tac airlifter

the one washout story from my training days worth telling was our class leader at corpus. he goes out drinking with some of the guys, gets totally shit faced so they decide to take him home. so they take him back to the apartments (we all lived in the same building) and leave him on the floor of one guys apartment with his keys on the table in front of him; the logic being when he wakes up, he'll have his keys right in front of him to go sleep the rest off in his own apartment. sounds fine right? well they get back when the night is over and this guy is gone and his car is gone from out front. oh shit, where did he go? multiple calls to his cell phone were not returned. maybe the guys should have done something else, but they were also drunk so they figured "we'll just let him sort it out and see him in class tomorrow (it was sunday)." so the story picks up the next morning while we are in academics (remember that gay 5 day class they used to have on PFPS?) sitting around waiting to start. the class leader walks in and informs us that he is washing out of training and also being forced to leave the AF. he said the last thing he remembered about the night was being dragged in the door of our friends apartment, and then he blacks out while they are covering him with a blanket. an unknown amount of time passes and he wakes up at the controls of his car with the guard at the front gate of corpus NAS shining a light in his eyes. so this guy drove around for who knows how long while totally unconscious and for whatever reason his brain decided to go on base. keep in mind they were out on the island, so thats a significant drive while blacked out drunk. i felt bad for the guy. i don't know how they forced him out, whether he was dishonoably discharged or if they did some drug deal thing to force him out. either way his dreams went down the crapper and that is sad. but if ever someone brought it on themselves, that was it.

holy crap, is that girl for real? how do you know she washed out?

dude, we were just doing the VOR A at LIT thursday in the weather. my co had never done it, and i warned him "man this comes pretty fast if you circle south to 4R, you need to decend at 2000fpm and immediatly turn left to 220 within 1.7 then perch immediatly after that." we did a total of 3 go arounds because he couldn't align himself fast enough. finally his EFI displaying his HSI went tits up so we called it quits.

we did complain and were told that the inprocessing push for transiets is being made by the qataris themselves, so there is nothing we can do. apparently they get more money the more people inprocess. same thing with the flight plans, qatar is requiring the refile in person, not the USAF.

funny that you mention that fozzy bear, i also found out the hard way they changed the rule in august while transient there. we used to show up on the ramp, offload our cargo and send some guys to the grab and go (great concept, by the way) to get food for the crew. we found out that you can no longer leave the ramp if you are transiet unless you first inprocess with persco there and go through the whole briefing. you know our ground times there are fragged for 1+30, so after the obligatory reconfig there really isnt time to do that. so i say to my guys, lets just get out of here and hurry back so we can make dinner at balad (no 24 hour chow halls there) only to be told holding short that they cannot process our ifr clearance and we have to taxi back and refile in person. 2 things here of importance: first is that they could have easily put this info in the NOTAMs or ATIS so we dont waste all that time. second and more importantly, guess where baseops is located? outside the designated ramp area, which means my nav had to deplane and go inprocess at persco in order to be allowed off the ramp area to flie our flight plan. the worst part of the goat rope is that AMD fragged us for a 90 minute ground time knowing it would take well over 90 minutes and then gave me shit for having to cancel a leg because the deid soaked up so much of the crew day. since we're all limited to the 12 hour tac day at balad, there is a lot of pressure to take the waiver to extend the duty day to complete misisons that AMD fragged improperly. luckily the leadership at balad does in fact provide top cover for us in these situations. still sucks that my guys get no food in the morning because the chow hall is closed when we alert, no food enroute because the grab and go requires inprocessing which we dont have time to do, and then no food when we land because, you guessed it, everything is closed again (there are flight lunches available at balad, but we could open a whole new thread about that bag of shit). oh, and if you are transient and you feel the call of nature, you guessed it, you have to inprocess to use the portapottie just off the ramp. i just looked the other way while my loads left a stanley steamer where we were parked. so if you're walking on the ramp at the deid and you think you might have stepped in shit.... you probably did.

everyone i know carries a knife while flying, although i have never used mine for anything. a leatherman and a flashlight is all you will really need for hercs, in my opinion.

new guys should want to deploy. this is what we all volunteered to do, if they are already looking for a way to stall before even having any combat time, they probably should not be doing this.

never been stationed at the deid but foolish people make their way onto every air base in the AOR. a few months ago i was walking to chow with my crew in balad, and a SUV rolls up on us and we hear a whistle. it was a first shirt from the fighter squadron trying to get my engineers attention. well i walk over there with him, and this guy says "hey airman (to my eng) i dont think the reflective air force logo on the back of your PT gear is as reflective as everyone elses. did you buy counterfit pt gear?" its one of the stupidest things i have ever heard. long story short, being the AC i had to handle this guy before my eng said something to aggrivate the situation. what the shirt wanted was for us to call little rock clothing sales (where the offending uniform was purchased) and ask the manager to be sure they are only purchasing pt gear from an approved seller. needless to say i responded "ok shirt, we'll handle it" and walked away. people don't complain about long days and hot ass sun, mortars and not having enough food. people complain about having to deal with bullshit like this.

although i don't have a copy of it, the best patch i saw was from a UPT class years ago that had a guy wearing a flight suit with a parrot on his shoulder and it said "i thought this was pirate training." but that nurse patch is HOT!

i wear dogtags on every flight, and since i am too stupid to remember them on every flight i just wear them all the time. i fly 3-4 times a week and it is eay to remember to always dress the same. also, i dont know any herk guys who fly with a scarf. in fact "rings and scarves removed" is a pretty standard part of the AC brief.

"We would save a lot of money if we never actually flew!! No fuel burn and no Mx costs, it's a little ridiculous!! We used to use a standard "ramp load" for training sorties, the we significantly reduced this load for "fuel savings measures", now instead of doing assaults at 120K we were doing them a 104K, very negative and worthless training!! Again, looks real good on paper, why go out and fly a training sortie if it's unrealistic, only to go try and do the real thing on a rainy cloudy night to a no kidding dirt LZ in the middle of Afghanistan at 125K and destroy the aircraft and kill the crew, because your training was flawed because of a fuel savings program, some of this stuff is not quantifiable to folks unfamiliar with Ops" i could not have said it any better burt. you are never saving anything by neutering training.

"In Herks, you don't want to tanker gas more because it's a performance/payload-limiting issue than a conservation issue" i guess that depends on how much gas you're talking about. if i take off at 125K vs 120K barring some unusual temp or pressure altitude it usually doesnt hurt my performance. and thats my point-- AMC fuel conservation SII prevents me from putting on a couple extra thousand pounds even though i think i may need it. so i understand the emphasis on strat air/tanker guys not putting on too much when you are dealing with tens of thousands of pounds. but i have flown maybe 5 missions where the 'costs gas to carry gas' performance data applies. mostly its me wanting more gas and being denied an extra 3 thousand pounds. i just dont understand the logic of trying to order hercs not to keep a little extra on when tankers are flying around with their gear down or dumping.

alright, here is what i don't understand about fuel conservation measures. how does putting less gas on board save gas? if you tanker more gas and have extra when you land, thats just less gas you have to put back on, right? i know you reach a point where it costs gas to carry gas due to a heavier weight aircraft, i've just never really been at that point. so is this only a real factor for the strat air types? because as a herc guy it all seems a little silly. AMC SII fuel conservation measures means i can't ask for an extra 5K on board to do pro after a tac ride; it doesnt mean any gas is saved per se, only that additional training was not accomplished. and deployed, i dont feel like i am saving gas since they fill it back up as soon as i land anyway. so if someone could offer some insight i would appreciate it.

you're right man, i forgot entirely about the C12 option. and i also knew a few copilots in alaska that were sent to C17s recently when they took over for no reason other than being in the right place at the right time. i know there are weird things that pop up every now and then, but for the most part phoenix is the primary means of switching airframes without leaving the MAJCOM. and you're also right that UAVs leave many options open for follow on. we'll see how it works out for those people counting on a UAV slot to give them J models to ramstein in 3 years. and i also neglected to mention the 89th for you senior IP types.

i have also never seen or heard someone doing phoenix out of the herk who was not an IP. and i have never heard of someone leaving the herk for any fighter track. from 130s you can get into other heavies through phoenix or go afsoc or white jets; those are the only ways to change airframes while staying active duty.