SocialD

This! I don't have cable, and have essentially blocked everyone on SM and the only thing on my feeds is stuff I'm interested in (mostly Aviation groups). Last Saturday someone posted on our Squadron group chat to avoid X part of town due to protests. I had zero idea what people were protesting about and had to look it up, which is when I heard about this incident. Today was spent tinkering on an N3N and a Stearman, then helped a guy who is building a Starduster, flew with a kid I'm teaching instruments, did a few pre-sunset grass landings in the Cub, then beers at my buddies hangar as we watched an amazing sunset. The world need less 24 hours news (err entertainment) channels and more sunset hangar beers!

We in the USAF don't let piddly things such as regs get in the way of our local policies!

Welp, guess I'll keep my 11 month streak of not checking my guard e-mail going.

Man there are going to be a lot of pissed off people when he is reelected.

Oh good, standing by for another touchy, feely course that we'll all have to sit through.

LOL, didn't they say that 2 piece flight suit testing for ejection seat aircraft would be done a 1-2 years ago? Based on that I fully expect to finish my career in a bag.

I was recently denied access to a Home Depot because I didn't blindly follow the rule du jour and have a mask on. How the fuck am I supposed to get my deck built with all this assholes telling me I have to wear a stupid mask...oh wait, I think we're no longer doing CV19... The struggle is real!

It mainly stems from the older management types that had been out of the military for quite a while, who still think the ANG/AFRES are flying clubs. One of them didn't believe me when I told him how many times I've deployed as a Guardsman. Hell, we still occasionally deal with this type of shit from AD folks, when we're deployed. In all fairness, the only reason I knew about the ANG was because I asked my high school guidance counselor what paid the best for college. He handed me a ANG pamphlet and said there is a Fighter Wing 1.5 hours north and they paid 100% tuition. Best thing that ever happened to me.

LOL! So that's what the WP C-17 guys fly with the callsign Rhino.

In my experience, some of the worst haters of the ARC pilots are the management guys (pilots) who did all their time AD and were never in the Guard/Reserve.

Circle back to summer 2019, who were pretty much the only people wearing masks back then? They all wore masks before this and the shit still got out!

Unfortunately for many that just won't ever be a realistic option. That said, if you can make it happen, it makes this job such an awesome gig. I live an hour from the employee lot, 8 minutes from the Guard and 30-45 minutes from all of my family...better lucky than good! It's why I would much rather go to our lowest paying category to stay in my current base than commute to stay on higher paying categories. What 2020 said above is spot on. I'd much rather be furloughed than be forced to commute to be a plug on a NB in NYC. I don't expect it will, but if it came to that, I'd probably take a voluntary furlough. Between part-time pay, my rentals and other side income opportunities, I'd rather not commute to sit in a crashpad in NYC for a year. It's events like this that illustrate the words I pass to all my buddies who think they'll ever go to airlines. If you're considering the airlines, do it ASAP, don't screw around for years making a decision. A few friends scoffed and said "the airlines are not for them," and even gave me a rash of shit about going to the airlines. Fast forward 3 years and suddenly they decided the airlines, in fact, ARE for them...and they're suddenly not giving me shit lol. So now they're 3,000 number junior to me and looking at either commuting to NYC or possibly being furloughed. I'm expecting to just be bumped back to a narrow body in my current base. Of course some delayed to get closer to an AGR pension, which I get to an extent. But this situation will be a boon for those who were just outside 5 years to go to an AGR pension.

Remember this is NOT pilots (yet), this is mostly enlisted leadership all over base including a few LRS & MX officers. It's not totally uncommon for random people around base to get tagged with 6-month deployments during the ACS/RCP/AEF (whatever we call it these days) window. What's different is they tagged 40+ from mx, which I have never seen before, nor have I ever seen them tag our MX officers. But yes, all the MX folks I've talked to are being individually deployed to run shops at various bases within the AOR. Apparently the AD is short on senior enlisted folks. On the plus side, they tagged about 4 our our Chiefs on base. Soooooo...with an increase in Guard E-9s, you might see a significant decline in Chiefing incidents at your favorite deployed hotspots. 🤣

Join the Guard. Wait, didn't you just transfer to the Guard?

Shack! Ya, sending us to the fucking arctic (northern tier Europe) in the dead of winter made great sense. Between inlet icing, ridiculous amounts of snow and no fucking tacan within 275 miles, we ended up weather cancelling more than we actually flew (no shit >50% attrition)....despite our best efforts to get USAFE waivers for wx reqs. We actually had to send guys to the sims in Spang just so we could actually get our sorties for the month because guys were going non-CMR. We were there 2 months before we even knew there was an A-team on the other side of base who might want to integrate with us. So ya, you're probably right, that has Army written all over it! But hey, this guy has over 175,000 hyatt points and another 150,000 points with another major chain and platinum status with both. I'm single/no kids so I'm always up for an adventure. That said, our last two trips were both divorce magnets and morale killers. Hate to see that happen for trips that feel like you're having zero impact on anything, all while having road block after road block when you try to have a positive impact. Time to open beer another beer and get off my lawn!

Well the media is latching on to the idea that DAL is 7,000 pilots fat this fall so we must be furloughing 7,000 pilots. 🙄

I'm not just talking individual BS deployments, I'm talking sending full up fighter squadron aviation packages to go fly CT on the other side of the globe. My last two "deployments" were completely worthless and did nothing but kill morale. We used to have to tell people no for deployments because we had some many volunteers, no we're having to force people to deploy. I get the idea behind these "presence maintaining TSPs," but we are fucking broke and morale is in the shitter. Cut those out, flow us into real combat deployments and you will spread out deployment cycles for everyone. We came home from our 2nd straight TSP and were already schedule for our third, just 19 months away. Our local leadership called whomever controls that flow and basically said, if you send us on another TSP, "I won't have pilots to fill the trip." ...and he was right. This also has a negative impact on retaining the amazing talent that we have in Guard MX. These deployments have killed more marriages than all our combat deployments (in my 19 years in the same Guard unit) combined. The AD has fucked away their retention so bad that they're now tagging a shit ton of our (non-flying) officers and enlisted leadership to go run AD shops overseas for 6 months. Dudes are deciding it's just not worth it to stick around.

We can, leaders just won't make the decisions to cut the bullshit deployments.

Interesting timing, we have been told all our tech spots will be converted to AGR (we only have 2 techs left anyway). Guys currently in Techs can stay tech, but when they vacate it will become an AGR. Don't really understand how all the works but this is ANG and not AFRES.

I think years ago, someone just took the master copy of the 175 off the shelf and scratched in NO SIDS/NO STAR lol. It goes right above that other section you never use called rank and honor code. Just ask for the points coordinates (in degrees.minutes.minutes of course) because I'm 99% sure that point wasn't loaded in the can. Like the Hill VFR departure to pick up IFR on the other side of the mountain...there is always a way.

4x10s is the way to go!

Ummm what? So they traded AD seasoning orders for a technician spot? Let me guess, they want pay you something less than GS-12...even a GS-12 was a sizable pay cut for me when I looked at it way back when. Damn right this is a good deal for the unit and you get the shit end of the stick lol. The reserves hired you to be a part timer and your priorities are family, civilian job (unless you WANT to be full time) and then the Reserves. I'd start with your FLT/CC and explain what you're thinking and see where it can go. That's a tough spot to be in as the new guy in the squadron, but at 38 I'm guessing you'll take less shit than the average 23 year old returning from training. Are any of your commanders part-timers? If so, I'd talk with them about your situation as there has to be some middle ground here.

WRT to the ANG, it can be done but it may take some time and it's not just something I'd expect to happen. I'm not fully up to speed on the process, but within the base there is a lot of horse trading that goes on for Technician and AGR resources. 6 to 9 years ago we had 5 or 6 tech pilots and the rest were AGR, but over the years we've traded away tech spots for AGR spots. I think we're down to only 2 Technicians spots filled with maybe 1 spot left unfilled right now. The rest of our guys are AGR or ADOS alert orders.

As a fighter guy, aside from that stupid departure out of Spangdahlem, I've never flown a single published departure or arrival. No SIDs/No Stars is an integral part the few DD175s I've ever filled out.