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Thanks for the -135 write up...I can see it was a handful especially after it was reengined. Ha, let me know if you are flying a squirrely tail dragger at 76. Fighter (RF-4C) was easy to fly/formate/land after the lightweight -38 in UPT. Employing it was a different matter. Have a lot of time in the B-727 (same cockpit as -135). Still one of my favorites to have flown. How did you get 3 flights in the U-2? I applied to the SR-71 and the most I got was a ride in the chase car during a launch. At least Huggy let me peek in the cockpit of the U-2 at OSH. WRT UPT we had a class of approx 50 with not that many SIE's or washouts. We were one of the first classes that implemented the bottom 10% rule with a mix of a/c because of SAC complaints. Hard to believe we can't come up with a better training a/c after 50+ years with the -38.

Dibs.

U-2, as far as I know. I only flew it three times, but holy shit, it's... different. On the KC it was the combination of low engines, fast approach speeds, and the cable driven ailerons and elevators delaying all the inputs. Then you had a huge hydraulic rudder that would throw the plane around much faster than the cable driven surfaces. It had so much inertia that if you didn't pull the power at the right point, you couldn't slow down. If I remember correctly we went to idle at 200-300 feet for the flaps 30 (engine out) approach when heavy. I also can't compare it to the fighters that were around in your day, because they only keep the planes, not the pilots in the museums 😂🤣. I suspect some of those rocket ships with stubby little wings were an absolute monster to fly, but everything we have now is so much more advanced. The difference between the U2 and the kc-135 was not close, I don't want to make it sound like the kc-135 was unmanageable. After all, many of the world pilot training students flew it just fine. But when I talked to pilots who had flown both fighter aircraft and the kc-135, the raw stick and rudder of the kc-135 was more to manage. It was just really sloppy. You made up for it with probably the easiest combat mission in the AF. I taught many many KC135 pilots that were barely able to fly the plane, much less handle a more complicated mission. Honestly the biggest argument I have in support of the kc-135 being harder to land than a fighter is that the fighters weren't doing touch and gos when I was in. That blew my mind. There's no way you could get proficient at flying the kc-135 without doing pattern only flights. But you also have the better pilot factor to deal with, for whatever that equalizes.

As I expected…

Damn man those are great scores… sorry to hear. I read on another year’s thread that someone from the board will reach out to you if you’re next in line should a spot come open. I don’t think they release the rankings but I’m sure they have alternates listed 1 - n. In terms of spots opening up, main example I heard of was a few selectees getting accepted into reserve flying units turning down their active duty spot. MFS-N could be another way but with most people having the stamped FC1 already a MFS-N failure seems pretty unlikely.

I have about 1800 hours in the -135, around 100 IP so take this assessment from there. The -135 was a challenge to land and do OEI (outboard) training / landing OEI once all trimmed up was not bad, landed one 3 engine once, it was not a huge deal, a thing but not bad either. The challenge in landing was speed control and the effect of N1 inconsistency between engines on approach. The CFM 56 on the R models I flew had a poor man’s engine control called Power Management Control (PMC) there were multiple versions of them for CFM 56s and they controlled N1 above certain power settings, it is a system really meant to prevent overboost in climb but on approach they could be inconsistent and make the tanker’s speed control and pitch up/down kind of a bear. The cross wind landing technique was not the easiest to learn either as you have IIRC 18 inches (sts) from pod to pavement with only 4 degrees allowed in the wing low flare position. Most IPs taught an aileron pop technique with a flatter flare for strong x-winds (15+ knots). There were also challenges in proper sight picture as the dash and instruments were all slightly placed off from the original -80 bird, the plane due to the large changes in GW and fuel movement had a range of CGs to get used to, a 22 CG -135 is responsive and stable a 32 CG -135 is tail heavy and likes roll a bit, etc… All in all, a good plane but from a different era with challenges in the pattern but obviously learnable Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk