Vito

Fix to fix, especially in the Tweet, was the reason 50% of studs washed out back in the day! Bust a check for a muffed fix to fix, then the vultures would start circling.....a vicious cycle., and very unfair to guys who would have been great pilots in the real Air Force.

So it seems like the same amount of check rides, just different names..

Can you explain the point about 50% less check rides at UPT? When I went through in 86 we had 3 checks in the Tweet and 3 in the 38. They had just deleted a Low level check in the 38 a class or two prior to mine..so are there only 3 or 4 check rides total in UPT now?

Perhaps this may help to give credence to the myth. When I first inquired about becoming a pilot around the summer of 1984, the recruiter had a worksheet with 7 criteria. Each one was worth 3 points, for a max of 21 points. IIRC some of the criteria were College GPA, Vision, type of College degree, any previous flight time or a PPL and a few others I forgot. I scored a 19, because my GPA was a 3.3 and you needed 3.5 or above to earn a “3,”,and my College degree wasn’t a BS (Science) but a BA, so I got a 2 instead of a 3 due to my lack of a Science/Engineering degree. Because I scored above a certain threshold on this simple survey, He set me up for the AFOQT. There was a minimum score below which one could not qualify for a pilot slot.

Best book I’ve read in years about UPT was, “If You Ain’t a Pilot”. By Ray Wright The most realistic book about UPT back in the day 1988, but also pretty funny and any Pilot can relate to it!

This was UPT in 1986, and those numbers are skewed since some of the graduates were wash-backs from other classes.

I was in one of the last UPT classes with the white helmets 86-87.. Part of UPT tradition was we designed a class patch, and also a class Helmet design. Nobody flew with a plain white helmet.

C-17 and C-141 guy here. The nice thing about the C-17 is jet speeds, jet engines, travel the world, and participate in world events as they happen, like earthquakes, hurricanes, contingencies, evacuations, VIP and Presidential support. For example, I flew into Berlin as the wall was dismantled, Panama invasion, all the wars and skirmishes since 1987. Left 6 years of active duty with 4400 hrs of international heavy jet time, which the airlines love. My buds in Tankers had 1500 hrs total in the same time frame. To be fair that was during the time they sat SAC alert a lot. The nice thing about C-17 is it’s new’ish, you get to taste all missions, Airdrop, tac low level, special ops, Air refueling etc. we had a few Tanker guys transition into my Reserve squadron and they liked the challenge of the mission but complained about all the currency. Either way, if you notice the responses so far, most guys like the plane their flying and enjoy the mission. If your goal is Airlines, I think a KC-46 would be tough to beat nowadays. Good Luck

“Empire Building”. Like the old guy at Charleston AFB in the 80’s and 90’s whose sole job was to sit behind a window and hand out pubs to crews. God forbid your chart got ripped or you needed a new chart or approach plate. I made the mistake of walking into the pubs room and grabbing a chart I needed! He almost called the SP’s on me!

Jeremiah Weed, Great post. A lot of truth there. I experienced a small slice of what your talking about when we transitioned from the 141 to the C-17. The vast majority of my Reserve Bros were Airland only, no tactical, low level, or airdrop experience. Those guys all rose up to the challenge and did a fine job, despite what many predicted. Talking about having some old school skills (3-1 rule, Pencil method) it does come in handy when the “magic” takes a dump. During an AR rendezvous the magic went tits up and my Young Co-Pilot starts pinging about our ARCT timing. I told her to check our ground speed, divide by 60, take that miles per minute number and figure it out. She was amazed, and said, “That’s why I like flying with you old guys, you know all the tricks!” I told her, “it wasn’t a trick, it’s Math.” As far as UPT and IP’s not teaching one to fly, I always felt that UPT wasn’t intended to teach us to fly, it was to overload us with data, stress, and pressure to see if we could handle it. After all, half of my class (87-04) had PPL’s and many of those guys washed out. It wasn’t that they couldnt fly, they just couldn’t handle the stress. I kept my old UPT In-Flight guides, One day I looked at the SIDs, and recoveries and couldn’t believe the complexity and amount of altitude changes etc...they were loading us up intentionally.

Any idea what the next “T” designation will be for the new TX? T-8; T-9????

You have to assume the clamshell canopy just hinges on one side without a motor to open and close it, if that’s correct, you’d save a lot of weight and Mx issues by eliminating the motor and heavy struts that a normal opening canopy requires. Is the T-6 canopy motorized or is it manually operated. I know the -38 was a manual system, never flew a T-6. The TX canopy is huge and it looks damn heavy for a manual operation, even with struts helping out.

Anybody know what the name of the new TX is going to be .T-8? T-11?

It would be refreshing to see this program stick to a timeline and not incur years long delays aka KC-46

A few weeks back, Ryan Gosling and the director of the Neil Armstrong movie held a press conference and it was revealed that the iconic scene of Neal and Buzz planting the US flag on the moon was omitted. When asked why they explained it wasn’t an American achievement but a human achievement blah blah blah...insert your standard politically correct BS...lots of folks were upset about the omission and the comments..I’m still looking forward to it, but I really hope it’s accurate..

I was looking forward to the Neal Armstrong bio-pic “First Man” until the lefty liberals in Hollywood put their spin on it. Still hoping it’s a good flick.

SHACk! Been going on forever, I witnessed the same thing back in 1990 and was a big reason I left AD and joined the Reserves

It’s not so much UPT bases, as bases located in Oklahoma! Steers and queers.

Mooseag03, A little perspective from an “Old Guy”. I went through UPT in 86, back then all the Tweet IP’s were excited about the T-46. One or two actually took a T-37 assignment in the hopes that they’d be flying the -46 before long. None of it panned out! It was a nice aircraft, but the program was so mis-managed by Fairchild that the AF axed the whole program. Then a few years later the AF conducted the JPAT’s competition. Most thought the Cessna jet was a shoe in since it was the only American built jet. The other Jet contenders were foreign built, much like the current T-38 replacement competition. Everyone wrote off the turboprops (T-6, Tucano IIRC) because the AF would never train it’s pilots in a prop!

As goofy as the original Top Gun was, it was a great time to be going through UPT! I was at Columbus in the summer of 86 and after Top Gun premiered, a lot of young pretty faces started showing up at the local bars (both of them! "Good Times, Bonny and Clydes" remember them?). We milked that dumb movie for all it was worth with the ladies. They loved it, and we tried not to disappoint them!

I found this page in our Class history . It's slightly misleading in that the final number of grads includes students who washed back into our class. My class 87-04 CBM had 3 washbacks, so we started with 52 graduated 26 of the original class. We were told we were above average too😀 Class 87-06 was an Academy class, and it sure seemed to some folks that they treated them much better.

We had 2 students who busted a standup and were washed out for it! One guy got so nervous that he passed out, the other screwed it up so royally that the Flt CC and all the IP's went on a rampage against this guy and he busted his next 5 rides, and washed out of 38's. Previously he was a strong student, so they gave him a extra ride or two, but he was shell shocked and couldn't recover...CBM 86-87l. And none of the IP's were our "Bro" they were actually not allowed to fraternize with students, even off base over a beer etc.. a different time for sure.

Think he's related to the famous P-51 ace of WWII Don Gentile?

I was flying outbound from the sandbox, and I called my wife who informed me that my Son had just soloed in his Cessna 152! I was on cloud nine the rest of the flight.

Great point!