brabus

Any info on a fund for Alec?

2. Never thought it'd happen this soon. brother.

Done. Them Them

M2 is spot on. Shotguns provide the best home defense. Think about if someone breaks into your house at 3am, you wake up, but still all groggy, blurry eyed, etc. Do you want to use a pistol that requires a good aim, and in a dark house, or would you rather grab a shotgun that literally just has to be aimed in the direction of the guy? You have a much higher chance of missing the guy w/ a pistol in this situation than you do w/ a shotgun. Plus, the shotgun will most likely have a larger scare factor, making the guy give up and get the hell out of there. Secondly, lets say the guy rushes down your hallway at you in your bedroom. It's dark, you see his outlines and you start shooting your pistol...ok a round hits him in the arm and the rest miss (very likely in this situation). You've basically done nothing except piss him off. Now you fire a shotgun down the hallway, I guarantee that guys going to be a bloody pile on your floor.

Good advice from T-Bone and sky king. My big caution is don't go reading the Dash 1, checklist or IFG. Ops limits/Boldface, "T-6 Need to Know Numbers" and the 11-248 are the limit to what you should do prior to UPT. As sky king said, just read the first couple chapters of the 248, the rest of the stuff will be a waste of time at this point. People who try to read the Dash 1, IFG, etc. are wasting their time...time that could be spent memorize "by the numbers" or getting the first few chapters of the 248 down cold.

Fuck that, 69% for all my bitches!

Good advice, I'll make sure to pick that stuff up on my way out to Luke. I assume wearing a grill and taxing w/ my mask hanging is also a plus?

Maybe I'm retarded, but that never really worked for me. I always hold the button down, but damn it'll feel good to be a Gangsta w/ my arms on the Viper's canopy rails! (I guess I owe Fury royalties or something for that line)

I would guess that we spent around $300 per person for all of UPT. Classes do spend far more than that, but that's b/c they decide to blow shit tons of money on crap that's unnecessary. Buy a realistic number of patches...everyone in class could order one patch or 50 patches, it didn't matter, then we ordered an additional 50 for IPs, guest speakers, random base offices, etc. That all worked out just fine. We also didn't blow tons of money on shirts, coins, mugs, etc. That costs also included several parties, lots of random booze over the year, etc....the stuff that really matters. If you're spending close to a grand, you either have way too much money to blow or you're retarded. Don't be a tight wad, but also don't let a few clowns force your class into paying tons of money for worthless stuff (Example: Our baby class paid something like $200 per person for graduation alone (excluding the costs of all their food) b/c some people wanted expensive flower center pieces and some other crap like that...worthless.)

Yeah I can see how that program might have helped some, but I never did it. Since the test is a lot about multi-tasking, I could see maybe playing a game that requires a lot of movement/attention, but also doing quick math problems while playing. That's a very basic premise of the test. Either way, anything people do like that is going to help minimally at best...get a good sleep and hope you've got the hand/eye coordination and good multi-tasking skills to do well.

Bingo. Any computer game, no matter what "setup" you have is going to help very minimally at best. The ONLY real proven way to help yourself is get a goodnight sleep the night prior, don't be hungover for the test, etc. You're hands and mind either works the way the TBAS does or it doesn't. No amount of video games is going to change that.

You can always have a goal and work your ass off to achieve it...that's just about how every one of us gets to wings. No one's saying you're totally screwed out of flying fighters, but as Spaw said, there is stuff such as class composition, check pilots, IPs, weather, and simply what's in your track select/assignment drop when you get it. Those things you cannot control. Like I said before, attitude and effort is what you CAN control...give it your all in both of those and I will say there's a 98% chance you're going to end up where you should be, whether that be fighters, heavies, helos or 130's/U-28/NSA.

At this point, you should be happy to fly any REAL plane (reference the various UAV bashing threads). Admittedly I am very happy to have gone 38s and heading towards a fighter (*crosses fingers*), but at the same time to say you'd rather just not fly for the AF if it meant flying a C-17, C-130, etc. is stupid IMO. Personally I would be disappointed for a bit if all of the sudden I had to go fly a "heavy", but I guarantee I'd get over it quickly and have fun. It sure beats the hell out of any desk job or getting paid 0.69$/hr to fly for some small regional. Happens all the time. It's just about the norm for every cadet/dude in HS/college to want to fly fighters, but I bet about 75% change their mind once they start UPT. You don't really know what you want until you get a small taste of it. Keep your mind open...F-16s may be the coolest thing to you, but it would be no surprise if you took your first few T-6 rides and said fuck that to the Gs, airsickness, etc. Just speaking from what I've seen.

I think there's a limited number of people who actually want to take the time to keep up a UPT journal like you've seen, and it's just so happened that they all went T-1s. That's probably just coincidence more than anything...though I'm pretty sure we'd get ridiculed beyond belief if one of us had made a journal and the IPs knew about it (at least in 38 land). Do some searching on the rest of your questions...they all can be pretty much answered elsewhere. But the short of it is, timing and luck is everything: you may be in a class of slackasses and look like a god, or you might have a class with a couple really great hands and now you just look average. There could be 6 38s at track select or there could be 2, there could be 5/6 fighters in a drop or there could be 1/4...who knows. Point is, do your best and concentrate on the things you can control - attitude and effort. Everything else is totally out of your hands.

Sadly, I will not be surprised when it does take another one to get some people to pull their heads out of their asses.

I thought it was hilarious...4 nametags, hahaha.

You're both definitely right. No we should not let the govt take a massive amount of our civil liberties...those are the whole point of our country. But, I think the article and M2 are talking about simple stuff that should not be a big deal to you if you're a "good" and "innocent" person. For example, I remember tons of uproars about putting video cameras in public high schools. Mine installed them back when I was a sophomore or something like that. People bitched their eyes out about freedom, etc. Well, cameras in a high school should not matter one bit as long as you're not trying to make drug deals in the hall or something. It's stupid to even complain about. Or how about even email/cellphone "tapping". Do I really give a shit if some computer software reads my emails or listens on my phone calls for key words/phrases? I don't give a fuck b/c I don't have anything to hide. It's not like some guy is sitting there reading my emails and then using them as gossip topics around the water cooler or using that info against me as blackmail. So as long as you're not a terrorist, you don't have one good reason to be against that. I don't care about you whining about "but my email is private!" Yeah, well mine and my family's lives are more important than your emails bitching about your shitty marriage to your sister. Point is, all the info gathered from sources/methods like those are simply used for security and will not be used against you in any other way.

Boxhead, any idea which office on base handles this? I remember going to Education and MPF...both had "no idea" and said it was the other guy's job. After 2-3 trips to each office, I gave up. I remember the education office having a commissioning code on me (I went in to find some info about GI Bill)...I think that's the one you're talking about. Maybe I'll stop by those asshat's office when I get some time.

Here's what I heard for 08-08 T-1 side, in case anyone wanted to know (of course no numbers, just airframe/location)... C-5 Travis KC-10 McGuire KC-135 MacDill, McConnell, Fairchild C-17 Charleston, Hickam, McGuire C-21 Peterson NSA Cannon

That's the problem, it's not in vmpf and not one idiot shoe on this base seems to know anything about it. I just got so pissed dealing w/ those retards that I gave up. Maybe I'll give it another shot (sts) sometime soon. I know it did mean something years back...i.e. DG out of ROTC was given pref for AFIT, etc. I'm not so sure it matters anymore, but like Brick said, it can't hurt.

Mine doesn't show up in SURF and I've been to education office/MPF/every other shoe office on base and have been told 69 times that they don't know anything about it and it's someone else's job. I gave up...that was 1.5 yrs ago. Anyone recently get this shit figured out? Will it even make any difference to me? If not, I could care less.

I'm sure you guys will see the same crap. That's just the way things go sometimes...you can always start working on a masters in the mean time.

He meant it's very competitive to get a pilot slot through OTS (yes, you already have the slot prior to OTS). From what I've seen in both OTS and Guard/Reserves "require" similar scores, LORs, etc. It's much harder to get slots through those two avenues than through ROTC or the AFA. Either way, don't quit your job and go get a bunch of hours. Get your PPL, fly when you can for the fun of it and apply. Many dudes get OTS slots w/ "just" a PPL.

I ended up wearing gortex pants and just the jacket they provided. I wore my every day bellview gortex boots...though my feet were fucking freezing when we weren't moving. I can't tell you what the wx will be like in a couple weeks, but last week and this week it's cold as balls...so expect to freeze your ass off, especially at night. The only extra thing I brought that I'm glad I did was a headlamp and my under armour coldgear. There's really not much else I wish I had, except maybe the gortex jacket (but only b/c dealing w/ the poncho is annoying).

Now the real question: when is someone going to man up and do a repeat of the Phantom pic!