Beaver

And by the way, 10 years in the "service" is 10 years longer than 95% of America spends serving thier country, so don't let any of these true patriots make you feel like a commie because you don't want to be in the AF for 69 years and work for free.

Here's my thoughts: Nobody ever got out of the AF because he didn't like flying F-16's (insert your plane here.) They get out because of all the bullshit that often goes along with it. I guess it is our penance for that one awesome part of our job, but the amount of hours I put in at work a week vs. the 1-2 hours I spend flying starts to sap my will to live. After 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, even the coolest job starts to drag you down. I am very proud of being in the "service," but when my time in the service is up, I will be gone. I can't picture myself doing the same shit I'm doing now in 15 years. And my neck hurts. Vipers rule!

Yes, we have an emergency power unit that runs on hydrazine. Our glide ratio is about 7 miles for 5000'. We practice flame out approaches all the time. If we are close enough to glide to an airfield, we can land.

Hey Huey, want your goat back?

I guess I just have a single seat mentality. I can figure out what to do with my airplane without a guy next to me, behind me, or sitting behind a radar scope telling me where to go.

You don't call and ask for a vector because that is weak. "Ummm...Center, I forgot the basic airmanship I learned in Tweets. Can you help me?"

Here in Japan I drive a $400 Honda Civic. No pilot in my squadron has a car that cost more than $5000, with most being in the 2000-3000 range. Lots of 4x4 mini vans and SUVs because it snows a lot. Some of our enlisted guys have Fast and Furious Skylines and Rx-7s, but that's a lot of money to spend on something you can't take home.

You can't bring cars to Japan because the Japanese won't let you. If you want to ship a car over that was manufactured prior to 1977, you can, with wing commander approval. Good luck. You can't take Japanese cars back to the states unless you have them modified to meet US emissions and crash standards, which isn't cheap.

Here's what I heard about the ZZ tailcode at Kadena, and this is just a sketchy memory of a wives tale, so take it with a grain of salt. Back in WWII, the island in the Pacific that the 18th wing was on was attacked by the Japanese. Rather than stay and fight, the fighters in the wing at the time took off and flew away, not defending the base. So afterwards, some general said from then on, they would have a ZZ tailcode indicating that they are the last wing in the Air Force, and their unit mascot would be a chicken. So now, the 18th wing patch is of a chicken with his arms raised. And one of the 2 Eagle squadrons, the 67th "Fighting Cocks," also has a chicken for a mascot. Side note: the WW at Misawa stands for "Wild Weasel." It used to be on the F-4G's from George AFB in California. When George closed, they decided that the 35 TFW had more history than the 432 TFW at Misawa, so they switched wing designations and tail codes.

If you are the heat in your UPT class and get a mighty Viper, there is a chance that you can't take your car to your first F-16 assignment, i.e. Kunsan, Osan, or Misawa. Your choices are park it or sell it, so if F-16's might be in your future I offer you this point to ponder.

Last year my viper squadron dropped CBU-130's, JDAM, shot HARMS, Mavericks, and strafed. But that was in a war.

A No-Rad intercept at night from 100 miles. Yeah right.

Yep, use the 2 rank rule and you can't go wrong. On a related topic, in fighter squadrons lieutenants don't salute captains (OR EACH OTHER!!). However, when I was a Lt, I'd salute captains in BDUs just to avoid the hassle if he had a stick up his ass.

If you get selected for UPT without it, then don't waste your money. It will give an advantage for about a week. And don't every post "get a leg up" on this board again.

Not hard to believe that Antonius started it off on the wrong foot. Aw Hell!

It's definitely a function of runway distance. With 8000lb of gas you'd be doing almost 200 knots on final. That makes it really tough to land the jet because it still flies really well going that fast and you'll float forever. Or, you'll force it onto the runway, bounce, then still float forever. If I had to get the jet on the ground, though, I'd land with 8000 lb. The landing distance isn't really that long (3600ft) but if I pooched it I'd use the hook.

All those other names don't mean shit until you get to your first operational fighter assignment. You'd better not refer to yourself as anything but "FNG" until you are Mission Ready and get your Tactical Fighter Pilot Callsign. Better yet, don't refer to yourself at all. If you come to our squadron calling yourself anything but "FNG" until you are officially named by the squadron, then you will be named "Handjob" for trying to give yourself one. That goes for Colonels and Lt Colonels, too. Our squadron has a proud heritage of naming field graders "Handjob." When you get a callsign in a fighter squadron, that becomes your name. No one will even remember your first name, if they ever knew it to begin with. Only your wife and your mom will call you by your real name.

Here in sunny northern Japan, we wear the poopie suit anytime the water temp North of the N 41 00 line is below 60 degrees. That means early November through late April.

We have a female with pretty long (and wild) hair. She just lets it hang out the back of the helmet.

Don't make the mistake of comparing flying formation in a tweet to flying fighters. I hated flying formation in tweets, and I wasn't all that thrilled about it in T-38's. And by the way, T-38 faips know as much about flying fighters as a tweet student. They know a lot about flying T-38's, though.

What is your perception of the fighter lifestyle versus the heavy lifestyle? I.e. time spent TDY, length of the workday, attitude of guys in the squadron, etc. I ask because I know there are a lack of fighter guys in tweets and texans, and maybe there are some misconceptions about fighters out there.

I have 480 hours in 1.5 years operational. That's a little higher than normal for young guys in my squadron because I was in the desert for 5 months flying 6-9 hour sorties. A guy I graduated the b-course with who went to Kunsan only has 280 hours. He's on the low end of the scale. I think the average is around 250-300 hours a year.

My squadron (F-16CJ) just quit doing 2FLUG. They cut out 3 2-ship rides and combined 2 and 4 flugs. Overall its a 12 ride program. For us, it is common for a 4v4 dedicated for 1 guy's upgrade. We fly very little CT. Somebody's always in an upgrade.

We don't take the fight vertically as much as the Hornet guys do, because we don't really want to get slow. It's generally not my gameplan going into a fight. But if you get into a stack there isn't much else you can do. Single bag jets are good for BFM, but 2 baggers get to be piggish when we add the HTS and the ECM pods and bomb suspension equipment. To answer the albino question: I don't know. I've never flown BFM against the light grays.

The closest thing we can do to overide the computer is the Manual Pitch Overide switch. In the event of an out of control situation, you can press the MPO switch which kicks the tail down about another foot. This is to get the nose pointed straight downhill so you can start picking up flying airspeed. The only time I could even think of using that tactically would be a negative G guns jink, which is a training rule violation.