Leaderboard

I knew it was coming but it doesn't make it any easier and I don't have any words. Rest easy, no more pain. Thanks for teaching me a love of flying and service to our nation. 257 combat missions in Vietnam totaling 754 combat hours. 5 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 23 Air Medals, first pilot to achieve 1000, 2000, 3000 and 4000 hours in the F-4.

Obit https://www.tallasseetribune.com/obituaries/alexander-howard-calkins-harwick/article_1d73c8c8-bffe-11eb-b13b-e320b57f59b3.html

To a life well-lived! 🍺 "For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16

The last 18 months or so the “real wars” have really been expensive 100+ plane pretend wars anyway so can we really call one a priority. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You have to decide for yourself when you’re ready to hang up the wings. Ask yourself on your next flights if you’d rather be somewhere else. If the answer is still “Hell no, this is the best gig ever!” then keep flying in the ARC. One of these days your answer will be “I’d really rather be watching Junior’s game or I’d rather be home with Frau.” Get an IMA job then.

Uh sir you're going to expire within 2 months of returning from deployment, you have reaccomplish that cbt Oh really, show me the reg... Well it's just "guidance." Copy...not doing it.

This really would be the perfect AF personnel action. Completely reactionary and void of any foresight. Covid is tailing down and airlines are hiring like mad. Clearly, the only correct response would be to cut pilots. Because.... reasons.

Damn, I can’t believe I posted my response above 5 (edit: 6*) years ago now. My family still lives in the area and the Suffolk area I described is still very nice, and again the commute on 664 (Monitor Merrimack bridge) isn’t as terrible as the I-64 HRBT would be. If you want to avoid the tunnels you’d have to do something up on the Peninsula: Newport News, Hampton, or Williamsburg. I’m not as well versed on good areas in the Hampton-Newport News area, but I’m sure there are some. Kiln Creek is nice I’ve heard, but there are also some really sketch areas in Hampton and “Bad Newz”. Williamsburg is very nice but also more expensive and a lot of old people. Norfolk and Virginia Beach probably have the best options for places to live, plus schools, but I think the commute through the tunnel on I-64 would be hell every day. Plenty of people do it though. There is a pretty large amount of private school options. Nansmond-Suffolk is in Suffolk, Hampton Roads Academy is in Newport News, and Walsingham Academy is in Williamsburg. There are even more in Norfolk and Virginia Beach. Look up TCIS Conference and you’ll get a list of all of them. Feel free to PM me if you have more questions. I actually went to one of the private schools in the area from 1st-12th grade back in the day.

As many have alluded to, tasking levels from the COCOMs tend to keep MAF assets maxed out on what they can commit to. So when a flag exercise comes around, AMC will task and cancel and retask again. The average tanker bubba will see yet another TDY pop up on their schedule a week prior or so. Juxtapose that with the fighter unit that has the exercise on the calendar for six months and actively planning for the last three. They want to do secret squirrel stuff, so no one in the MPC without a read in. The poor LT tasked as the planner gets a time, place and offload, and not much more. That ends up with the tankers supporting the exercise without really playing in the exercise. Sometimes we do it better than that. Occasionally we even get something out of it. But most of the time we're just retasked and back in the desert.

Officially it is not the rodeo... Unofficially, everyone knows what it is including the exercise people at HAF (AMC didn't get any of their exercise money, so you know what they must think of it). it's an AMC/MAF lovefest... AMC can drop bombs, AMC can plan CAF sorties, AMC can do PR, AMC can do comms, AMC can do AOC's, AMC can do it all! As a matter of fact, why do we need other MAJCOMS? AMC/CC said KC-46's will be carrying air to air weapons in the future and 17's will be able to drop munitions instead of delivering to a forward airbase, so why the need for B-21?. All we need is AMC apparently.

This POS and his cohorts will have blood on their hands when we get our asses kicked by the Russians or Chinese. But by god at least we don’t have mean tweets anymore!

Far too slippery of a slope to even venture down, yet here we are. Does following an account constitute restricted actions? A like? A share? Who is to determine if something is a joke? Oh, but nuance and context no longer matter... At least the fighter pilot meme pages on IG are having a field day... For now. From the Army cartoon recruiting commercial advertising a woman who grew up with "two moms" who "marched for justice" to this... The leadership at the top has forgotten the reason we f***ing exist. Pathetic.

*airline hires in spite of rona* big blue right now.... 😄

I just saw some slides with the so-called "Bonus" take rate. The year isn't over but it's dismal so far. Only 14% of eligible 11F's have taken it. 0/10 F-15C pilots took it. And 3/32 F-35 pilots.