Toro

They're both correct, you're missing the point - they're talking about different types of flights. You would be getting an incentive ride, not FAM. Something that would benefit you for a FAM ride would be water survival training. Obviously you can't run out and get yourself scheduled for that, but it is a go-no-go if you're going to fly over the water. That happens a lot here at Seymour, Tyndall and Eglin (Brabus, not sure if this affected you). ENJJPT IP and a couple of his buds came out here a few months back for backseat FAM rides. Only three of the four of them had water survival training. The fourth was going to be limited to over-land. We scheduled some over-land airspace, but as mentioned, she was merely along for the ride. So if weather crapped out and the flight had to go over the water (which it almost did) she would have lost her flight.

…and the last six… “and any sonofab!tch in the 3rd Army who doesn’t ware his reflective belt is just as bad as a Nazi and will therefore be shot as a coward.” -General George S. Patton Iwo Jima, February 1945. Joe Rosenthal would not have captured this great moment on film had it not been for the distinct glare of the reflective belts. Disclaimer: Parody only. It is acknowledged that the United States Marine Corps does not wear reflective belts in combat zones. LZ X-Ray, 1967 Vietnam; The First Cavalry Division and it’s flair for all things yellow, breaks out the reflective belts to help pilots decide where to drop napalm. North Vietnam 1971; Task Force Ivory Coast. The Special Warfare Legend, COL Arthur D. “Bull” Simons declared the Son Tay Prison raid a complete and total success because of the reflective belts which enabled our Special Forces soldiers to discern between friendly forces and military advisors from the People’s Republic of China C’mon, everyone is doing it… DISCLAIMER: Parody only, The Halliburton Corporation does not manufacture reflector belts… Yet

Somebody sent this to me, thought it was pretty funny. 1775, If not for the reflective belt, General George Washington would have lost boats in the “fog of war”, thus rendering his crossing of the Delaware river pointless. The Confederacy might very well have won the American Civil War had General T.J. “Stonewall” Jackson had been wearing his reflective belt on that fateful evening in May of 1863. Unfortunately, he was shot by his own men. As testimony to the caliber of leaders produced at the United States Military Academy, the brilliant tactician General George A. Custer ordered his men to don their reflective belts at Little Big Horn. This ensured the ability to distinguish the living from the dead. From 1914 until mid-1918 our European Allies were locked in a stalemate of trench warfare. Enter the doughboys of the Allied Expeditionary Force who brought with them the power of the reflective belt. It has been said that the reflective belt was a key factor in the German decision to surrender. Normandy, June 6th 1944; Poor navigation, overrun drop zones and Nazi Flak caused the elite U.S. Paratroopers to be scattered over the French countryside in total confusion. If not for the reflective belt, they would have never been able to link up and form LGOPs (little groups of Paratroopers) thus enabling them to complete their Airborne mission. From Normandy to Tora Bora; for nearly 60 years, Rangers have been leading the way. Omaha Beach was no different as the mighty reflector belts helped identify the elite Rangers from their 29th ID counterparts

Notice that every one of those threads has something in common - every single one of them got locked because they ended up being runaround mud-slinging name-calling threads. Let's keep two things in mind here 1 - We have no details on this situation 2 - We simply will not come to a conclusion on the details of what is cheating and what is 'fair use of gouge' in UPT. Let's not waste more bandwidth trying. If you have something new and original to add to this discussion, then by all means go ahead. If you have speculation and old arguments, then just keep them to yourself.

I'm doing a paper on the Osprey and have found a ton of information so far. Most of it leads me to believe that the plane is actually quite a capable aircraft and has great potential - despite it's checkered past. I'd be interested in the people's opinion on the aircraft. No offense, but please don't post if you have no flying experience and your opinion stems completely from reading Janes, and I don't need responses from people whose knowledge of the airplane consists of "it's crashed a couple times and it's dangerous." Also, if you know of any links that would be good sources, please post those as well. Thanks in advance.

Every AF base I have been to has had a lemon lot.

High prices should be (at least partly) offset by your COLA - Cost of Living Allowance.

Most likely, but not necessarily. I broke my hand about two months ago and immediately after I had the cast put on, I went to the simulator to see how it would affect me flying and flipping switches. I had full mobility with the hand and no problem flipping switches, raisin gear, etc. When I told the flight doc this to see if I could get on flight status, he hemmed and hawed and basically said it would be up to the commander to let me fly. I didn't push the issue any further - I could only imagine if something happened, "Safety Mishap Board revealed..." However, I could see some commanders authorizing it if they were skosh on flying bodies and you were willing to fly. As soon as I had the hard cast removed and replaced with a soft cast, the doc put me back on flight status.

The SF-86 (security form) has a comments section. If you can't find the details of the tickets due to them being removed from your record, just annotate it in the comments ("I had 5 tickets in the XX-XX timeframe which were removed from my record due to XXXX.")

There are two FTU squadrons, each puts through two classes a year and they're spaced out between the separate squadrons so that a class starts every three months. Right now the average (and max) size of each class is 24, but only half of those are pilots. So when you do the math it makes sense - with a UPT class graduating about every month from four different bases, but an FTU classes starting every three months from only one base, there is a bit of funnel effect.

Just get all your personal life in order and enjoy your time off between IFF and the FTU. It's not like UPT where you can sit around for a year on casual status and study the Dash 1. If you have a lot of free time, the desire to study, and access to a government computer, you can access the 4th Training Squadron for the academic workbooks that you'll be studying as well as the inflight guide and local standards. I PM'd you the link - if anybody else is interested, send me a PM and I'll forward it to you. Again - you can ONLY access it from a military computer. It's going to be tough - definitely tougher than UPT. Your fourth ride will be 'crew solo' (with a student WSO) and your sixth ride will be a Form 8 checkride. By the time you leave, you will be qualified in Low Altitude Step Down Training to 500 feet, NVG Qualified, and be qualified in diving, low altitude, and laser guide bomb delivery. In roughly six months, you'll get about 50 sorties, 30 sims, and have over 170 hours of academics. A few married guys live on base. All the single guys live off base - most have roomates. As far as where, there isn't any particular place that's popular to live. There are lots of nice housing communities throughout the town. You're really not going to find anything exciting in town. Raleigh and Duke are an hour to the northwest - lots of culture and nightlife, and obviously college sports. You've also got Greenville and ECU about an hour to the northeast - plenty of college excitement. If you're up for a further drive, Myrtle Beach and Wilmington are a couple hours to the south. For a weekend trip, Virginia is only about three hours away. Attitude. It's a lot like UPT - I've seen guys who were good sticks get kicked around like nobody's business because they thought they were king $hit. I've also seen dudes who were consistently behind the power curve, but they gave 110% to try to get themselves back up to speed. The instructors recognize and respect that, and if you're putting in the extra effort, we will too.

Concur, platform doesn't matter.

Hit the tanker a couple weeks ago and it turns out they had some media types in the tanker taking photos. I managed to track one of the guys down and get a couple photos. At the end, they had us pull up into a 3-ship echelon to get the last shot.

I can't speak for the Viper FTU, but the F-15E FTU is similar in that you don't A/A and A/G. The length of the course isn't vastly different from the C model, but the depth to which we get into the A/A stuff is much less. They do multiple rides in all phases - OBFM, DBFM, HABFM, OACM, DACM, 2vX, 4vX, etc. The only areas which have multiple rides are BFM and 2v2 (which are very benign). They don't have to demonstrate proficiency in ACM. The fact that we are dual-role means we have more to teach our guys, but we don't get nearly into the depth of A/A that the C model guys get into.

Not sure what sort of 'deterioration' you're talking about. The separation of tracks was done specifically to tailor the training for the follow-on track. Guys were coming out of the T-38 with a very ingrained single seat mentality which obviously doesn't work well in multi-crew heavy. If you specifically want only Rainman's thoughts, send him a PM. Seriously, where do you get this mentality? Going for fighters in no way is a 'gamble' for your wings. These days (and at least through the last decade) you are just as likely to wash out of the heavy track as you are in the fighter track. F*** them, good riddance. If some dude had the hands and brains to fly fighters, but didn't have the balls because he didn't want to take the chance - I'd rather not have him flying with me. That being said, plenty of top finishers don't want fast jets. Two of the top five finishers in my T-37 class wanted T-1s and the number six guy took the only helo. Okay, I'm a little confused. He was a T-38 FAIP when there was only one (T-38) track, and he took grade pride in ensuring that guys were qualified to go fighters or heavies? Seeing as both of those options were available then it sounds like he was just....doing his job as an instructor. I have no idea what the point of that statement was. Great attitude. By the way, all Mrs Hog's general disrespect for the moderators of this site has resulted in a unaninimous decision by all of his to ban her from this site - accomplished by Baseops.net himself. Good riddance.

Rich, Glad to see you here. Personally, this is my favorite picture from your collection. They're doing ~480 knots and you can actually see the pilot's eyes.

Here's my most recent bad timing story: 4-ship of F-15Es holding just south of MacDill planning to hit a hard TOT. About 5 seconds inside our inbound turn we were supposed to get a "begin national anthem" call which would help us QC our timing. We hit the IP inbound, close it up to fingertip and descend to 1000'. No call. About 15 seconds later we get the "begin national anthem call"...and we now have less than 90 seconds to somehow lose 15 seconds. Flight lead directs "Hold on" and starts doing S-turns at 1000' over Tampa with a 4-ship in fingertip. He rolled out with the timing showing 15 seconds late relative to the original TOT and we pressed inbound. Shacked the timing, no thanks to the dudes on the ground.

Never fault a sh!tty flyby without talking to the pilots. Having done many flybys, I can tell you that the dudes on the ground working as ground coordination (if they're not pilots) tend to have minimal understanding of our capacity to push it up and pull it back. On average, most IP to TOT distances are 20-ish miles. That means that once I've pushed from my hold, it's going to take me about 3 minutes to get there. We're given a 'soft' TOT which we depart the IP to make. Any sort of TOT change after the push completely screws with the timing. Since the National Anthem is only 60-90 seconds, we have minmal 'push it up' or 'pull it back capacity'. Sometimes, ground dudes will 'allow' the National Anthem to start early or late and inform the pilots with the hope that they can work magic.

Just had this one sent to me. Quite possibly the coolest F-15E picture I've ever seen. Taken in the hills of Wales (UK).

All SNAPs feel free to keep the discussion open, but General Order #1 - as mandated the last time I entered the AOR - was no porn and no booze. Here's an interesting definition -- it starts off with the important stuff and nose dives into the administrivia.

How are you going to have a marriage certificate if you're not getting married until December? Talk to the JAG and see what they say. If they say you're out of luck you can always trying bluffing the apartment manager: Explain the situation to the apartment manager and see if they'll work with you. If they don't seem like they're going to be helpful, kindly let them know that you've talked to the base JAG and you can get them involved to resolve the situation, but that would take time and paperwork that you're really not interested in wasting. If he still says no, then let him know that on your way to the JAG office, you'll be stopping by the base housing office to put the apartment on the list of non-recommended off-base apartments due to their lack of flexibility with the military clause.

Slight addition here. If the tour is accompanied, then the length will be extended to two years. If the service member chooses not officially go accompanied, but brings his family (brings them on his own dime - no medical or other benefits), then the tour remains a year. This can only be done with tours that are allowed as accompanied (I have a WSO bud doing this right now in Korea).

Are you planning on getting out of your lease before you're married? (I'm assuming he's leaving sometime in late October, early November). If that's the case, then my guess would be no. Orders aside, you need to actually be a military dependant for the benefits to apply.

No. I know plenty of O-5s and O-6s who have never done a remote. I also know one O-5 who has been unfortunate enough to have done two. It's all about timing, your airframe, and your duty history. A lot of instructors in the FTU with me become "hot" for a remote if they have never been stationed overseas. Guys who have been stateside their entire career and are approaching/at the rank of major become very susceptible to a remote. An AFPC type is probably the only person who could give you a precise answer. I would estimate that around 50-69% of F-15E crews go remote. We are told to expect a remote at some point in our career. Some guys volunteer for remotes early on (get it done while they're still single or while the kids are young) and others try to stiff-arm it as long as possible. Realize that ALFA tours can be ("A"LO, "F"AC of the ALFA) but are not necessarily ("L"IFT, "A"ETC) remotes.

Contact somebody at the 560 FTS, they should be able to e-mail you a pdf version.