Notch

Fellas, I was a POC for a group buy of airwolfs a few years back. We had 37 made. I was stationed in England at the time and I met the dude at RIAT. If you give him a call or email, he might point you in the direction of someone in the CONUS or you could use him. http://www.andrewmichaels.co.uk Good luck! Notch

Sorry about your experience. That just plain sucks that an evaluator is that small minded. The issue you talk about is just nuts. My "engine failure" on takeoff happened about .69 seconds after brake relase and was a non-event. Have you heard of any other similar experiences there? Can you bring it up with the FAA? We heard what they make when we were down in Arlington as well. It was tough to hear that they make about $1250 a month prior to taxes but they are there building time for the regionals. Most of the guys in Dallas were happy about having a job. Just remember that if we weren't part of the USAF, we would all be looking for someone to pay for 1500 hours of multi time. Sure, there are jobs in the industry that pay more but these guys are using the company for its leverage at getting them interviews too...win-win, mostly anyway.

I just went to Arlington this week. The 2 day course was just the right amount of flying to feel somewhat comfortable. The IPs they have there are very young and mostly graduates of their course building time to get their ATP. Don't expect a USAF style briefing before or after the flight. It's much more relaxed and even a bit disorganized (scheduling of aircraft). Overall, the training portion went fine...nothing to write home about however. The big deal everyone is worried about is the check ride. I had their "usual" evaluator and he was extremely fair. His son is a marine -130 pilot....questions he asked came straight out of the piper seminole training supplement and only a few standard instrument flying questions (what's RAIM). The flight was a mix of 3 small airports under the class B with him giving you "vectors" while actually flying VFR. The other evaluator is a older gentlemen who used to be a USAF -135 pilot and has been flying for literally 50 years and has 20k + total flying time. The other two guys I went with both checked with him. He takes his time (lunch break after the oral) but is extrememly fair as well. He has a tendency to talk about random topics and both of the other dudes claim he only asked about 4 real questions during the eval. He flies a different profile than my evaluator at an airport just outside the dfw class b but again VFR flying while getting vectors from him. Most of the flying is under foggles... I'd recommend that anyone going to fly the seminole get a PDF copy of the POH and download the training supplement off of the all atps student site. Overall, the only thing painful in the process was seeing the credit card bill. Questions, let me know.. Notch

WIC also applies since it is advanced flying training.

Let the troll die...

What does this have to do with anything? Something wrong with being proud of what you do? Something else wrong with a pilot wearing a breitling? Stop trolling.

I was the POC for a Mildenhall order of watches. The order took about 8 months total. Just be ready for that timeline. The watches are amazing though. Hopefully it won't take that long!

At ATA this year, HAF A1 gave a brief called "MAF-apocalypse" and their message is below (I do not necessarily believe everything here, so don't kill the messenger and I am paraphrasing): - Pilot retention in the MAF is not an issue...it's the CAF is broken (we all seem to know this, but they backed it up with numbers) -- The CAF issues are the cause of MAF dudes taking MC-12, RPA and traditionally filled CAF staff billets. --- The source of the problem is that the CAF has enough pilots for cockpits but not in the staff roles. That is why pointy-nosed dudes are getting Ops tours back to back to back. --- The above problem has caused he MAF to OVERPRODUCE pilots in the past few years...this could be a problem in the future. - Pilot retention in general requires a 60-69% (or close to that) ACP take rate due to the number of Lt Col and Col billets available. --This fiscal year the bonus was about in the sweet spot of where A1 wants to be. The segments that are lower were given 50% up front (RPA, etc) - A1 is looking at the "Airline" issue but... --their numbers stem from contractors looking at airlines like Southwest and Up with FedEx and UPS. --Currently their predictions are that the AF as a whole is doing just fine becuse of the numbers published on the link above -- A1 is powerless to do much unless people start punching (they have to be reactive and not proactive) - the ACP will see no major changes until FY15 at the earliest and is currently being coord'd to be $35k per year. if $35k can't fix A1's issues they may offer the 20 or the 25 year bonus again but is not likely. --This years ACP was hinted to be the same as last year with a message being published sometime after January. Again, don't kill the messenger but sitting through this brief the numbers they showed seemed logical. If anyone else was there...feel free to fill in the blanks. -Notch

I got a chance to meet these guys last year at battle creek. Good bunch of guys. They threw a BBQ for all of the military guys (blue angels included). They had 4 or 5 of the L-39's on the ramp near the hangar. We got to mess around with them for a bit. Some of the jets did have the seats operational but others did not. I can't recall if his did or not.

Nope. Never have been. You could possibly change when you were about to get on the rotator but they are not authorized on civilian airliners....sucks... I can't figure out why it's cool to fly in ABU's but not a flight suit. Maybe the shoes feel like its "unprofessional"

The only thing you forgot to mention here is that the tanker uses gas too... The -135 burns about (give or take...the lighter it is the less it is) 10K an hour. If you put a tanker in an anchor for fighter support for 3 hours (assuming a pre and post VUL tank) you just burned 30K of fuel plus the required offload for the fighter flight. You now have to include the cost of the tanker in your equation too...If you do the long division on that, it might actually be cheaper to fly more fighter sorties without a tanker.

Not cool. No idea. Didn't ask. I'm just a -135 guy so I'm not sure what the issue was exactly..some sort of bean for flying dissimilar form with me. It wasn't a dig on the -10 community. I was simply pointing out that there are things we all can do better. edit - grammar..

- Judging by your profile pic...I'm going to step out on a limb and say you are a holier than thou KC-10 driver...just quit the attacks...last time I flew a coronet with a KC-10 the AC couldn't fly lead with a -135 since she wasn't qualified...that made for an interesting mission...You guys are far from perfect...but thats not the point of this thread.... - I know from experience that most of the FMS sales (at least in Europe) paperwork needs to be correct (to include the tails)...Most of the military controllers that we deal with (Germany, Norway, and a few others) ask for our total offload before we depart the airspace and also ask the individual flights how much gas they took... - A lot of the talk here has been about fighter refueling...lets not forget about heavy's....There is no way for me to find out a tail number without asking....Some big jets do have a tail number painted up front but not all of them. How do we deal with heavy traffic?

It will be interesting to see how we are supposed to fly with them on our laps on an approach down to mins....I hope they are investing in Otterbox cases too....

As a tanker pilot, the tail number is the easiest way for me to keep track of who i give gas too....Even if Rainman give me a BS tail number, guess what...I can look outside and see it and most of the time they are painted by the receptacle, so the boom can relay it to the Co...That's why we rarely ask for them...Wing to Wing would be a pain in the ass since now I would actually have to talk to you. BTW - your post AR report (gas, freq to call, etc) is relayed by the Co up front not the boom.