General Discussion

Big Blue needs you to present a PowerPoint to a deployed location, even if you are needed at your current unit: https://www.jqpublicblog.com/leaked-memo-shows-depth-of-air-force-manpower-crisis/ Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

I just recieved my slot a few weeks ago for UPT and am anxiously excited to get myself prepared for it. i got my PPL when i was in high school and since then have used my license to more or less buzz around and enjoy myself. This summer i've got some money set aside and want to start flying in a much more disciplined manner to start gearing my mind for UPT... ie serious attention to detail and things of that nature. For example i'm planning on doing heavy 'mission' planning, restudying PPL material, a lot of practice with EPs, and spending time practicing manuevers with narrow altitude limits, etc. in other words doing what i should have been doing anyway. do you gu…

Does anyone have or know where I can get a video called "Eagle Rage?" One of my ROTC instructors who was an Eagle maintainer showed it to my class. Is was shit hot.

After using the search function, I didn't find much, or any really, information about anyone talking about using their domestic cell phones overseas while TDY, vacation etc. Aside from a straight up world wide plan, does anyone use the unlocked phone and international SIM combo while flying over seas for the calls or SMS home? Any gouge and advice would be welcome.

https://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=1025605 I'm voting for photoshop. The jet's exactly the same height above the ground it would be if the gear were extended. There's no blur which one should see if the photographer was panning to keep a 300 knot AC in his viewfinder. No heat signature. Don't know enough about fighters to comment on nozzle position. It also looks like he's offset from the centerline. (#2 in a taxiing formation?) I'm just a stupid airline pilot, but if I were beating up some airfield at 300 knots or better, I'd be glued to the centerline. Discuss... [ 02. May 2006, 05:33: Message edited by: Toro ]

Hopefully this is the right section of the forum for this. I'm at UPT right now and I'll just say things have been incredibly rough lately. I was doing pretty alright for the first few rides, but after that the cracks started to emerge in my GK and I found myself falling behind. A hook or two later I ended up on CAP and whipped myself into shape. I started going to the cognitive specialists every other day to assess and fix my study habits and work on in-flight stress management, I started studying harder and better, simming a lot more on my own time, chair flying better and more, having regular GK sessions with my IPs etc. Things were starting to really look up until my …

I know there are a lot of topics that discuss VA disability here and there, but didn't se anything specific to it.. unless I completely missed it while searching on my phone at 3am. As flyers, we document nothing. I decided 3 years ago, prior to retirement, to start documenting everything. This eventually led to me being DNIF and never flying again but also helped in getting 100% disability from the VA. My 100% was from nothing big I claimed.. just a bunch of little aches and pains that added up to 97%. When I got my notification letter, I noticed a number of items on there that are "deferred". I called the VA and asked them what that meant, what was needed …

'We're going to lose fast': U.S. Air Force held a war game that started with a Chinese biological attack Meanwhile, a leading Chinese think tank recently described tensions in U.S.-China relations as the worst since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, and it advised Communist Party leaders to prepare for war with the United States.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/bells-v-280-valor-tiltrotor-picked-as-armys-black-hawk-replacement

As a former FE in the AF as well as civilian life I never had the pleasure of flying an aircraft with wings the size of credit cards so this video was very informative. I never realized that the T-38 was a category E approach aircraft but it should have been obvious since the wings are essentially scaled down from an F-104. The author states that we have been crashing T-38’s on circling approaches for 50+ years so I have to ask, is this type of training really that necessary on the T-38? https://youtu.be/huYvrZm_Y_M?si=UnqokXrEaumim5Mi

I should be leaving the Air Force soon if they process my paperwork right this time. I spent a lot of time stuck in places and airframes I didn't want to be in. It was UPT and AMC. I didn't end up there due to bad performance, it was mostly due to luck and timing. I had a really hard time watching people who failed courses, struggled in UPT, got in trouble, get the assignments I wanted due to missing VMLs, waivers needed for instructor duty, changing rules, or other factors. I feel like my youth was just... wasted and I have little to show for it. I don't have much pride in what I accomplished and I never was truly engaged or challenged. I am angry I spent 15 years of my …

Come this fall, there will be a new and extremely powerful supercomputer in Afghanistan. But it won’t be in Dave Petraeus’ headquarters in Kabul or at some three-letter agency’s operations center in Kandahar. It’ll be floating 20,000 feet above the warzone, aboard a giant spy blimp that watches and listens to everything for miles around. That is, if an ambitious, $211 million crash program called “Blue Devil” works out as planned. As of now, the airship’s “freakishly large” hull — seven times the size of the Goodyear Blimp’s — has yet to be put together. Full article: ISR Blimp

Story developing on CNN. Fox actually has a little more detail... Shots Fired at Bus Carrying U.S. Soldiers in Germany

Speaking of bullshit media headlines... First Lady Onboard Plane That Reportedly Just Misses Military Jet Really? Just misses? I love the quote burried in there "The FAA is investigating the incident. The Boeing 737 landed safely after executing the go around. The aircraft were never in any danger." Is it really that big of a deal? Obviously making the first lady's plane go around is not ideal but c'mon, this shit happens every day at multiple US airports. I guess it's sensational news when you've got other stories out there of controllers falling asleep. edit: sprrelling

So didn't find this anywhere else but am curious if anyone knows the answer to this question: Do T-38 (or T-1) compete against every other base for assignments? I only ask because I hear that the scoring is different between Columbus and other bases. At Columbus we grade phase 3 checkrides as upgrades, meaning a 12G (a good score for us) means that we got 12 Es on the whole gradesheet. This differs from our T-6 checkrides that downgrade, meaning a 12G is ok, everything but 12 are Es. I have heard that other bases do it the other way around (T-6 are upgrades and T-38s are downgrades). I am curious if we compete against every base if this is screwing us at Colum…

Dos Gringos new (first) CD is out now and avialable to you. The CD is titled "Live From The Sandbox". This is a great CD for all the military pilots out there, makes a great present for all your military pilot friends too. Get your copies now by replying on this post or emailing me. My email should be listed at the bottom. Anyone who has heard the Cd lets hear what you think. Dos Gringos rules.

Anybody know where I can find some gouge for the IRC test? PD

Does the air force issue a survival knife to pilots? If so, what knife do they issue them? If not, is there a universal knife they use, or something? Thanks.

Just finished at Laughlin. My wife was there with me, and we don't have any kids yet. In my experience, it seemed each class had only one or two families with kids. Our class had only 7 of 28 that were married. The wives got along for the most part, although from what I hear from other classes (and ours at times) there is a bit of soap opera drama to be had - who's doing what, how well so-and-so is doing, etc. Guess it will depend on your particular class. As for family life...here was a typical day for me. This schedule is fairly close for at least 5 days a week - refused to study on Friday night or at all on Saturday - and probably went like this for every…

Taking a hint from rumblefish, what are the best spots you've been deployed to? This can be anywhere. A certain base that hosts the 380th AEW is mine. You can go off base to some great spots, the base itself rocked, with a smoothie shop within walking distance of tent city. Base life was pretty cool; not as much of the @sspain of Al Udeid or (I'm told) P-sab. And best of all, schwarma night which happened to coincide with bingo night and KC-10 rotators. Granted, it was alot better before 9-11 and khobar, but it was still great during and after OIF (excluding hornitschek's rein-O-$hit of the refueling sqdn). What is yours, and why? Edited: For possible OPSEC buff…

In the first of what may or may not be a weekly installment of the weirdest thing I heard at JSUPT this week, we have... TFOA - this is filed in lieu of a dropped object report you AF folks may have heard of. Acronym? You guessed it, Things Falling Off Aircraft. Simple and to the point, but somewhat entertaining nonetheless.

From the wizards at HQ AF PA. Link To Story That's pretty hot right there. All kidding aside, I see a brilliant shoe clerk career ahead for this overacheiver. She's 16, home-schooled, the "top CAP cadet", wants to study physics and physiology, her Mom says this award is "opening doors of opportunity", and she's taking karate to keep up with the AF's fitness standards. I'm quite sure if you asked her to name ONE of her friends or one band that has released an album in the last five years, she'd stutter and her head would explode. HD [ 15. May 2006, 02:19: Message edited by: HerkDerka ]

Can any of you direct me to the engine out procedures for a cessna 172-P ???

Just was wondering what some really cool airframes are out there and interesting jobs such as the B-1 "BONE" or the B-52, anybody out there with experience in airframes that they loved that can share some info on certain ones?

av8tor55 - If I can give a recommendation, not from the military stand point, but from the view of someone who worked for a large insurance company and someone who sold term life insurance, term life is a waste of money. If you were looking for a small amount of supplemental insurance, term could be the way to go. If you are looking at covering your mortgage, I would look at mortgage insurance. Otherwise, I would recommend spending the extra money on whole life insurance. It builds cash value that you can borrow against. Basically with term life you would be giving USAA $90 a month and saying "I bet I die this month". And USAA says "Okay, I will take that bet". Loo…