ViperStud

You are a SNAP, and unfortunately there are a lot of you running around. I have spent a lot of time crushing SNAP attitudes the past several years, and you are no different. You have wandered into a place where you have access to a lot of people who have been there, done that. STFU and listen. Stop trying to defend yourself. You are talking back to people who take dumps that are tougher than you. You have no credibility in this world, so don't go offensive (even though you see it as defensive) on anyone; shut up and listen.

Dude, you don't have thick enough skin to be a pilot. Pilots are blunt and sarcastic, and you are too sensitive. Don't waste a pilot slot. Have you thought about being a figure skater?

If "stay in one place" is a must-have, don't join as a pilot. UPT will be in one place, then a PCS to your FTU then another PCS to your ops unit for ~ 3 yrs. You will have two more assignments (both requiring moves) before your commitment is up. Your family will have to move. There is a chance you could homestead (stay somewhere for a very long time) if you get a B-1/52 or MC-12 but that would be a huge roll of the dice. Sounds like you are ok with deployments but do you want to be gone 200+ days like a C-17 driver? There are simply too many airframes that will not meet your "requirements" so you need to figure out what is more important - flying or your flavor of stability. That, or bite the bullet and go in knowing that you will bail after your UPT commitment, at the ripe young age of ~34.

True. I should not have been so flippant. Too much I guess. How much is too much? I guess it depends on the person, but who goes through to process to become a pilot without paying attention to the demands of the job? Shit, spec ops, sky cops an CE guys are gone all the time. Some pilots more than others - again part of the job. You don't just wake up one day as a UPT grad, you jump through a lot of hoops to make it happen. If you want a job where you'll be home all the time, BKIH. You don't owe the AF shit once your time is up so if you want to punch then do so, but you should know going in that time away from home is a given. It's what we do. A year-long stretch at Shaw I was gone for 70% of the time, and our tasking was ONE. YGBSM.

Dude I get it but I don't at the same time. I am no company man, not by a longshot, and I need to make the same decision in a year, assuming the bonus is still around. Stay or go should be about a lot more than a deployment. Deployments are part of what we do. I leave for shitholestan in November. I'll sport bitch as much as the next guy but get the ###### over it, we are in the military and we deploy. Quit acting like a pariah when it comes your time to go downrange.

Just a nuggets up - I've ordered two watches from them and just received my chronospace last month. The aerospace took a year and the chronospace took almost 18 months, but they claimed there were extenuating circumstances there and gave us a $100 rebate. If you think you'll have them in time for Christmas you might need to re-cage your expectations. Good luck with the order.

Great kid - one of my studs at Luke and the kind of full-up dude you want in a fighter squadron. Mano, we'll miss you brother!

Him, him...

Nickel on the grass

Exactly my point. If the dude spent all 10-12K on gourmet chefs and French maids how is it different from renting a place at a high-end condo that provides the same amenities? Ok so then how much is he allowed to profit, $50, $500, $5000? Who makes that call and why? Agree the gift cards are idiotic. Other stuff could fall under "services" but that's a blatant kickback.

I'd be interested to see what the big deal is. Shady on the part of the pit pad owners? Sure. But from the AF perspective what difference does it make? Is it somehow more noble to pay Hilton that $109/nt? They may have actually saved the AF money since the hotel would be charging tax...

0, 1, 0, 0. And I'm in Enid...the last one appears to be sucking it in, someone needs to smack her in the small of the back to let the fupa loose.

Sure, wtf not

Shack. Granted, blues Mondays never got to me because no one ever really followed it where I was at. I'm all for a few quick fixes but there are some pretty serious cultural and policy issues right now that would really make a difference: - 11F shortage - KC-X and F-X procurement buffoonery - Corporate culture where enslisted treat officers like work buddies (starts at the top - the last graduation I was at the introduction included the wing command chief being introduced before the O-6 Group CCs. Seriously an E-9 given props over a Colonel, that shit trickles down...which is why TSgts feel they can callout field graders which I have seen first-hand) - Promotion system that rewards square-filling above all else (the problem is bigger than AADs, if they disappear some other queep will replace it) - How we spend money on BS we don't need for fear that it will "disappear" if we don't - too big of a monster for anyone to take on, but he'd be my hero if he did If he could tackle any two of the above during his tenure I'd call it a success. I'm not holding my breath. That being said, best of luck to the man.

Skip Gary. They might have a fuel contract but the chances of making it through a night or two without getting shivved are slim. Gary is easily in the "top ten biggest shitholes in the country" list for anyone who has been through the midwest.

Him him. Had some good times together brother - you'll be missed by many.

Searched 11-202v3 and the airframe specifc vol 3 and couldn't find this - isn't there some restriction as to how much down time you need when you cross X amount of time zones on a trip, whether for work OR personal travel? I'm sure it's different for fighter versus heavy (augmented) crews but I remember this being a factor when I crossed the Pacific and it came up again after some personal travel but I couldn't find where it was mentioned.

Stop claiming to be doing this in the best interests of PIT dudes when you could have "made more" getting two houses and renting them traditionally. ~$40/day for a 3 br house equates to $3600/mo for one house, probably more than the combined rent you'd see from two houses rented traditionally, and you only had to buy one house, not two! Now I realize occupancy is not always 100% and you pay the utilities (deductible BTW) but owning a PIT pad is still more lucrative than renting the house traditionally. That is, if people are allowed to stay there.

Just left PIT and it's not just being used to prevent people from getting full perdiem. Even if your plan is to refuse govt quarters and go to a PIT pad at the exact same cost to Uncle Sam, commanders are forbidding it and referencing this letter. Finance guy, is that legit? It goes deeper than saving money, they are trying to funnel all the money back into the base by forcing people to stay at billeting. The quality of life difference between the postage stamp billeting rooms and a PIT pad is substantial. At $1200/mo you are getting ripped off at billeting. They even give you the added benefit of rooming an O-5 next to an A1C, we had a lot of issues with 20 yr olds up all night partying. If I owned a PIT pad I'd try to fight it. It's not a matter of saving money, it's a matter of taking away options that the JFTR allows.

Pawnman, if recent history teaches us anything it's that the course will not be fixed. I hope I'm wrong but I take the more cynical approach. Unfortunately the writer shacked it by pointing out that the SOS instructors are the bottom-feeders of their peer groups. That applies for the overwhelming majority of the cadre. Who the F wants to leave a cockpit from the Ops/FTU/UPT world to do that? Apparently the drug deal is that SOS instructors get a guaranteed school slot on the back end (or their SOS tour counts as school - forget how it was explained to me by my SOS instructor), so the dudes going there to teach are the same back-stabber careerist types that went to SOS and had their sights set on DG from day one. The SOS system is a self-licking ice cream cone that encourages career underachievers to either (A) turn on their "High Speed" switch for a single TDY in hopes of getting a DG or (B) go back there to teach with a guarantee of IDE in-residence credit on the back end, which is essentially a back-door way to Lt Col for someone who would never have been selected for promotion/school in the first place. Unfortunately the bullshit fake leadership of the "student council" types passes as legit, because the instructors evaluating them were the SAME PEOPLE 4-5 years ago as SOS students. When I was there a few years back we were the "test class" for the big debate that was to take the place of the academic test. Is the debate still part of the curriculum? Our topic was - the fundamental qualities of good leadership are timeless and apply to ancient cultures just the same as they do to present day society. Talk about dry content. Needless to say the whole debate was not taken seriously. During the hotwash I asked our instructor (turns out the debate was his brainchild) why they had chosen such a stupid topic. If they wanted us to get involved why not give us something topical that we could get our arms around and really debate? His response was that it was an appropriate topic for the premiere military leadership school in the world (he really said that). He asked what would be better. I literally chuckled, then said I'd give him two examples (1) Get the F out of Afghanistan and (2) allow gays to openly serve in the military. After about 10 seconds of classic deer-in-headlights blank staring, he went into some mindless drivel about those topics being too controversial. My response was that no intelligent person could call us the premiere blah blah blah in the world if we are afraid to tackle a controversial topic. Again, blank stare and eventual subject change. My point is that making SOS useful would take real thought and a lot of work because it would have to be rebuilt from the ground up. There is no hope whatsoever for the cadre there to enact such change because they are exactly the back-door promotion careerist types that have benefited from the system as it stands. They truly believe they are doing the right thing and that SOS is "cutting edge." WTF are we going to do, can the upper half of SOS cadre and non-vol some quality ops/mx/intel dudes from the CAF/MAF to start over? That's what it would take. Not gonna happen because no one has the balls to do it.

I've been at Luke long enough to say there is not much fat in the syllabus. Cut an AHC/TR ride and 1 or 2 SA/DT rides? OK. Remove O/D/HA-BFM demo-prof rides (rumor only at this point) and make them PTT for ACM? VERY bad idea, particularly because it makes it harder to bust dudes that need more looks. Cut 5 rides and you get less of a full-up round, no way around that. Plus, when you cut several rides you also need to cut SSRs like NVG rejoins, radar recoveries, SFOs and time spent in a CAS wheel, all of which have contributed to fatalities recently. Would one more square filled have prevented them? Who knows, but fewer exposures is not the answer. Bad timing for said cuts considering that CAF units want to trim their MQT syllabi so they don't have to have a dude spend two months in MQT before being a CAS wingman. I think they know they are sacrificing quality. They didn't say "more capable wingman" but rather maintaining "key combat skills," even though it sounds a LOT like more with less. Tough to tie future mishaps to any specific syllabus change, which is why we will continue to whittle away at training and call it an acceptable risk. Hell, by that time said generals will be either long since promoted or clogging up the local commisary in their retiree-isue Buick, so no sweat off their balls. Bottom line - the CAF bubbas will continue to make it happen, even if it means sacrificing training. No way around it though, the quality of the product goes down.

Old gouge. Current/qual guys in the Viper world, especially IPs, are increasingly staying in the jet. At Luke, we've seen most guys getting Viper assignments unless some other PFA takes precedence (join-spouse or application to another community) or unlucky (ie the only Maj-select being rack-stacked against all Majs with leadership that puts him auto-bottom). Been that way for 2-3 assignment cycles. CAF is not too different. 38s have a lot of bomber drivers, particularly because most of those dudes are dying to do it. Not a shot at all, just look at PIT classes and you see tons of Buff/Bone dudes.

What is the current status of 38 pit out at Randolph wrt non-As? Showing up there soon and want to gameplan for my living situation the next several months.

Thank the good man upstairs he got out OK. Vipers have a tendency to crimp right around the cockpit area if they nose-over into the ground. Most of us talk about trying out the seat if we're going off-roading at much more than a normal taxi speed. Good on him.

Any recent war stories with USAA vs others with car insurance? I have them beat by what amounts to 200-300/yr with another company. Other said company also had some spotty reviews in that family members had two claims with them that were fought tooth and nail and they ended up not getting full money for their repairs. They were even apparently told to deal with the other person's insurance for some claims because the accident was the other person't fault; that is not how it is supposed to work. Trying to figure out if the rumors of USAA's great customer service, at least in the auto insurance arena, are worth a little extra money. That being said I haven't had a claim in my 9 years of coverage with them so I'm not sure how valuable great customer service is if I never have to use it.