Leaderboard

Years ago, ended up at Shaw to build an A/OA-10 squadron with 17-ish Lt.s converting from the OV-10. These guys are fired up, fangs out, and ready to learn. Friday night at the club and Lt. Gen Horner, 9AF/CC, shows up with his entourage of flunkies and hangers-on and they sit at a giant round table in the corner of the bar. I noticed Horner had his hat hanging dangerously halfway out of his leg pocket. I grabbed one of the young lieutenants by the collar, pointed at Horners hat, and told him his mission was to put that hat on the bar. He throws himself on the floor and commences to low crawl towards the 3 star and remains unobserved as he picks the hat from the pocket. He successfully egresses with the hat then heads to bar depositing the hat and ringing the bell. An announcement is made asking "Is there any 3 star missing their hat? Please see the bartender.". Horner sends a minion thus scoring negative points with those in attendance. I'll add the Gen. Fogleman had his hat polyurethaned in the A-10 squadron bar at Osan and would show up on Friday night to buy a round.

Gen. Fogleman is a first class act. I had just left the AF out of DMAFB when he came in as the new 1 star ADO. Moral was bad. First thing he did was to host Crud tournaments at the O'Club.

Both things you mentioned - TX slots are not plentiful, so what’s the incentive for a unit to (re)hire a guy who’s already by choice stopped flying once before? Especially considering there are likely several other great candidates for that TX slot who haven’t quit flying before and are probably currently flying some other aircraft (recency). That is clearly subjective, but put yourself in a unit’s shoes - you may be a great dude, but it’s still a pretty hard sell to pick you over the other guys (in this hypothetical).

There would more than likely be a glory hole in that barrel.

This could be concerning.

Truth. I gave an I-ride to a crew chief, briefed him exactly what we were going to do and he was gung ho and normal as shit for the whole experience........ Riiiiiiiiiight up to about 5 seconds after brake release. Full AB and off the ground shortly after that, 5-bills at the end of the runway and into the vertical. He's hyperventilating for the acceleration which didn't seem that abnormal. At the start of the pull up he starts "ohhhhhhhhh" and then as we're vertical he says, "Sir, I want to go back." I level off at 10K and offered to just be an airliner and we could do some sight seeing and take it easy. He just kept repeating that he wanted to go back in a scary, panicked way. I started to get pretty concerned he was going to do something crazy, so I told him to put his hands under his thighs, don't touch anything and I'll have us back on the ground in 5 minutes. Should have done a straight-in but I wanted to get down fast. He almost lost it when it put some G on the aircraft in the pitch out. I figured out he no likey the Gs. Not an experience I'd care to repeat. Absolutely no fun having a panicked human trapped in your back seat with access to some fairly "reactive" handles and actuators. 0.1 KPAM-KPAM 🙃