jazzdude

Each OG sets their own bubble-750nm seems pretty standard because it's one travel day each way for mx if they need to repair the jet.

This. I think this often gets forgotten.

It's one thing as a single guy to volunteer to take bad deals so married people can be home for life events, it's another thing when the scheduler puts you on the bad deal without asking because "it doesn't matter if you miss Thanksgiving/Christmas/holiday/weekends because you're single, so you're on the trip/deployment/alert"

I think it was up to 95% in MAX (no 100% position on the regulator)

No worries, like you said, I don't think we're that far apart on opinion, just looking at the issue from different viewpoints. :cheers:

I didn't zero sum the math myself, but my brother who is finishing up med school now did. It comes down to opportunity costs. Doing the military thing is a guaranteed job, with an opportunity for a pension, and no malpractice insurance, but you get paid much less than what you can get on the outside. Or you can go out and take a little risk in the civilian market and make some really good money. Or another strategy some doctors take is just min run their loan payments, live it up, and die with debt. A doctor that just finished up their residency and thinking about joining the military is like a military pilot at the end of their initial commitment: you could stay in/join the military, but financially, it makes sense to go get hired by a major airline/work in a civilian hospital, but there's always that chance you might not get hired. Then again, you won't have to deploy, or move if you don't want to. All that to say, there no real comparison between doctor and pilot bonuses. Each gets paid what the military thinks is fair, and yet both groups are still undermanned. Saying we (pilots) should get a 100k/yr bonus because the doctors do is dumb. We should be paid enough to make the jump to the civilian world not as enticing as it is now. Then again, would $100k/yr bonus keep more pilots in if the AF doesn't address toxic leadership, doing more with less, and culture problems? Outsource medicine? What if the local doctors don't want to take new patients, or don't think Tricare pays them enough? What if the only hospital in town goes bankrupt? How many AMEs are out there to do flight surgeon stuff? How about getting doctors to go down range? If people aren't fit for duty, the unit mission suffers. If you want to outsource dependent care, sure, I can see a case for that. I'm tired of pilots thinking we're the only ones that matter in the AF. Yes, our service needs pilots to accomplish it's core mission, but we can't do it alone. Yes, we deserve to be paid better to help with retention. But we also deserve support functions that can actually support us, so we can focus on flying. The underlying problem is we are not manned or funded to do the things our nation asks of us, but we are too afraid to say we are at (or really past) our breaking point. On top of that, we self impose the ridiculous OPR/PRF system that wastes innumerable man hours- that's self inflicted. We created a culture where failure is not an option, so people will go out great lengths to cover up problems rather than identifying them and solving them, instead of using failures as learning points to make ourselves better. We can't contract everything out and keep cutting our support functions; we've been doing that for years and we are paying for it now. Finance sucks because they've consolidated to save on manning. Having our own medical capabilities means they should better understand the environment we work in, but we can't attract enough medical personnel. Contract mx sucks. It took Vance a year to get its runway repaired through a government contract, while Stillwater airport 45 min away did theirs at about the same time in 3 months. Why not get rid of the MAF and contract it all out? Contractors already fly some Army airdrops in theater, why not expand it to all airdrops? There's contract ISR already too, so let's get rid of that as well. I'm sure we could find a contractor willing to do light attack. Where do we draw the line at for what must be done by active duty? But hey, just give the pilots a big bonus, and all the AF's problems will be fixed. Scratch that, just give the fighter guys a big bonus, everyone else can be contracted out. I got mine, screw everyone else, sucks to be you.

When I was an IP, the common USEM technique (that I didn't agree with) was to sit people down on standup if they deserved it, but if they had 2 Stan failures (EPQ or stand up) in a row, to give them an open book boldface quiz that their buddies could check to reset their failures and prevent triggering pro-cap or other consequences. EPQ retakes were generally the same test again, but after you remediated and were told what the right answers were.

The gamble is that the military picks their residency, which then pretty much locks them into that specialty for the rest of their lives. I've met a few military doctors that regretted taking that deal. Wanted to be a general surgeon or an anesthesiologist eventually make $400k/yr after you get out? Sorry, we need flight docs right now, so I guess it's family practice and $180k/yr for your entire post military career. And the only way to switch specialties is to reapply for a residency, and most programs would rather take the younger doctor fresh out of school. And if you did get picked up, you'll have to work for 4 years making $40-50k/yr with terrible schedules. It'd be like deciding who got to fly for a major airline vs a regional airline (with no opportunity to go to a major airline) right after UPT. People would probably still take that bet, and not be happy when it doesn't work out like they thought it would. Edit to add: my brother researched joining the military as a doctor, and determined it was a pretty terrible deal, even though it looks like a great deal at first glance. Pretty much the only reasons to do it was because either you want to serve, or you couldn't get in anywhere else and had no other options.

The bonus listed for oral surgeon looks about right. The bonuses look like what a doctor could make in just over a year as a civilian out of residency, so even with the large bonuses listed, they still come out way behind. Even worse off than pilots. Throw in the fact that medicine also has pipeline issues (only so many residency programs and spots in those programs), and the military has to compete hard to attract doctors who can make a lot more on the outside, and likely accumulated $200-300k in debt for school. However, the military has probably made little investment in their doctors; probably didn't pay for their med school, and residency is like being a copilot/wingman for a few years. On the other hand, us pilots get our training (UPT and FTU) paid for by the military, so they've already made a big investment in us (the ~$1M to make a mission ready pilot). And unlike a doctor, where you can bring a civilian in pretty much at any level of responsibility or rank, you can't really do that with a pilot. Unless you do something silly like a direct to T-1 program, then make them an aircraft commander bypassing copilot since they were previously a regional captain... The Air Force needs to figure out how much it values pilot experience. It obviously values medical experience, and is ready to pay for that experience. If pilot experience is also important, the bonus needs to go up to compete with the airlines. They need to protect/retain their investment, and convince people to stay (That's what I think needs to happen) If they are fine with the experience levels that are being retained now, I wouldn't expect to see the bonus really change. Heck, just change the definition of an experienced pilot and the Air Force will look great, at least on paper. But that would make for some interesting times if a real shooting war kicks off.

Hypemic or histotoxic hypoxia both would make sense- contaminated air from OBOGS could block oxygen absorption, resulting in hypoxia. Think along the lines of carbon monoxide poisoning. Which would make pulling the green ring instead of gangloading make sense (actual 100% O2 from a seperate system), and if they suspect that the normal oxygen supply from OBOGS is providing contaminated air, gangloading would only make the hypoxia worse by increasing the amount of contaminants the crew is exposed to. And rather than have the crew try to figure out what kind of hypoxia they are experiencing, just go for your known good supply of oxygen all the time and figure it out later.

I think this only helps the part 141 schools stay in business now that they can't place their grads direct into the right seat of a regional anymore.

Already experienced pulling Gs, skip T-6s and go straight to T-38s.

I'd say the only thing worth studying beforehand is the boldface/ops limits. Maybe if you have some extra time and are really bored, the Air Force (UPT) traffic pattern and priorities (though it helps to have someone explain it). Outside of that, take care of yourself and your family beforehand, since once you start it'll be busy. You'll have classes on everything you need to learn, as well as your class to study with. Same advice I gave my casual LTs when I was a T-6 IP not too long ago. Edit to add: All learning the boldface beforehand does is free up time so you can learn/study other things when you start instead of worrying about stupid capitalization and punctuation.

Each FSDO is different, and may ask for different things to meet the CFR requirements. It may be worth the money to pay someone to deal with them if you don't want to spend the time doing the research/make the calls/visit/etc As an aside, if you're at Vance, Wichita FSDO is much easier to work with than Oklahoma City FSDO.

It was funny a year ago when we were dropping 2 RPAs on the Tone side listening to the studs complain about how this is the first time RPASs were dropped at UPT. They were caught off guard when I mentioned that RPAs were in the drop back in 09 when I was a student, were not limited in number given, and were given to both 38s and Tones. They didn't think their situation was quite so bad or unique.

Shut down for students, but not instructors. Now I just need to figure out how to get there... Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

OKC ANG has them

Continuation offered is a maximum, not a minimum. Just because they offer continuation to 20 doesn't mean they can't decide to separate you earlier by changing the continuation criteria and reboarding your record for continuation again based on needs of the air force. If you are authorized X majors, you have to have a process to get rid of the excess majors (either through promotion, separation, or retirement). Up or out was one way to force separation of people to keep the end strength for the grade where it needed to be. The continuation board would be the logical place to assess which officers should be separated to maintain end strength, as the records are there for consideration already. Welcome to the hunger games. Plus, IPZ/APZ has been masked on the last few majors boards already, but board members can tell if you are APZ (count OPRs, look at dates, etc). Sent from my SM-T700 using Tapatalk

It would mean that each continuation board will essentially be a RIF board to make room for the guys on the new promotion list. DOPMA doesn't care about year groups, just total number in each grade. The only way I see this working is if there are quotas on AFSCs promoted to ensure a healthy balance, especially given the pilot shortage (does the Air Force no good if only mission support guys are promoted, or if no cyber/space guys are promoted, etc)

That's what a wingman is for

I also thought the call was worth my time. They'll go through your record to see if there are any glaring problems (depth/breadth of assignments, etc). They don't have notes from the board, but they have 10 records from the gray zone that were above the cut line to compare against yours. The two things I was told that they could guess as to why I didn't make it was no awards, and I didn't have the words "definitely promote" in my push line. I also talked with my senior rater afterwords- he didn't believe in putting "definitely promote" in a push line (there's a checkbox for that), and was somewhat surprised to hear that it was a common thing in the sample of records afpc had to brief from. In the end, it all worked out and I made it on the next look.

It's roughly a year-ish. More precisely, it's until the next selective continuation board for your rank, which occurs immediately after the promotion board you are considered for APZ, until you hit high year tenure. Each board could have different instructions on who to continue. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

5 people in one room? Sounds like a fire code violation...

It looks like there were some deleted posts removing some questionable recommendations

Nah, it's just cheaper to keep pilots as continued captains. Plus they can fix the glitch again once there's no more shortage by stopping continuation since it's only a yearly extension up to a specified max. It's not like pilots have any better job opportunities outside of the military right now...