Champ Kind

To me, that's the end-all for this discussion, as far as Herks go. Well put!

Nope. "2".

Here at OKAS, shirts must be tucked in, and no morale patches on uniforms. Thankfully, they are not making us salute in PT gear. Funny story, in reference to the tucking in, we got an email from wing leadership saying that the wearing of the PT gear was "out of control", in reference to some phenomenon called the "fake front-tuck", where apparantly you do tuck your shirt in, as per the regs, put then pull it out (as they say) to give it a little to give it a more "un-tucked" appearance. Yes, this was the actual subject of an email, and surprisingly, it was NOT from a shoe-clerk Chief or anything... Man, people have way too much time on their hands.

Yep, there was a bar in Columbus, MS that featured a coin-operated breathalyzer, and that's exactly what we used it for. It was always fun seeing who could make the thing peg-out first.

I fly with the Oakley Fives 2.0 Started wearing these at UPT. They're relatively inexpensive ($40ish at the BX, I think even cheaper if you get them through Oakley gov't sales). They lasted me two years, and they would have lasted even longer if I'd taken better care of the lenses. I just bought my second pair a few weeks ago. They're lightweight, damn near indestructible, and fit well between your noggin and headset.

Fear not, pawnman. I'm sure there's some BS reg that they can hide behind, so long as it suits their interests of not providing timely and efficient customer service.

UFB. Absolutely clueless. And as far as the real problem.... The real problem is the absolute asshattery one has to experience just to get anything done at finance.... CORRECTLY. I share the same experiences as most of the people posting. It's like a trade off. Either I go to their office during the hours I'm free, and they are closed, or, I carve time out of my day to go during the two hours in the afternoon that they are open, or right when they open up in the morning, and they still screw up what I submit. The ONLY way I have had things go over with no problems in finance is when I looked up the regs myself, or just wrote the total of my entitlements on a scrap piece of paper and brought them in along with a copy of my LES and showed them what was screwed up. Even then, I've been told, "Well, WE don't actually do that... It's just how "the system" works. But you know what, that doesn't infuriate me nearly as much as your "waiting for 2 hours for billeting" comment. Again, no clue. And you even spent a good hunk of time in the military! I can't even imagine what Amn Snuffy thinks.....

+1 for the narrative, Scooter. I felt like I was there!

2

Thread revival from a thread that had last been replied to 10 minutes earlier?? WTF? .....I keed.

This might belong in the Dumbness at the Deid thread, but since that's not where I'm at, I'll post it here. Speaking of uniform buffoonery..... So here I am, at my undisclosed location's finance shop, max-performing my pay for all entitlements bestowed upon me for my deployment, when this SMSgt walks in, "Goooood morning finance people," to which most people in there just groaned in response. He walks around with this little USO bag with tiny, folded-up flags inside, distributing them out to all of the clerks. As he is doing so, he starts chanting, and I quote, "Now, make sure you all get rid of those "sloppy floppies so that you can all sport these inside of your eight-points!" I looked at him in pure dismay. "Sloppy floppies? Are you serious?" He uttered something about "looking professional" (I honestly wasn't really listening, as his credibility stock with me had plumutted by that point) and he just walked out, like the assistant-manager of a Sears that he wants to be one day. I turned to the clerks inside as I left, smiled, and said, "Well, don't forget your 15 pieces of flare today. Thanks for the help, have a good day!" Laughing ensued, so that made me happy that at least most of them had a sense of humor. "Sloppy floppy." Wow. My wife teaches kindergarten, and I think she speaks to her kids on a higher level than that. Speaking of the hat issue, why is it that everyone on the "hill" of my base (ie, the non-ops, shoe-clerk part) is making this huge push for everyone to wear that 8-point cover. Do we really care about looking professional in a combat zone? Is that why they have a thriving dry-cleaning shop on base and I see shoe-clerks walking around picking up their freshly-starched DCUs in a supposed combat zone? Was this SMSgt THAT bored and useless in this operation that he has time to go around and make pushes for people to ditch the "sloppy floppies"? Is there some kind of AFSO 21 form I can fill out to have specific people removed from the Air Force, therefore saving us that much more money? Really made me want to puke.

It has a poll. I think when someone makes an entry to the poll the software bumps it back up to the top.

There you go. The tradition is Robin Olds-approved.

Cingular = AT&T https://www.cingular.com

Baseops, I finished up the Initial qual at Little Rock in Feb of this year. My class was the first class to go to the "new MPD program." We were starting Tac academics and one of the Lockheed instructors literally poked his head in the door and said that all new CPs were going to be tac qualified in the right seat only -- guidance would follow later. Upon leaving Little Rock, they still did not really have any official guidance yet, but the answers to your questions are below. Specifically, as far as future plans go, they don't know if the "new MPD guys" will be returning to Little Rock for AC upgrade, or if we'll do it in-house like the other MPD guys before us. Rumor is even if we do go back to Little Rock, they don't want to call it "AC School/upgrade" because that would infer that the MPD program was a failure. At home station, we fly right seat tac routes, and get to fly some left seat pro/SAAMs here and there, with an instructor in the right seat. As new co-pilots, we left Little Rock as left seat pro qualified, right seat mission qual, NVG airland, and NVG airdrop. We are NOT assault landing qualed, only qual for that is pilot monitoring duties. Once we got to our first station, we could be come NVG Assault qualified, which, again, is just pilot monitoring duties. Hope this helps: -A pro checkride is accomplished in the simulator? (for CP and AC?) Yes. An instrument pro checkride is accomplished in the sim for CP and AC. The "landing check" still occurs down on the flightline before the Tac academics/sim phase. -There is a new MPD syllabus? Yes. --For initial pipeline guys, what is their new syllabus - what is done in the right seat, left seat, etc. Short answer: left seat pro, right seat tac. --How many checkrides, in what seat, plane or sim? 3 checkrides: -Instrument pro checkride (standard ILS, holding, TACAN, 3-eng approach, go around) in the SIM -Pro checkride ("landing check") from the left seat (100, 50, no flap, 3-eng) -Tac checkride from the right seat. One vis route as lead, one SKE route as wing. I don't remember flying at all on my vis route, just backing up the nav and talking on the radios. I flew one leg on the SKE, including a turn. That's it. There are also two EPEs: One systems-oriented EPE in the non-motion sim a few sims before your Instrument check in the sim, and then a tabletop EPE in the tac phase down on the flightline a few flights before your Tac check. Both were with instructors from one of the flying squadrons. -Are there any other new syllabi? What to guys do cross-flowing from other airframes? What about copilots upgrading to AC? We had one guy in my class who was a C-21 guy transitioning to Herks. He was with us for academics and then sims and pro, but in the Tac phase, he was flying left seat. -Any new billeting rules / requirements? You need a non-A letter to live off base and get full per diem. You can refuse goverment quarters and still get partial per diem while living off base. Single guys WERE still getting Corpus BAH during their TDY at Little Rock. -Any new finance / tdy pay issues at Little Rock? I did the monthly accrual vouchers and if I had to go back, I'd say save it for the end. Figuring out how much you got paid out and how much the goverment still owed you when you got to your duty station ended up being a MESS, even though I kept pretty good records. They (Yokota finance) said I actually got overpaid and owed the government money.... Despite my own records, they still took the money out of my account. Both finance offices blamed each other, only further strengthening my opinion that all finance offices equally suck at life.

Sounds like this could lead to a whole different thread entitled "Why airplanes are better than women."

Maybe the funding well finally dried up after paying every stud going through there roughly 12 grand a piece in per diem.

I started to type a long-winded reply about how bad Sprint sucked at life when I tried to cancel my service during my PCS move to Yokota, but I started getting too pissed so I just deleted it all. Moral of the story: Make ABSOLUTELY SURE that your account is cancelled. After receiving TWO more monthly bills after my account had supposedly been cancelled (after 4 separate phone calls), I finally had to say it in this way to the "customer service" rep that was fortunate enough to get me on the phone for my fifth attempt. "NO. I do not want to keep my account on "hold", or keep one of the lines open. I want it closed. Cancelled. Just like I did eight weeks ago when one of your associates told me that it was closed. If my account had a plug, I would want it pulled. If it was dying, I would want the ventilator to be removed with no CPR administered. Do you understand? Can I be any more clear about this?" As far as assuring that your account is actually closed.... I don't know what to tell you. Maybe a signed-in-blood, notarized letter from the provider saying in no uncertain terms that your account is closed with a zero balance. Because a customer service rep saying/typing that your account is closed apparantly does not mean that it is so. Take that for what it's worth. Edit: FWIW, the aforementioned provider was Sprint. I switched from Verizon in 04 and had absolutely no problems, though.

Did my T-44 solo XC from Corpus to Pensacola. We really just wanted to go to Corpus Int'l and taxi around for four hours and then get some slushies at the FBO, but oh well. Came back and shot the ILS down to 50' above mins. Fun stuff. "Dude, do you see the rwy yet?" "Nope" "....see it yet?" "Nope.... Wait, I see it! I see it!" "Props full fwd, three down and loc.... SCREECH" Fun stuff. The training itself (one to a full stop) may seem lame, but there's something to be said in training for letting two studs take a plane out away from home station (without getting violated or dying).

God willing.

That's what I thought. Something about "geosynchronous" or whatever making them only able to cover a certain part of the globe.

Anyone ever used XM or Sirius overseas?

That's all you need..... to be flying a cadet around in a 172, fielding questions about how the attitude indicator works while simultalenously going defensive against Junior Junior shooting at you because you flew over his meth lab.

You can only begin logging time in military aircraft (other than solo time) after you complete UPT, correct?