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Glad to see my airline/union assisting UPS/IPA in their time of mourning and assist bringing Captain Diamond home to rest.

i totally agree that UPT cuts are seriously degrading the quality of the product. But don't conflate the UPT syllabus cuts with a need to create a new ACE program: even with a robust UPT syllabus like I went through many moons ago, the ACE Program was extremely beneficial for the new co-pilots. Story time: I remember back in the 2005-2006 time frame, there was a Langley F-22 at Hill AFB whose crew chief lost control of the landing gear pin during ground ops, and the pin got sucked down an engine. IIRC $6.8M in damage. That year, at Beale, our T-38 CT Program was run on a budget of around $6M for ~3700 hours of flying time. Think about that. That's around 3,000 SORTIES in a T-38... for $800,000 less than the cost of a single Raptor FOD incident. My experience in the Beale T-38 CT Program has made me such a better U-2 pilot and overall aviator than I would ever be without it. A magnitude better. There is so much that could be done to make our USAF aviators "that much better"... but the AF leadership will simply not invest the pennies... and I do mean "pennies"... to make it happen. It's no longer a priority. I hope I am proved wrong on my last statement.

a bit generous referring to them as people 😁

I think this about the 5th cycle of colored shirts and name tags in my career. Thankfully I’ve been able to mostly ignore all of the knee jerk decisions and keep doing the right thing: morale shirts and call sign name tags (and no hat/sunglasses on head), as God intended.

My only comparison to heavies is the airlines, which I know isn’t apples to apples, but I don’t think it’s far off much of the time. These styles of flying allow for significant decay of stick/rudder skills and dealing with EPs/abnormals/unintended events that require them (vs. manipulating automation/simply pushing buttons). It is a disservice to young pilots especially not having ACE - the mil is holding them back on advancing their skills/maintaining solid proficiency. There’s a lot of airline pilots who could really use some GA time for this reason, and the ones who don’t care and rest on their 6900 airline hours don’t seem to realize they don’t really have 6900 hrs of flying, they have 6900 hrs of managing computers and rinse/repeating the same taxi flows/departures/arrivals (over generalization a bit, but point remains).

I bet those T-37 hours were probably 10% the cost of -135 hours and at that point in your flying career twice as valuable in building airmanship. Resurrect ACE, fly COs after UPT thru a solid 300 hour min program. Give the new ACE program T-6s from AETC (after an avionics update) then recapitalize UPT with PC-21s, T-6Cs or M-345s… or this training aircraft offered by Grob https://gaf-aerospace.com/tpx-cobra-en.html#:~:text=The TPX is a low-wing%2C side-by-side%2C two-seater,turboprop engine with 750 HP%2C 7-blade propeller. One more thing, ACE was unfortunately before my day but I believe it was there to give COs flying hours they weren’t getting sitting alert to assure pilot development and to aid the development and timing of Aircraft Commander eligible (by hours) pilots of whatever aircraft they were assigned. Good for the pilot and good for the Air Force. ACE 2.0 would serve the same / similar rationale, cheaper flight hours developing Aircraft Commander eligible pilots sooner, less expensive and less wear and tear on an already well utilized fleet of aircraft

Sadly, none of this surprises me. The more I learn, the more jaded I get toward our military/political leadership and what kept us in the never ending quagmires since 9/11. This is proof that no one is immune to the government trying to fuck you and make your life a living hell if you piss off the wrong person. It also puts a spotlight on the hypocrisy around the different spanks for different ranks. Never mind the unwillingness of people to do the right thing so as not to upset their careers. Here's hoping the current administration will fix this situation. Funny sidenote on the point they make about being "frozen" in the rank your retired/left the service. Our OG received a call from a FDX guy about a squadron mate who had the audacity to take MLOA during peak. The dude introduced himself as Maj Gen XXX and to our OG's credit, he made a point to let him know that his retired rank didn't mean shit, then prompted told him to go fuck himself, the MLOA was legit.

To whom it may concern. Will the person at the O-club Friday night who drew dick pics in our flight caps please provide new hats. Sincerely, Col. Harry Balzac & Col. Hugh P. Ness

Leave the kids alone. If the boomers hadn't raped every institution and convention for their own advantage, all the while incinerating the housing market, suppressing interest rates, saddling every 22 year old with crippling debt, and inventing "too big to fail," maybe the younger generation wouldn't look toward something different. The American Dream was raped by the generation that cried out for free-love and no war until they got in power to give us a corporatist government and endless wars. Now they don't like that their kids are skeptical of their promises. No small wonder. Socialism is a nightmare, but you have to be blind to think this is just about lazy young adults. 😂

Watching POTUS realize that Putin is a menace in real time has been entertaining.

Well, looks you got your answer.

Correction: ACE did not end when SAC went away. It remained within the newly-formed ACC until summer 1994 (maybe '95) when General Loh cancelled the program literally overnight. In my opinion, this was one more indicator of the lack of understanding that officers like Loh and many of the other ACC generals with fighter backgrounds had WRT to the non-fighter platforms under their command. Although I was never in ACE, I have many friends and classmates that flew as ACE co-pilots, or that were assigned to ACE as instructor pilots. I have a lot of experience with the CT Program at Beale, which ran in conjunction with ACE until the ACE portion was killed. You pose a number of questions, Clark. Bottom line: the ACE Program was a cost effective and solid aviation method for getting low-time co-pilots some much-needed quality flying experience. Not to mention, it made pilots very happy that they were able to fly... actually fly anywhere they wanted to go, and work on developing their new aviation skill sets. Imagine that... happy pilots working to better their fundamental aviation skills. For a brief period of time, Beale RQ-4 pilots were flying Beale aero club aircraft in an ACE-like program. Pennies on the dollar. Of course, it was cancelled. But it showed that with a tiny bit of thought and effort... and not much money... something positive could be done. The short-sightedness of Gen Loh and his staff was very unfortunate. Bringing back an even better version of the ACE Program should be done today. In both ACC and AMC.

The putin simps like bashi are confused because they got played. They thought they were voting for an idea (pro-putin) but now they realize their idol’s hurt feelings and chase for a Nobel prize are way more important.

Unfortuantely, there are experience and recency blind spots no matter where you find yourself in the aviation industry. When bringing guys in to fly the B-24 and B-29, I am looking for a mix of: - Multi-pilot, multiengine, "professional" flying - Day/VFR GA flying - Tailwheel experience There are a lot of other desirable traits, but these are the ones that keep the airplanes from getting wrecked.

If you give the government the power to feed you then you give the government the power to starve you.

Be more like Boyd... https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/advice/john-boyds-roll-call-do-you-want-to-be-someone-or-do-something/

So he can’t influence vendors to charge less for a beer at the dude’s own event…but…come Jan 1st he’ll be able to influence property owners to reduce/stop increases when it comes to charging rent.

Yall were enjoying it too much.....cancel that shit now!

Engines are numbered left to right... for those unaware like I was at one point. Brabus... In the Viper or F-35, that would be "#1".

On that being said "arg"...I declare DIBs Before "Biff_T"!

Weed stench, incessant beggering, homeless that don't want help and just want to be assholes, $18 beers.* But hey, there's a Packers bar there with Pliny on tap. * I know, I probably described every mega city.

Detroit was technically too be to fail too. Been there recently? Given communist rule, ANY city is fully capable of collapsing and consuming itself.

Yeah while it's an interesting conversation in an academic sense, the simple reality is that the people who view flying as an unfortunate necessity and impediment to ladder climbing are not going to do anything but the bare minimum to train and keep pilots trained. The bare minimum will be discovered by gradually reducing flying experience until too many planes crash to ignore the problem.

This is from the cheap seats, but everything being discussed in this thread strikes me as the whole point of pilot training. What am I missing? What is the USAF missing? Is this a serious proposal? We cut pilot training in half, but then add a program like this shortly thereafter? WTFO?

One more idea, in another thread this may have come up but what if ACE 2 were run at one or several centralized bases and participants TDY’d in for recurrency and a set training profile, like recurrency flights then an intense 2-3 weeks flying schedule. Figure 3-5 training programs. Since it would be about a one month TDY, the interference factor from home base could be eliminated.

No, no…you have it all wrong. The progressives told us it was a Republican shutdown.

Won't matter soon, free/cheap beer at all those soon to be city owned/run grocery stores.

Being a pilot wasn't enough reason for them?? 😁😆

You are not far off the target, my time in tankers 01-05 had a LOT of one to a full stop at the Died flying essentially the same mission 2-3 days in a row. Complacency and expectation bias was a real CRM / ORM issue. Variety is the spice of life and necessary in the development of a military aviator

I've gotta go dig in my tubs of ol' USAF shit to find my "WSO Hater Union" card I was once presented at a roll call. Looks like I have others to pass that along to here. Wish I could remember the occasion for which I was awarded it.

All things being equal, I'd rather have the gas.

I learned in a Supercub that had a 135HP Lycoming...it was a beast and I thought normal ops for a Cub. There is NOTHING like slipping a Cub (or other taildragger), over the tree to a greaser one wheel landing on the grass....best if done at Sunset. I am currently shopping airpark runway options. I looked at a 5280' grass strip on 80 acres two weeks ago. Looking at 361 acres this week.

Is she dinosaur bait? I think Republicans need to give up on tough-talking women. I'll take the soft spoken Condoleezza Rice and Amy Coney Barrett over Sarah Palin, Marjorie Taylor green, Lauren Bogart, Christy noam, or Kari Lake

It's late, I'm drunk. IAW the he man woman haters club handbook At 14:15 reminds me of taking my first wife 4 wheeling on the Eglin reservation back in the 80s. Good times Also at 21:36 there's a door in my barn just like that

I want to see her wearing those chaps with no jeans.

Just listened to it. I’m not really surprised by any of it, but it is still absolutely blood boiling. I hope the Trump admin steps in and rights this egregious wrong.

Currently fly this bird, this all tracks perfectly. Hard to land well, but feels good when you do. The power pulls are wild too, especially a 30 flap. Something unsettling about pulling power at 200-250 feet.

just awesome, it's like we're all in a race to find the bottom

Russia made a robot. It's a perfect copy of a drunk Ruskie.

I agree. I think the right is underestimating the political energy and direction politics is headed in this country, mostly in big cities. I think socialism and open support for violence against the right is taking hold of a larger and larger percentage of the population. The question is, when will the dems find a way to remove themselves from the violent leftist progressives? Let the progressive’s behavior and ideas stand on their own outside of the Democratic Party. This country desperately needs bad examples and we are about to get two of them, one in NYC and the other in Seattle.

Don’t want to veer off topic too much and fantasize this plane or that one but…. this jet, yes it’s a kit plane, could be the basis for what could be a great ACE CT aircraft https://www.kitplanes.com/viperjet-redux/ Like a modern Folland Gnat, small light quick nimble and cheap in jet aircraft terms. It would be modified some for sure if adopted for an ACE or CT aircraft but the basics I think are handled.

Your age is a pretty glaring factor. It’s extremely hard to get hired by a fighter unit when you’d be going to UPT near/at the age waiver requirement. It happens occasionally, but data shows it’s very rare. I think many units won’t even entertain interviewing someone who’s in that position, regardless of how stellar their app is otherwise. When a unit sees your app vs. a very similar app (but the guy is 23), they’ll take the 23 yr old 9.9/10. Your best bet is keep submitting apps, but hit your home unit with all you got - put in the extra time to interact with pilots as much as possible, make it known ASAP to them you are excited to be a CC, but your ultimate desire is to fly in the Wing. Your home unit is probably your best bet given your timeline. If no luck by 30, I’d start throwing out apps to heavy units if you really want to fly mil. If you don’t want that bad enough/fighters or bust, then so be it, but be at peace with the decision and never flying for the mil (if it comes to that).

It feels like a pipe dream, but I hope there is a successful movement on the “near” left (e.g. the mid 90s Dem mindset citizens) to establish a new party and send the Dems the way of the Green Party. AOC, etc. can enjoy their irrelevancy on ballots and in the public square. We don’t want everyone to be in lock step with one party - we need rational debate and different ideas, as well as shifting leadership over time (e.g. not having one party dominate for decades). But we also do not want a socialist shit show party who hates everything about America and wants to completely reinvent it into an abomination.

easiest problem to solve and a no brainer.

Good news, good times are here again! Our biggest problem as a service has been solved. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/air-force-callsigns-nametags-morale-t-shirts/

Had I remarried earlier in life I would have done the airpark thing. Big regret after owning an RV-4 for 20 years and an RV-8 for 10. Lot of wasted $$$ on hangars. Thousands of landings w/o a ground loop BUT when it comes to tail draggers, gotta know your limits. Here I am at Red Wing AP, WI waiting out the x-winds at my home airport in MN:

UPDATE (6 Nov 25 / 1230 CST): Since I haven't heard from lilyelliott4, and his profile is suspect (IP addresses), Ihe's been banned. ADMIN NOTE: Thanks, I wasn't tracking until you mentioned it; then I looked at his posts and all followed the same style. I admit I use AI to grab info, but all of his responses look like they are completely AI generated. lilyelliott4, your account is locked. PM me if you aren't a bot and I will consider unlocking it. Otherwise, it'll be deleted shortly. p.s., I also removed the Thai fitness webpage link. Sorry guys, but there wasn't anything interesting on there! I had to check for the good of BaseOps! 😁😁