Toro

Black Wings, I can't offer you any information about the Bone, but I'm an F-15E FTU Instructor and can answer any specific questions you have about the Strike Eagle. I don't know how many of each come through Pensacola. You are correct on the course length. Hacker answered the IFF question. Deployments for the most part mirror the AEF cycle. Your instructors should be the primary source of information - surely none would scoff at you if you asked. Knowing little to nothing about the Bone mission, I can't really give you relative pros and cons, but if you have specific questions about the Strike Eagle mission or FTU details, feel free to PM me.

Only a few thousand feet, depending on how much altitude ATC has cleared out for him. He'll stay within visual limits of the rest of the formation, then rejoin as the three-ship is out of view of the audience.

Thread revival. I just read this letter in the AF Times - I thought it summed it up perfectly. It wouldn't surprise me if this Foglesong found this Sgt and demoted him to a one-striper. --------- I was surprised to see that Gen Robert H. “Doc” Foglesong, commander of US Air Forces in Europe, is to be inducted into the Order of the Sword on Aug. 26. Not that being inducted is not a great honor; it was the reason given that amazed me. The reason given [in the Air Force press release] was “Gen. Fogelsong has worked tirelessly supporting the enlisted force under his command. We can take any one of the 15 Combat and Special Interest Programs he’s instituted within this command and see that they embody the development of the enlisted force.” My issue is with referring to various special-interest programs as combat programs. Renaming base cleanup, a detail referred to as “weeds and seeds” as Combat Proud, or base in-processing as Combat Exit are three of the eight or nine such programs. Combat is not something that we in the military should take lightly or use as a buzzword for various programs. Combat, in the end, is about the taking of human life, violently. Our job in the military is to defend our country; we do that by “breaking things and killing people.” Using a word such as combat to describe the latest program of the day is a disservice to and devalues the sacrifices made by more than 1 million Americans who, over the last 230 years, never came home from combat. Until these combat programs die a quiet death, meaning they are renamed to reflect what they really are, I am one noncommissioned officer who cannot support Gen. Fogelsong’s induction into the Order of the Sword. Staff Sgt. Ivan J. Rasmussen RAF Mildenhall, England

For one, most fighters are single seat. There are a couple 'family model' Viper and F-15Cs with two seats for instructors, but not many. Besides it being risky, it's too difficult to arrange on a non-interference basis. Wives who ride along on the tanker do so on a non-interference basis: the aircrew are able to get a full-up training mission accomplished. Flights in fighters would require dedicated sorties, which draws away from training timelines.

No, it's because you have a metric f*ckload of stuff to learn in UPT and if you're going to try to commit something to memory prior to UPT, the IFG is not where you want to waste your brain bites. The IFG deals with local procedures like airspace, departures, recoveries, and local EP standards. This is stuff you're not going to get into until Phase II. Learn the systems of your aircraft first, then worry about the lateral confines of your airspace. The only thing Study the Dash 1 - particularly, Chapters 1 and 3.

Concur with ENJJPT and Hacker. Regards to some specifics - key the mic and talk over the dude if he's blabbing will you're trying to make radio calls. I try to minimize my instruction during task saturating portions of flight like the VFR pattern, but I will tell a guy in the crew coordination brief that if I'm talking to much to tell me to be quiet. Unless the dude is a pr!ck, he shouldn't be offended be you telling him the same. Back to your original question - as a former T-38 IP and a current F-15 IP, I can tell you that as long as you have a concrete reason for wanting to not fly with this guy. It sounds like your problem is something you may be able to present to the IP. Again, if a student had come to me and presented the problem, I wouldn't be offended. We would sit down and review what he had been taught, what was procedure (things he would have to do) and what was technique (things he could choose to do if he wanted). If, as Snake mentioned, it was a personality problem, I would bypass the IP and go to your flight commander. What sucks is that now - and for the rest of your career - you're going to get more 'techniques' than you care for and it's a matter of determing which ones work for you and learning how to nod when an IP tells you that his technique is better...then continue using your own.

By "lock all topics" do you mean lock 3 topics of 154 posted over the last month? That's a whopping two percent - not quite what I would quantify as "all topics". Relating to the Muslim thread, I specifically stated that I locked the thread because it didn't belong here. The same could be said of numerous topics, none of which belong on a military aviation forum. All I asked was that you take your topic across the street to the Socio Political forum. It's more appropriate for that forum. It had nothing to do with making anyone angry - I actually thought the post was somewhat interesting, but it got long (seriously...your post was quite possibly the longest ever) and it was degenerating into a political bickering match - appropriate for the other forum, not here. Actually, as a moderator I kind of am forced to read the topic. Fine. If it's not military aviation, go vent 'across the street.' Regarding the other two threads that have been locked in this forum, there were; Honorable discharge - From the get go, it was a repeated topic that degenerated into bickering and bashing which was recognized by people as they posted. The Falcon 4.0 thread which became CypherX777's personal toilet and grounds from him being banned from the site. This topic serves no further purpose and I will now lock it. Okay, maybe not.

It's been eight years since I did water training, but I thought it was pretty straight forward. Spend a couple days at Pensacola - first few days hanging out in the classroom and the final day was in the water riding behind the boat in the parachute, jumping into a raft and chewing on a power bar while you waited for the boat to come back and pick you up. Other than knowing how to swim, there is no real 'prep' prior to starting the course.

Urban legend is that spouses used to be able to get flights. I've never gotten confirmation of these, but we do routinely (usually once a year) do spouse taxi rides. I've seen this in T-38s and Strike Eagles. We taxi them out to the runway, light the burners, accelerate to about 69 knots, then clear the runway and taxi back to the chocks. It's usually done in conjunction with a spouse appreciation day and if we can work it into the schedule (since we have the 916th ARW right here) we try to get them rides on the tanker to watch us refuel.

Yeah, but I think I must be one of the few who didn't mind PIT. My instructors there were very cool, very big picture. They actually liked that I was a FAIP because they could proficiency advance me through about 1/4 of my rides. Pretty much a six week paid vacation to San Antonio. All I was getting at is that most of those terms are fairly common place in the fighter community - if they bug you now, they're really going to be annoying you 6-9 years from now.

You will not swim during UPT. Once you are done, you will do water survival training. Once you are operational, you may have to do water survival training as a recurring item. Since we fly over the water at Seymour Johnson, we have to do a refresher course every year.

I think you'll be largely offended by the fighter community. Better steer clear.

Are you kidding me? We don't let that beast into our car. It's bad enough that he $hits all over the main briefing room. Red dawg.

JAWS and CWDS are key to our planning for the Strike Eagle. Hacker got at the main points, the only thing I'll piggyback on is that we figure out what our target is, how to kill it (JAWS/CWDS) and work everything back from there (Weaponeering 101). I've had students come up with a stellar attack plan and have all kinds of pretty lines drawn on a 1:50 map only to realize that for all their planning, the weapon isn't going to do d!ck because they hit it at the wrong angle / low airspeed / wrong munition.

The litho is a great idea - most classes usually have something done collectively. If not, the frame shop will surely have many templates to choose from. I had one done for my UPT class and my FTU class. The UPT class had our class patch, and both flight patches along the side, class photo and 'hero shot' in the middle, and both trainers flown along the right side along with my wings and a plaque with my name and class dates. You can PM me as well if you'd like to see a pic.

Do not study the IFG prior to UPT.

It happens because some O-6 wants to become an O-7. Gotta leave their mark somehow.

Second the Belleville - we had a guy who couldn't fit into anything supply had (I think he had like size 14 feet) so he had to order his online through Belleville.

I would recommend calling the nearest AF base with deployable flyers (when in doubt, Seymour will do) and talk to their supply guys. If they don't have the names and NSN's, they can surely steer you in the right direction. If you have trouble doing that, PM me and I can try to hunt them down.

Ahhh...the f***ing 'Died reflector belts. We'd wear them below the survival vest so it wasn't visible and just wait for some safety geek to call us on. "What? We're wearing the belt" (lifts survival vest) "See?" The sad thing was that apparently the war had become so second priority to us at that point that the WG/CC drove around base threatening to pick up anybody spotted without their safety belts at night. Great story, Hollywood.

My B course bought an ambulance and painted the thing up like the A-Team van. Since our squadron was the Lancers, it become the Ambulancer. Here's our class photo with the vehicle. It was totally souped up - PA system that could blare not only the horn, but whatever music we popped in the deck (somebody downloaded the A-Team theme song...that was always good). We rigged up an alternator to power a TV, VCR, and Playstation in the back (I recall Animal watching porn in the O'Club parking lot when the WG/CC walked out one Friday night). Also, there was a hatch near the back that was conveniently about the size of a cooler. It was not without incident, however - here's my crewed WSO after drinking a couple bottles of wine and several shots of Scotch (that's wine-laden vomit on the floor as everybody tries to escape the frag pattern). If you look past Jimmy the Wino you can see the entertainment center. The other F-15E FTU (334th FS "Eagles") has a car as well. We got into a little rivalry with them and some thievery occurred. They finally called a knock it off when we stole their car, drove it down to EOR, removed all the wheels, and left it with this sign. The first person to see it was the Eagles squadron commander when he led a four ship to EOR the next morning.

Interesting, didn't realize that. That seems to contradict the definition of Type 2 (from JP 3-09.3. The way I read it, and the way we've always been briefed is that the JTAC has to either be able to see me or the target. So you're saying that his method of 'seeing the target' is through some sort of relay? We did a good deal of Type 3 (which I guess may have been Type 2) with guys who were obviously going off some sort of chart for our talk on. One of the scariest experiences was when a two ship from our squadron was being told they were cleared to drop on what appeared to be a couple of no-threat huts in the middle of nowhere. The radios were totally trashed - pilot talking to CAOC on the main, WSO talking to JTAC in the aux - and neither sources were apparently talking to each other because the aircrew were getting conflicting clearances. In the end, they seem to have everything sorted when two A-10s flew through their targeting pod field of view at low altitude - turns out the A-10s were talking to a totally different JTAC for the same target. KIO KIO KIO - what a clusterf*ck.

Are you kidding me? Go back and read the first post again - my exact statement was If this thread has made just one wife 'see the light', then it's worth it.

They're qualed to teach everything. Not sure what you mean by 'schoolhouse' but PIT is for UPT. The IFF guys have an internal upgrade program.

Went to MacDill a couple weeks back for an RON. Seven of us went looking for a Hooters for lunch which was supposedly somewhere on Dale Mabry Blvd, but couldn't find it. What we did find was a decent BBQ place so we stopped in (all still in flight suits). We sat down and when the waitress walked up she told us that a gentleman who was leaving as we were entering had put $50 towards our tab to thank us for the jobs we do. When we ordered, they forgot to throw one guys burger on the grill - they got it cooked up a little later than ours, apologized profusely, and told him it would be free. By the time the check came, the place actually owed each of us 12 cents. The waitress got a $35 tip for that lunch. Also went to Mons for the first time - wasn't a planned trip: we were coming home from dinner, saw the neon sign and all decided "What the heck." I haven't been to a whole lot of gentlemen's establishments in my life, but I must say that they've got some spectacular employees in there. Highlight of the night was one of our female aviators getting a lap dance - and loving every second of it.