SocialD

We have that in our ANG Fighter squadron. I've only done my initial assessment, but hopeful it will help.

The fact that they have the A320 on there and don't have the 757 is immediate loss of credibility! Hands down, the 757 is the most badass airliner I've ever flown. Ya know...as badass as airliners can be anyway.

I don't think Gazmo is a long term mloa type of guy. Maybe he was saying that he liked working a total of 4 days this month for 88 hours of pay as a line holder, like I'm doing this month 🤣.

Ha, I wish. While we have some phenomenal people working in our FSS, they still can be a royal PITA. I walked in one day to get my CAC renewed and there was no-one to be seen. Wandered around, found the FSS Chief. She investigated and it turns out everyone was on leave to drop their kids off at a state military kids camp...the one remaining guy got sent out that am on an emergency TDY (for personnel lol). The chief was as dumbfounded as I was and lost her shit. I could also write a book on just our finance shop. I just prescribe to the line of thinking in your second paragraph. If you do those few items I mentioned, everything else will work itself out. I remember when I left Luke, they wanted me to log into some online program and out-process using some ridiculously long, drawn out checklist, which involved stopping at the library (I didn't even know they had a library) for a signature, as well as the chaplin or something. Fuck that, I grabbed my AFE gear, my flight records and medical records then jumped in the car and started my drive home. I never heard a word about it, so clearly it didn't matter. A helpful tactic is to walk into a shop and tell them you have to be out the door at X time for an appointment (works on car salesman as well). If it can't be finished by that time, just send the rest to my email and I'll get it back to you when I come back to work.

Things that might get you a call. Going out on MLOA longer than 5 years on orders that are not exempt. Saying you're on MLOA but actually working at your civilian contractor side gig. Consistently using one day of MLOA on each trip to drop all your weekend trips and then picking up weekday trips (when you 2-leg commute to your mil gig). Dropping so much MLOA that you don't get consolidated. Dropping a trip so you can go in and SOF for half a day on the day after Christmas. Dropping a trip to take Stan Eval tests the day before Thanksgiving. I dropped MLOA between Indoc and sim training. I took a week of MLOA immediately after finishing OE. I've taken MLOA over holidays. I dropped 8 months of MLOA (spin-up/deployment) while still on probation. I had to extend MLOA over the Super Bowl (in the company's mind that's a holiday) due to a broke dick jets and all the married guys in a hurry to get home from a dreaded 2 whole weeks of TDY. I've dropped trips last minute for MLOA. I've even had to call the CPO to have MLOA removed from my schedule. With all that, even at big scary DAL, I haven't heard a single word about any of this. Bottom line in the middle, just take what you need to get your sheit done and heed the advice of Brabus Johnson. Unless you're attached to an AD base, you shouldn't need an entire week to in-process. My in-processing consisted of dropping my medical record at medical, flight records are ARMS, flight gear at AFE, a few forms at finance/personnel/comm and I was done in time for the lunch push.

Yup, I understand that. I'm talking about squadrons, just like mine, that are forcing part-timers to ROPMA to O-4 then O-5, unless there a "chosen" one. Maybe we're lucky in that our part timers tend to not hang around as squadron bums forever, but very few guys are forced to ROPMA for anything other than not doing PME. One bases leadership looks at it as "paying your dues." Then again they also have had numerous dudes leave to fly in the heavy squadron in their state while other said fuck it, I go find a non-flying gig...

Ultimately, it's up to your TAG. I know a guy who made it to O-5 without SOS or ACSC because he wanted to be at a unit that can never fill spots. Our previous TAG had a hard-on for PME, however the new TAG says no PME required for O-5 but you'll be going to ROPMA to make it happen. I understand some states/units require guys to go to ROPMA (even for O-4) as a matter of practice, which I'll never understand why you'd willingly do that to your own people. My base has always been; have PME, TIG requirements met, not a shitbag, promotion paperwork goes in. We rarely have to force guys to ROPMA and the few I can think of were simply for not doing SOS orACSC. Having prior-e time, waiting for ROPMA would have meant delaying my retirement 3 years, so ACSC was well worth the pain.

What herkbum said. PV and ROPMA are how we get promoted. We have to have up to date OPRs but no PRFs (maybe for ROPMA). Our base has recently started requiring interviews for O-5, but not for O-4 or below. Herk may have better insight into what happens next All I know is it's sent up to state or NGB then it's usually 6-9 months before federal recognition happens which means you can pin on.

Makes sense...I've never even seen a PRF.

Holy shit, this is what OPRs are "supposed" to look like? AD kids being sent to Guard units as a first assignment are FUCKED! Well...besides pretty much having a guaranteed job in a few years when they can get out. I guess I don't understand this and it seems to be a complete devaluation of medals. I once got a MSM (as a Capt) because the OG at the time was passed over for O-6 the first time for not having a MSM. A few months later, the whole damn squadron got MSMs so this didn't happen to any of us. I guess he thought he was "taking care" of us. Fast forward a few years and we get a WG/CC from another base. Now a Major, he loses it when he sees that I have 2xMSMs and no Commendation medal. Guess who now has a commendation medal. Again, what a fucked up system! Note: Before this I had never heard that it was customary that Capt get AFCM and Majors get MSMs.

Finally brought my Cub home yesterday. Winds kicked up way earlier than expected...was just glad to her on the ground in one piece. There was zero wind today so I spent the afternoon on the grass. My dedicated crew chief has a T-Craft based at this grass strip...don't think he appreciated me texting this picture when he was working today LOL.

Man I'm jealous, that's a good buddy to have! The panel of the Cub makes it evident that he takes good care of his planes. Post pics of the Stearman if you have some. Hoping to acquire one down the road. Was his Stearman owned by the current President of the Stearman Restores association? That dude is a real under achiever...he was a Navy rescue swimmer, then Seal, then decided to be a 160th SOAR pilot and now flies crop dusters. https://www.westpointcoh.org/interviews/a-career-filled-with-detours-from-seal-to-night-stalker https://readyfortakeoffpodcast.com/rft-284-navy-seal-cropduster-mike-rutledge/

Awesome! Few things better than cruising around at 500 feet with the door open and being able to smell fresh cut grass. From what I can see, that's a nice looking Cub. I have a handshake agreement to buy a 1947 (Ponca City) 90 hp Cub. It was restored around he same time as the one you flew and has about the same hours. Was supposed to be delivered last Thursday but storms, then schedules got in the way. Hoping to get it this Sunday.

Your if statement is a major qualifier there. Many of us can't even stand the thought of going on a 2 year order to get the big bonus. This is why I'll never understand why the ANG didn't push for the 1 year big bonus, like the AFR was able to get. Also, there are tons of USERRA exempt orders...up on the staff (no sts). The same staff that has denied adding a few vital positions to the list of USERRA exempt status. As for the rest of this thread. Having a boss who doesn't use the proper words, or not having the "right" medals/titles...what a fucked up system.

PRF/APZ/P/DP...it's like an entirely different language. If this is the only "signal" you see, we don't want you.

Right! You can't be scared your whole life!

Just be careful of the state you choose. Some states, as a matter of practice, force guys to ROPMA even to major, which is ridiculous. I pinned on major 2-3 years before quite a few of my officer school classmates because of this. The only guys in our squadron that went to ROPMA for major were the guys that didn't do SOS. Maybe we're lucky that we don't have a bunch of O5s that just hang around forever, but few guys have to wait too long for O5 as well. Occasionally a year wait, but few guys are actually forced to ROPMA.

Agreed 100%, I actually had to use that last week to get them to relent on a minor clerical error (no money) made by the hotel desk clerk. I have 4-5 days/month to get 6 sorties, knock out queep and fight these battles. Honestly, anymore I don't care which one takes priority, I'll just roll with whatever the leadership wants at the time, but I'm still only showing up 4-5 days/month...their choice. In the end, I've never been denied payment, but the constant battles are tiring. Preach brotha! One finance officer has already been fired...I think more will follow when we get our next WG/CC. You're right though, we should actually force someone from finance to go on every 2-3 week TDY we do as a unit.

Wow, and you were paid without issue? Our finance would have denied my voucher a few times, threatened to not pay for not using my GTC. I'm still trying to get a voucher through from a TDY over 3 months ago. Our FM once tried to force me (a part-timer) into paying by saying I wouldn't "be able" to go TDY because my card will be shutoff. I don't think me laughing uncontrollably and letting him know that is perfectly fine with me, was the reaction the FM was looking for. This is one of the few downsides to Guard units. Sometimes someone gets dug in and builds an empire...then his proteges take over and continue it. Their biggest concern is the dreaded "audit," which drives their overly cautious nature. There is hope that the next in line for WG/CC will fix this. LOTS of people on base have started saying no to TDYs simple because it's such an ass pain to get paid anymore. Next voucher, I'm thinking of attaching a MFR with a narrative of events for the TDY, with "READ ME FIRST." I've already started attaching my cell number with a note to call me before rejection. I wish they'd just bring back 1351-2s...paper vouchers!

I'm with Brabus on this one, that's how we've always operated. In this type of thing, you can never go wrong by following "the process." Sadly this is almost never efficient and often an extremely painful experience. We've recently added numerous callsigns for our local and XC flying. Then we followed up with going through the process of making it official. Guess what, the world kept spinning and anarchy did not take over. The old bossman has already told us to not blindly follow ridiculous rules...do what makes sense then work on getting it changed (note: the latter being an important step). I'd say this falls squarely into one of these situations. This is especially true in this case since the manager seems to be following an reg that is no longer applicable. This change will not harm anyone and if it's truly based off heritage, it seems like a no-brainer. I mean some bases use the pilots callsign as their flying callsign...it's not like we're redesigning an arrival/departure procedure. I get there are some battles not worth fighting for, but this seems like an easy kill that can only help with espirit-de-corps.

NGB: Good news guys, we're giving out a part-timer bonus! Pawns: YAY!!!! NGB: Ya, it's going to be totally awesome and will help retain our peeps...here you go. Pawns: (reviews eligibility requirement)....dude, like 3 people in our squadron are eligible, and they're not leaving anyway. NGB: .... NGB: Oh and btw, we need to review some things... Pawns: Opens up retirement donut of misery chart. NGB: So here are our new requirements... Pawns: (reviews new requirements)...dude, now only 1 person is eligible. Flips table! We seriously only had 2 guys eligible in a squadron of ~40 pilots and neither of them have heard anything either way. I really hope this is bad gouge, but no skin off my back, I was prior-E and not eligible anyway. Well it's a gorgeous day here in Barcelona, time to meet the crew for beach/wine/tapas.

Not saying you're AMC, but a buddy was just telling me about a recent CC directed Q3 in AMC. Naturally there are 3 sides to every story, but this isn't the first time I've heard stories of seemingly ridiculous sounding Q3s in AMC. Some of the stuff I've heard would have just been a few days non-flying and maybe a briefing in front of the squadron...seems like AMC uses it more as a punishment tool.

They're just getting you conditioned for the rest of your career.

Had iPhones for years, then switched to the S7, now the note 9, and I couldn't be happier. If you really want to nerd out on your phone, you can unlock developer mode which lets you tinker with a few other things. Camera is insanely better.

Not to worry, guys over on other aviation forums/FB groups have already figured out it was a false flag operation so we can get involved in yet another war.