hindsight2020

Agreed on all counts. And indeed, they have the cabin volumetrics overweight Americans want, and for some, outright need. But at those prices they are still hen's teeth in the retail market. This downturn will further protract their prevalence in the market outright. If the rank and file GA recreational market had to wait until they could spend housing money on a 2 seater (nevermind those of us who could, but don't do as a matter of principle), there'd be no recreational piston market, even for the standards of our current moribund one. The need to build in itself continues to be a hindrance to the market of course. Otherwise you and I would already own one each. Thankfully, there's old RV-6s and 7s on resale.

Perpetual war is not the bug, it's the feature. The mission is pork barrel baby, we're just the patsies. There's a few people in life I'd take a bullet for, none of them currently populate our 3 branches of federal government.

Form landings are pretty much done at this point, so moot discussion. The latest RUMINT on the shit that's rolling down the hill on the UPT 2.5 fighter track side of things is a doozy. UPT 2.5 might end up killing more people than wing landings. I'm sure Gen Webb means well and his reputation precedes him, but I think he's not got one clue wtf is about to unfold under his tent. Captain hi-top left this place in disarray.

LOL #oof

Because that's NOT the reason the program exists. Read the UFT handbook excerpt I quoted, it spells it out right there. I'll spare the history of why this became the case, but the purpose of the TDART program is to facilitate the qualification of a future career civil servant, and served as an olive branch for folks to stick around in light of high airline hiring (regionals, in the case of the co-pilot/basic wingman types). It's not and never was intended to be a conduit to help you keep your seniority number and retirement credits at a civilian employer you intended to return to. That's what MPA/RPA/IMA/AGR/CDE order statuses are for. You're not the first nor the last person to posit/request/kvetch/lobby for the allowance to make ART jobs treated as title 10 or 32 status (it's title 5 btw, if you're wondering). I'm not trying to patronize you, and don't shoot the messenger, but it's a pipedream you're latching on to with this ART USERRA business. By all means, contact your congressman, and the USERRA support govt agency (the ESGR) if it makes you feel better. I'm just trying to get you to focus your energy more strategically, before you go say the wrong thing back at the unit and effectively get yourself on the entitled-shitbag list when it comes to full time opportunities in the future. BL, Don't look at a gift horse in the mouth. You got real enviable options considering this Corona economic environment.

Let's pump the brakes. I'd be careful about the nomenclature here. MQT (now MT) is part of school tour funding. I know because I used to be the training guy on the officer side, when filling out the AF 101s for my last CAF unit. That's paid by daddy AFRC. You're not being shorted that. TDART is a different thing. It's a full time ART pipeline grooming program, not a substitution of mission funding for pilots, like it's being portrayed here. As most old guys here know, OPM requires flight time triggers for full time ART positions and seats. In the past, baby ART jobs were requested in order to kill two birds with one stone, since what the unit really wants is meat in the ADCON seat, not airline pilot aspirant fodder. AFRC simply streamlined that constant ask from the units, via TDART. That's it, no conspiracy here. And yes, of course it's a cheaper avenue than paying people title 10 (see my remarks on the AGR-ART flexibility thread), are you new? (don't answer that, I know you are 😉 ) At any rate, straight out of the UFT Guidebook: So everybody pump the brakes on the "they're forcing me to quit my job!" nonsense. You're still getting 140 days of RPA to get local mish qualified after FTU, just like everybody before you. After that, you're no different than any other TR: That's what you signed up to do, be a TR. Now for some tough love: The fact you built decade long seniority and retirement credits in a civilian career before going to UPT is not germane to this. Most people your age would not have had the luxury of acting on a military flying epiphany in their late 30s in the first place, so count your blessings. Like you said, most young guys (the majority in the UFT-board level of things), have no option in this shitbox economy. And in the shitbox economy I got smoked out of grad school 15 years ago with no kidding $1500 to my name, TDART would have been a godsend. Like I told a couple of the TDART applicants who have PM me recently, and I quote myself: I would have scalped them with my bare hands for a TDART guarantee in 2006. So let's redirect fire here. You can trough.... but you rather be an AGR. I hear ya brother, I want a threesome with my wife and Alexis Texas. Wish in one hand and shit on the other. That may not in the cards here, because your unit is ART-centric. But you knew that from day one. You can still trough, just not to the degree you would prior to Corona, since all your senior guys are coming back to roost and you're the low man on the pole. Re-read the 3 rules of military life. BTDT got the Lost Decade T-shirt. If the unit is shorting you the 140 RPA days post FTU, take that UFT guidebook to your DO right now, and escalate from there. That's the only legal foul they would be committing. But I'm 69% sure that's not what's going on here. As to the macro topic of ARTs not being USERRA exempt, just like my threesome ask, that has been a known quantity for decades. This isn't new. Matter of fact, it's stated up front. They're not telling your unit TRs to become ARTs if they want to trough or pull more trips at the unit. They're still using the same mish mash of MPA and RPA allocations they always have. What you're asking (making ART USERRA exempt) is a non-starter. It's federal law brother. By the time they get around to changing that, you'll be of Social Security Age. Pick another hill to die on. The reality is that you are at a fork in the road, career wise. You gotta figure out what you want to be in life. We've already conversed on PM as to what I think you should do based on your current potential avenues (and we counted three distinct paths from this discussion alone). If you want to put your gaining unit on blast for what you think is subversion of the law, that's your prerogative, I have no dog in that fight. I just want to make sure people understand what TDART is and isn't. Good luck to all.

This describes most of the implementation changes. It's not particularly significant, other than some changes within the management of term vs non-term positions. Why do you ask? Are you looking for an AGR? Vacancies are listed in MyPers.

In short, NO. It's not easy, nor probable, and Wings have little input. **TLDR warning** There's a fundamental cost savings to the bean counters at ARPC, associated with doing this job as a civil servant vice AGR. Which is why the lion's share of the full time support in Active-Duty-Lite is ART. Within the last 3 years they had to address some of the shortcomings in pay and retirement of the civil service system (FERS won't even give them the 6c multiplier that LEO and ATC in the civilian Fed are accustomed to, forget the yearly vesting fees post 2014 compared to pre-2014, let alone CSRS), which is why the recent updates to the SSR tables and ART bonus imo fall short of the cake vice the AGR side. Specifically, the retirement is shit compared to AGR/AD. It's not the money, it's the time value of money. See my prior comment about straight civil servant 6c multipliers. Military critters are a sacred cow class in this country good bad or indifferent. If you can get federal cops and ATCers those kind of multipliers and vesting years to disbursement, you can do it for ARTs. So the answer is self-evident: They just don't want to. Which does nothing but antagonize the talent. I digress. Advantage AGR. BL, if you're chasing an AGR, you're gonna have to low crawl like many of us lifer Reservists have had to, because they're actively fighting to nodge you off that pot. That means moving if need be. I had to endure 7 years in a place I almost lost my ability to form and raise a family, if not my outright sensibilities over, in order to attain a lateral into a duty station I could actually stomach doing the rest of the time to an AD retirement and raising my family without absentee parenting oportunity costs that were non starters for me. It wasn't pretty, but I don't regret it because I know exactly what I'm after: the position of Fuck You, and AGR is the road to that in my life. All that said, ART is not a bad way of going about raising a family and homesteading; I saw dozens do just that as townies in my first CAF unit. I do admit it beats the civilian economy post corona. It's not perfect, as long as you can medically make it to your late 50s that's is. That was my main objection in staking my retirement to this medical dependent AFSC, let alone a part-B military job where the failure to maintain part B makes you ineligible for the Part A aka civil service part...something straight non-ART civil service critters don't have worry about. At any rate, that's the history of ART in the AFRC, and personal editorial on why they'll notch the proliferation of AGRs for officers like its their religion. Good luck man!

what would the phase-III formation MIF item roster look like if y'all were king? -What items would you take out (form land is already out btw)? -What would you keep? -What you you introduce that isn't currently included?

Indeed. I've made a fairly recession-proof and homesteading-friendly living as a professional shield/deflector for TRs of that bullshit as you call it. 14 years and counting. No ragrets. Based on my experience, troughers (AFRC equivalent to bums) were not immune to being bullshit handlers. Ask me how I know. Most of the time I took mandays as a trougher back in my Bush 43 Economy drought days, those days came with a lot of bullshit strings. Maybe the Guard will let ya 'fly, fvck off at the bar and go home' while on orders, but in AD-Lite I was expected to be a bullshit-handler of some sort while on a Res Code 1. At the time no sweat, beggars can't be choosers and all that. I suppose this could be MWS dependent, though I suspect it could be just another of the opportunity costs of ANG vs AD-Lite.

We all agree in principle that there'd be a credibility problem with the direct-to-PIT business. Fortunately it is the exception, at least in 38s. Lots of 2+2s abound, which is better than nothing I suppose. Also recognize there are many on here for whom the program hasn't, and never will have, any redeeming qualities whatsoever. But that's a sunk cost of working within a demographic of self-important type-As; that's just a Tuesday in pilot land. Between the time you went through the 560th halls and today, the place has been the recipient of every possible 19th concocted good idea fairy shitshow imaginable, and will be the initial cadre for UPT2.5. Manning demographics in the middle of these constant whipsaws sometimes gets lost in translation. We're all innocent in Shawshank; everybody is trying to make brick, even when the Pharaoh won't send any straw. Just some context. Now back to our regularly programmed sport-kvetching. 😄

I'm not one to look at a gift horse in the mouth. AFRC has worked out very well for my family all things considered, and that's all I care about. To each their own.

Too many 19th lurkers on here to comment more specifically, but there's a few folks in that place that think rather highly of themselves wrt that question. UPT 2.5 rollout is gonna be interesting if the personalities associated with that effort are any indication. And I'm out!

Oh, that helps a lot. It's not a distinction without difference at all. Understand many of the instances where the board meeting would be of interest to the hiring officials is when it involves an incident where the was loss of life and some criminal or administrative culpability would have been pursued. Rare but it happens. In your case (and my ex-coworker's case), nothing is in the record, beyond the Q3s associated with the training failures, if they got to the evaluation stage of the program (which it did for my ex coworker). Getting removed from a formal course with neither failed spot evals nor an FEB, is about as close to walking away scott free as you can get considering the circumstances.

Oh indeed. I'd never take those capex investments as insurance against divestiture. We've done much worse on that front btw (C-27 et al). As far as Uncle Sammy is concerned, he's playing w/ OPMs (other people's money). Remember, Congressional pork and the associated grift is not the bug, but the feature.

It will, but not in any way specific to IFF. The airline hiring environment will be much more competitive post-Corona, especially if there are mainline furloughs in the street. In that regard having a training failure in the record is accentuated compared to the same in an environment of more lax hiring. Meeting an FEB as a result of failing a formal training course after winging does carry a higher penalty than just merely having checkride failures in your FEF. We had a guy in that situation and we were able to get him a re-assignment in lieu-of-FEB and he kept his wings. He was shortly hired by an LCC. So it really depends on the hiring environment, and much less on the nature of the failure.

-UPT 2.5 fighter track implementation potentially dilutes the old phase-III to effectively that of a shortened "warm up/fam" transition course, without solos nor the accompanying comprehensive T-38 EP pattern flying repetitions. Then off to legacy IFF. This iteration of "blended phase III" is also much shorter than legacy phase III. - UPT 2.5 does not have any changes to IFF as of the last time this topic came up (pre-Corona). The initial "blend" ask between phase III and IFF made it clear they're not wanting to play together.

My understanding was the UPT2.5 fighter track (of a total of 4 tracks) is predicated on people winging on T-6s after 7 months; no solos on -38, which means no EP flying training on the Equalizer. Ruh Roh.. Which would equate to a bastardized "transition course" on steroids modeled after what we currently give the non-fighter TPS candidates, and the make-a-wish heavy-2-fighter non-IFF background hen's teeth candidates of yesteryear. Oh and IFF ain't blending with old phase IIIers nor changing a damn thing about how they run their stand-alone. Okie dokie. But no worries, according to the big brains one here, UPT s a bunch of make-work grifters anyways and the "FTUs got this". In Sha Allah is all I'll say to that. Train, evaluate,document, punt. Call me Pontius.... 😄

There's the CBP *spits*. They fly the things for GS-11-12-13.

I'm currently waiting to begin my first facilitated on 7.0. Same limfacs as 6.0, gotta wait for the faciliated courses, one a month. Plus the whole d!ckdance that is CANVAS (they moved away from blackboard) having to wait for AUSIS to reflect grades before the windows 3.1 coded UI allows you to enroll on the next modules. 7.0 has more modules in total too, to include one more faciliated, so logistically cannot be done as fast as 6.0 by default. Have a snickers, cuz you're gonna be at this a while. As to content, Jesus, this sh%t is actually making me dumber, but I had a brick and mortar STEM masters before I decided to leroy jenkins my life and become a stick monkey for the USAF in lieu of respectable pedestrian high paid occupation. So that colors my perception of PME. They don't call me uncle hindsight for nothing....🤣 /sarc

FTFY. Not a distinction without difference to this 3-time sucker of the certified captive audience game. 😄 I liken my relationship with certified rules as Michael and the office fax machine in Office space...

Yeah, we're dealing with the same assclownery in Central TX.

Def a regional dependent thing wrt ownership, airpark living, and the feasibility of clubs vis a vis sole ownership. I own because I've never lived in a place where rentals or clubs were a viable option, or even existed in the first place. So the decision matrix was a Hobson's Choice. My life has been too nomadic to make partnerships a palatable option. At this point I'm too set in my ways to want to dabble in the opportunity cost that comes with cost sharing. Access is worth the premium to me, under-utilization be damnned. Some urban locations tend to have the density to support flying clubs, and sometimes it's the only way to attain covered storage in these areas too, since the waiting lists and hangar costs in desirable metropolitan locations are stiflingly scarce. To be clear, not all metros have the same availability of general aviation. There are socioeconomic and demographic reasons for this variability in outcome within metros of otherwise the same population size, good bad or indifferent. So again, it's all gonna be regionally dependent of an answer.