261 replies to this topic

[ATIS]

Will never forget this: One muggy Pcola day I crawl into a T-39 at VT-86 for a low-level ride with two of my other buds. G-man and myself have our self made low level charts and radar predictions for our portion of the flight. Third guy gets in...C/S "P".... and pulls out his chart and predictions. He then proceeds to pull out individual low level charts and predictions he created for the instructor and the TRACOR T-39 pilot.
Now our instructor was a salty, bean-stalk tall A-6 B/N who a few years earlier earned some air medals for flying under power lines in Iraq avoiding AAA/SAMS (GW#1) and still managed to get his LGB's on-target/shack, and our TRACOR pilot was a A-4/A-7 Vietnam vet with more green ink in his logbook and things shot at him than Jesus Christ himself. The look on their faces was priceless when Q handed them their own personal charts. G-Man and I were just sitting there ready to pound this bag of douche. The pilot just threw his someplace in the cockpit to his left (I was sitting in the rear[STS])...and the instructor just rolled his eyes and handed them back (he could fly the route with no chart as I found out on a later flight). Don't be a D-bag trying to snob the teachers or leadership...help your buddies that might be struggling. Party on your time off and put your nose in the books and chair-fly the shit out of things to get ready for game time.
My class leader was a Marine Capt who had just come from OV-10's as an observer and was tracking/transitioning toward the F/A-18D WSO program. Nobody has ever had higher grades in VT-86 before or since 'Hap'. He already knew how to do everything, heck...he was forward observing and telling half the VT-86 A-6 Intruder pilots and B/N's instructor staff where to put their bombs a few years earlier (again, ref GW#1). **It wasn't the grades that he was known for...it was the fact that every day he was in the ready room quietly talking to the instructors and looking over grades to see who in the class was struggling and he went out of his way to help those students improve**. He would chair-fly and critique in a non-hammering way and that was priceless. I pink slipped my low level check ride on my ######ing birthday not soon after the above D-Bag event (with the same salty instructor, who cut me some slack because of the haze on the route and gave me a two below = no pink). Hap was right there the next day offering advice and assistance to get my head back in the game. Hap went on to a fine career (sqd CO) and I even think he was in county when I was (we might have shared some airspace in a stack or two). Unfortunately I never had the opportunity to thank him since he passed a few years ago in a civil air accident. Be Hap, don't be "P".

Apologize for the long read folks.

Cheers
Collin

Edit: damn font size, and changed the C/S to protect the guilty.

Edited by ATIS, 15 May 2013 - 03:22 PM.

[B0neWs0]

CDAWG, on 15 May 2013 - 02:03 PM, said:

I'm not at Pcola yet, I'll be heading there at the end of September. My question for you is, how are people ranked? What aspects of training and other things go into creating a score? I'm curious how someone could #### over their classmates, are people given the opportunity to throw their bros under the bus to make them look good in training?

You are ranked based off of everyday events such as tests, simulator sessions (T-6 and T-1), and flights including T-25 sims (this being the big one esp. checkrides and/or end of block rides in the T-25), your flight commander ranking goes in there as well. When I went through I never really saw people "throwing people under the bus" but what I will say is that you can def. tell who in your class is struggling and who is not. Help out those who are. I remember sitting down with a couple of guys and helping them out when they hooked checkrides or even daily rides. Do it for the right reason though! Don't do it to hold it over their head like they owe you, do it because these are guys that you want to see graduate with you and not get rolled back.