty, I will only have a couple of days leave earned. I should have my 15 days of military leave right off the bat though? Can I use a day of military leave each pay period to continue my leave accumulation? How do I go about doing that? Are there are any other benefits I may be missing while on Reserve duty, or any gotchas for doing the Reserve time? The plan is to do 10 IDT's and then 2 weeks of AT prior to starting the 90 day tour. Thanks for any tips.