RIPs

[barney]

do you get a new RIP every time you enter a new phase of training or do you just get one for the whole thing.

clarify:

i got a RIP for CSO traning and it said the cour is going to be 172 days long. that does not seem right, I am assuming that i will get a new when that first phase is up.

please enlightin

[barney]

tour not cour

a new one

[PET-Shot]

It's 172 training days (week days-not to include weekends/holidays). That training timeline starts once your class begins, not when you report. You will be in San Antonio a lot longer than that. Approx 1 year, maybe shorter if you are lucky.

A RIP is just a recursor to orders; PCS, training, etc.

[PET-Shot]

172 training days is about 9 months give or take.

[NUKE]

Nav school at Randolph is only 9 months long? Holy crap, what do they teach you, how to use a whiz wheel, a chart, and thats it?

[dontshavemyhead]

i could teach my dog to use a whiz wheel, plotter, chart, as well as how to use the -D> button on a g430 in 9 months.

im betting they do more than that

[PET-Shot]

Randolph is quite different than Pcola. That is why they plan on combining both school there in 4 or 5 years. I did not find the Nav side all that exciting so I tracked EWO. It's quite a bit more challenging than the Nav side. I know you Pcola guys come and take classes with us EWOs, though I didn't have any in my class.

I just got my wings a few weeks ago and I already forgot how to use the whiz wheel. J/K. Though I won't be doing much of that anymore anyways as a RC EWO. Guess my first 5 months of nav training were just FYI.

But seriously, the training was invaluable. So they tell us. Ha!

Grandpa

[Scooter14]

Originally posted by Grandpa:

I just got my wings a few weeks ago and I already forgot how to use the whiz wheel. J/K. Though I won't be doing much of that anymore anyways as a RC EWO. Guess my first 5 months of nav training were just FYI.

But seriously, the training was invaluable. So they tell us. Ha!

Grandpa

Grandpa,

You laugh, but I went through when EWOs were coming out of PCola only, they started there and finished there. I was in the second to last class to start at RND, and I tracked Nav and stayed there. No clue about navigation.

NSTFS, my first trip to Saudi, I'm sitting there, DRing away like a good little nav, and one of the Navy-trained EWOs comes up front.

EWO - "So, where are we?"

Me - (pointing to my chart) "Right here"

"Really?"

"Yup"

"How do you know that?"

"Because I'm a navigator. It's kind of my job to know where we are."

"Well, how do you know that?"

(we just happened to be on UA1, about to cross the toe of the boot of Italy)

"Well, we have this radar here, and that's Italy right here, and this box right here puts these coordinates on our screen, and I know how fast we are going and our heading and our drift so I..."

"Oooooh. What's that? (pointing to dividers and plotter)"

Yup, those were the navigator wing wearing EWOs of the late 90s. Granted, most were smarter than that, but it floored me how little exposure they got to actually directing an aircraft.

[PET-Shot]

I do actually think it is valuable that we get training in both areas (nav, ewo). It never hurts to be knowledgable on what everyone does on board. The new CSO concept will make us more versitile and more of an asset than just a nav or ewo or wso. After all, it takes a crew to get the mission done. We can always be there to back each other up.