SocialD

RVs are awesome planes and I had the order form filled out for an RV-7. However, after talking with quite a few builders I decided to hold off, maybe down the road. Orbit gave a pretty good description above about the various RVs. I'll add that I really wanted the RV-9 but after lots of research figured you're much better off with the RV-7. They're pretty close to the same plane, but the 7 is aerobatic. This is huge for resale value! If you like the Kitfox, you have got to check out this guys videos. His day job deals with filming/expensive cameras, plus he lives near a bunch of BLM land, which means he can land anywhere can make awesome videos. Also, check out the Rans S-7 or S-20 if you're interested in an alternative to the Kitfox. I've flown with a few Captains recently that have built the S-7 and they love them. I've flown both, they are a blast to fly and they're essentially the same plane, but the 7 is tandem and the 20 is side-by-side. I ended up going with the Rans S-21 and my wing kit is showing up to my garage in a few hours. I don't really care to fly aerobatics in an aircraft that doesn't have an ejection seat, and would rather bounce around the local dirt strips, with the occasional weekend trip. It's relatively new, but much of his stuff is being reused from other kits he has designed. It's STOL-like but will cruise around 155mph @ 75% with a 180hp motor. For me the build time/complexity was a huge factor, and that's another place this plane excels. Given that it's all aluminum (CNC milled parts...read very little drilling/deburring) and built mostly with blind rivets, they're forecasting 500 hours, not including paint. Based on a few bloggers that have already started their wings, that seems fairly accurate. On top of that, there are very few times where you need another person there to help you, which is key since I live by myself and don't want to have to always bribe my buddies to buck rivets for me. Here is one that is already built. It's hard to tell in the pic, but the doors and roof are all lexan...great for visibility. Cargo space is pretty awesome and is easy to access due to the large door and seat that fold down quite a bit.

PM sent. Moving this to GA thread.

Same...I'm receiving the first part of my plane kit tomorrow. Not an RV though.

I don't believe there is anything wrong with having another job, as long as it's OK'd by the boss. Did any of those officers go into their other jobs with full intention of NOT working there after they get on property? IMHO (which isn't worth much), it seems like an abuse of a law that is meant to protect us when we have to drill, go TDY, deploy or even fill a vital role in the squadron that pops up down the road. WRT to something legal vs unethical. Watched this happen... Dude doesn't pre-post MLOA and gets assigned a 6-day coverage trip (means he didn't want it but got it because he's junior) that spans Christmas eve/day. Due to manning he is unable to drop the trip. He then uses one day of MLOA on the first day of the trip to drop it. He immediately picks up a highly lucrative trip that started on day 2 of the original trip. This trip gets him back home Christmas eve morning. I'm sure he will go do some mil duty at the base, but to use MLOA to get a holidays off is a bit unethical, though totally legal.

Are you really surprised? There are plenty that use USERRA to have their cake and eat it too. I have witnessed some pretty unethical, albeit totally legal, shit go down with respect to using MLOA to ones advantage...and others disadvantage. Then people wonder why the company is looking a little closer at our MLOA or asking a question or two when you start changing stuff around post schedule release.

I'm sure there are people who will love it. We have some people who can't pass a PT test, I'm sure they will love this as they can just get out of the military and keep their job. Not saying that's your guy but one reason some will love it. As Guardian says below it will also be a great thing for the enlisted guys who wish to keep a job after retirement from the military. It will be a great thing for the AGRs who retire and still need a job to make ends meet. On the plus side, we maintain that experience, which is one thing that sets the ARC above the AD in many respects. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but we definitely have Title 5 guys who are also DSGs. There are now a lot of things that they can't be compelled to do unless they're in a mil status, such as CBRNE/SABC training...although they can be forced to attend Green dot training since civilians do that as well. I just hope they make our medical staff AGR, it's maddening when you need to get a shot but they don't have anyone in a mil status to administer the shot. Agree with your last sentence.

I've only had a few minute conversion with a buddy and he didn't seem to excited. Among other things, he said they're not allowed to wear military issued gear other than steeltoe boots...everything else they must foot the bill. On the upside, they can work a title 5 job and NOT be in the military...something our current technicians can't do.

...and a Harrier in DJ. Here's hoping for a good outcome at Nellis.

ANG or AFRC? Did they say for how long? We only get enough pay cards for 4 days/month, I'd start by only showing up for those days.

My guess is those were all "volunteers," I still have yet to see an ANG pilot be involuntarily individually mobed. The good will and volunteers will/are already drying up extremely fast. We've been sent to multiple non-combat deployments (TSP) and have already lost guys who don't want to deploy to go fly CT...we'll lose more. I've heard the same is happening in some of the tankers squadrons out there. Having said that, I have no illusions that they're not feverishly trying to figure out the red tape to tap ANG guys for 365s! At least they're trying to unfuck 12301d vs 12304b bullshit, so there's that...

Stand alone Guard squadrons are your last bastion of hope. We still have our issues, but nowhere near what AD/Reserves have. I wouldn't even consider a Guard TFI squadron these days. 2020s comments above are why I keep telling all my AD bros to go to the Guard and NOT the Reserves. Reserves are a totally different animal when compared to the Guard, and they seem to be AD lite. I have yet to hear of any Guard guys being individually involuntarily mobilized for anything. Im sure it's only a matter of time, but they're still not here for now. Again, stand alone Guard squadrons are your best bet.

Administratively, a huge majority of the "advancements" have made it more difficult on the individual, especially part-timers. DTS...a coat hangar abortion compared to the old paper vouchers. I could book my airline ticket/hotel/rental car and get orders cut in a fraction of the time it now takes to just get an auth approved. Leaveweb vs 988s...I've honestly never used leaveweb as my AGR time was before leaveweb. Now any time I take orders (rarely) it's short term ADOS and we still use 988s...super easy, and the FSS doesn't have time to fuck with it because I drop it in a holy joe on the way out the door. AROWS vs 105s...for you AD types that's how we get paid as part timers. It used to take 1 minute...now, depending on how the computers are doing that day, it generally takes 20+ minutes. It recently got slightly less painful, but all they did was make the ugly baby, slightly less ugly. vRED...used to be paper in my mobility folder. UDMs pulled them as needed and we only updated when we actually had a change. Now I have to log in (come on network, don't fail me now), update it, print it off (shit new printer server...gotta remap) and turn in...on EVERY tdy! How is this not automated and no news is good news? CBTs...it used to be the man from LOX video once a year (youtube it). On my last deployment, we couldn't get the powers that be, to get us Link-16...but by God they made damn sure we were all green on our CBTs! 781s/bubble sheets...used to be 2 quick papers. No we have hope the compute in AFE isn't locked out...Shit it locked out, back to the mercy of the networking gods and hope it's not on it's once daily outages. Guess I'll log that next month... Tricare...any Guard bum who regularly goes on/off orders will know what I'm talking about. Painful, but for $47/month, I'll jump through some hoops. 2875s...EVERY FUCKING WHERE WE GO!!!!! GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

After my most recent deployment, where we constantly fought our own AF just to get people properly paid (which still hasn't happened...), and to conduct normal operations, the AF deserves whatever happens to it. May they reap what they sow...

Swing by your intel shop, they should be able get you the deployment schedule for your airframe. Find out who is leaving soon, then start making phone calls. This method worked for me. Goodluck!

On two separate occasions during a recent deployment, finance interpreted the reg in a way that was advantageous to the government and disadvantageous to the individual. On their own it might have made sense...but looked at together, you see that they completely contradicted themselves on the two decisions. It was then that it became crystal clear that they will "interpret" the reg however it suits them. All this to say, good fucking luck! My 20 can't get here fast enough, I'm so ready to leave this dumpster fire behind!

Reading this makes my nugget hurt and makes me thankful I'm on a stand alone Guard base. Knowing almost every SP by name is great...especially when you leave your ID in the computer. In 17 years on the same base, I have never seen/heard of cars being searched on the way out of base. Hell they cant even write tickets. This just made me all the more pissed off during a recent visit to an AD base. One particular night after a long debrief, I ended up having to play their mickey mouse game of a car search while trying to leave base. They didn't seem impressed with all the red solo cups of jack n' cokes in the van, but didn't fuck with us for them...so that was nice.

Living in base for the airlines and your Guard squadron is about as good as it gets, and has given me lots of extra pay opportunities without doing anything shady. Even more opportunities to get paid to stay home. At DAL, doing what you're saying wouldn't really do you any good wrt pay. However, there are some dudes doing some pretty shady (albeit legal) shit with MLOA to get specific days off they otherwise couldn't have held. Pretty shitty move, but there is always that 1%.

And if you're a DSG (even if you happen to be on orders), you're still being paid the old rate ($650 for me).

Like, "we are going to have your flight pay fixed by then end of the month (4 months ago)," kinda fixed...or we are actually going to get them? Zero talk of them at our base.

I agree that decisions have consequences, but we're already doing just fine without these tax offsets. $40 million in offsets is a drop in the bucket right now. Will this actually go through? LOTS of Delta employees (voters) living in GA and Delta is a MAJOR economic engine in ATL. I'm sure it will be in the news for a bit, but not something I'm terribly worried about. FedEx is kinda saying that... https://about.van.fedex.com/newsroom/fedex-responds-questions-national-rifle-association-gun-safety-policy/

This will have little, if any impact on the airlines. Just wait for the next political "flavor of the week" to sweep the nation and most of America will have forgotten about it. The only thing I don't like is the fact that this is purely a decision based on social media pressure...when does this type of shit stop? I was actually surprised we they had a discount program with the NRA. Signed, long time NRA member (for now...LaPierre has gone off his rocker).

Sweet, so you're saying we're back to a one step process to get paid for UTA/AFTPs? I miss the days of the paper 105 cards (and paper vouchers). So simple and so easy! I would slightly retract my statement that nothing, over the course of my 16 years in the ANG, has made it easier on the part-timer. But in this case we're simply removing an obstacle that was needlessly put there and still are not back to how easy it was with a 105.

Ha, I could just imagine if they stop-lossed any of our, about to separate, part-timers. They'll give you 4 days of their choosing to get them 6 sorties (which is what most of us do anyway), if they don't get them, oh well. Watch alarm goes off at the 8 hour mark and they'll get up in the middle of the debrief and go home. If you want them to go TDY you'll likely have to activate them. PT test 5 months overdue, SABC CBTs overdue...huh that sucks. It would actually be comical to see...what a mess! After my last "deployment" (a TSP), I realized just how fucked we are. The MAJCOM was more worried that all our BS CBTs/red dot training was checked off than what we were doing tactically. Our priorities are so fucked! My 20 can't get here soon enough!

For all the non-airline guys still learning/looking at the airlines, not all airlines have separate short call and long call lines, like AAL. At DAL, we are all long call unless specifically converted to short call (max of 6 or 7 a month). We also don't get paid extra (yet) for short calls, here's hoping it changes in the next contract. Dedicated short call lines sucked donkey balls as a commuter, but would be pretty awesome if you can sit short call from home and get paid extra. But yes sitting reserve on a WB is pretty awesome, especially during the winter. I generally bid a line because I enjoy the layovers, but the last time I bid reserve, I didn't turn a wheel.

Clearly his circumstances were different, but I know lots of guys who've left one major for another (myself included). I met a Delta new hire a year ago that had been at FedEx for 5 years. I left AAL, and I know quite a few guys who've left various majors for other majors. One common element amongst them all was the option for home basing. Don't commute! If you absolutely have to, I'd probably go FedEx.