sputnik

I personally have always hated the mess dress, looks like a cheap tux--something a doorman would wear. I've always felt it was chosen by someone who wanted a formal uniform that looked sort of looked like a military uniform, but not overwhelmingly so. Compare it to Army, Navy or Marine formal uniforms. So at my own wedding I wore service dress. I'm always proud to wear a uniform, but not so much the mess dress. To the original question, I vote wear the medals you've earned. Though I will say the no one wears any isn't a bad idea. Really, they are a pain in the ass, expensive, and unless you've got a sh!tload they look kind of pathetic anyway.

Active duty no one cares. If you pass the PT test (which includes waist) and don't look like a sclub to your commander you never get weighed. Coming onto active duty..... Don't know what to tell you, we had to make the weight standard when we graduated, I remember many football players utterly starving themselves to make it. There wasn't a body fat option, we had to make weight. That was before the AF changed it's standards for active duty though

BTW 68% of readers like the new uniform? WTF?

It's pretty gay, far better than the original tiger smurf suit, but so what. I wore ACUs (Army) uniform last year when I deployed, and it's a good uniform. Functional pockets on the shirt, what a concept. The odd thing about the ABU is, after all the tweaking they did on colors and patterns to assuage all the bitching, it looks damn near identical to the Army--except it has none of the functional improvements of ACUs. God knows you don't want to have pockets you can access under body armor. Keeping the sleeve rank for enlisted was a bright move towards "heritage." Someone might have wondered why the Army and Marines got rid of sleeve rank post WW2, probably wouldn't have anything to do with the concept that perhaps to the enemy it's a giant "shoot me I've got more stripes and am more important than the guy next to me" sign. I got to like it, in these times we're so broke we have to kick out Lt's, yet we can scrape the budget to come up with a new uniform. It's so important that we have a different field uniform than everyone else that we finally come up with one that looks just like the Army, but is no where near as good. Here's a thought, no one else is wearing BDU/DCU anymore, if we wear those, we'll be different, and we'll save money. And don't get me started on the f#$king boots, green? Wtfo? It only took six years of war to get a wide selection of decent desert boots, like ones that fit my flippers. Can't wear the same boots as everyone else because, uh, we can't. Okay, then there's this new heritage uniform. Apparently the only way to maintain any uniform heritage is to ensure we absolutely never keep the same uniform. Heritage is all about change. Like, for example, ditching our current service dress in favor of what is clearly a copy of the previous version, with a f*&#ing belt? Even the schlep they pick up to model it in photos looks like an idiot. If they'd got Michelle Manhart to model it before they kicked her out maybe it would have helped the cause.

Most courses I went through at Altus there were plenty of family members along. And PIT in AETC for that matter. Can't speak to Kelly but at Altus the courses were generally a one month course crammed into four months--i.e. plenty of free time for family. If you sign out of your old location before heading for Kelly you'll have your BAH to spend on a temp appartment. No idea what the billeting situation is there but when I was last at Altus they were so overfull that they allowed folks with families to stay off base. Billeting was around $30 a day, or $900 a month, you could get a fully furnished 3 bedroom appt in town for less than that and quite a few people did. C5 school will be far less busy and intense than UPT. If you made it through that as a family, you can certainly make it through San Antonio. You may have smaller/more ghetto digs, but you'll have more time together. Best of luck

TALOs aren't ALOs. And are now called AMLOs...but your point is valid. Difference is there are 40 odd AMLO billets in the AF compared to about 10 ALO slots at each base that has them=a lot of ALO slots. In answer to the original question, I just spent 3 years playing ASOS ADO. Majority of our ALOs were great officers who did the job very well. We also got quite a few f'ups that were very clearly flushed to us from their previous base/community. We generally had enough good guys to run the brigades effectively, but it got interesting at times. We had a few guys who volunteered. The majority, good and bad, ended up there just due to timing, there was a slot at their base and they had the time on station, etc, and they got it. A lot of good deals come down to timing, so do a lot of bad ones. jojo I so suspect I know exactly who you're talking about, where did he do his ALO tour? The only guy we had that came close to a purple heart had his convoy come under attack, he elected to jump out and fight, the driver behind him elected to continue driving, in this case knocking over the BALO then running over his leg. We thought he was going back to Germany but unbelievably he only ended up with a hell of a bruise. I pesonally thought he deserved a PH but he absolutely refused and the Army was saying nope anyway so there it died.

When I was a FAIP (a while ago) we had one drop to T1s, so it has happened at least once. Nothing different from info already presented--go to T44s, do well and hope for one in your drop. However, keep in mind that if you end up in a slick, or some other non gunship for your first assignment, AFSOC is always hiring. As people get married and have kids the gunship often loses some appeal vs what they felt as 22 year olds. From what my 130 brethren have told me, it's pretty easy to cross over to AFSOC after a tour in slicks, if you still have the interest.

Mymemories of airshows mainly involve gritting teeth, but my favorite story came from back in the days when we still more or less had a nuke mission. Friend of a friend was sitting in a B1 static when the standard mom and young kid came on board. "Isn't this nice Jimmy? So, let's ask this nice pilot what this plane was designed to do?" "To kill tens of thousands of people." Quick exit.

You can also drive firearms (no pistols) through Canada if you're driving up. There is some paperwork and fees, I think $50 Canadian (i.e 73 cents or so) per rifle. I've flown with weapons and found it no big deal. Also sent with movers, they will make an enormous production of it, which is fine, just means there is no question on insurance. Personally I've worried more about airline folks swiping guns than TMO, but never had a problem. Good luck

Hickam IS overmanned, which makes it funny that they are still getting warm bodies. While Dover, Elmo and Travis are completely undermanned with no relief in sight. HIK leadership wants to play in the war so they have soft commited to keeping two crews at the North EAS, which is a nice bonus for TCM. SRTs are 60 days, so it's not too bad and seems to be more people who want to go than get to so that's always good. No one really knows what life will be like at Elmo but going guess is much like Hickam--mostly Pacific flying and SRTs of 7 days or less. Like HIK Elmo is getting a weekly Indian Ocean Channel mission--i.e. a 7 day trip that gets you a tax free but you don't even have to wear deserts.... I think the above remark about the joint deployment is a fair assessment, at least it does seem to be conventional wisdom in PACAF. PACAF wants to play in the war too, and if we go we'll empty the Pacific out, meaning all the CONUS units will finally get to fly in the Pacific too. Addressing some other remarks earlier in the thread--the Ice mission. McChord is keeping it....for now. But it used to be officially "owned" by whatever the HQ element is down at March. PACAF took it over 2005. It seemed odd that TCM would never PCS Ice IPs to HIK, though the strategy is becoming clear. While TCM clearly doesn't want to give the mission up, and I'm sure March wants back in, conventional wisdom (for whatever that's worth) is that Hickam will pick it up. Soon. Airdrop at Elmo--it's there. They're still working out the percentage. HIK has a 25% requirement, which is mostly idiotic as there are no airborne units in Hawaii (other than very very small SOF types with no riggers) and the drop zones suck and...the list goes on. Elmo is starting out at least at that level, still not sure how far it will go. Army has an entire Airborne Brigade there, and that's a lot of support required. They're currently deployed, but when they get back end of 07 their needs are going to be huge. 8 17s replacing 18 130s there won't quite pay the bill. Hickam is going to get a lot of airdrop practice there too but wouldn't completely surprise me if Elmo becomes the first 100% airdrop unit.