Scooter14

Now I see your point.

That's actually kind of awesome.

I met Rich back in Field Training back in '93. Ran into him a few times before and after he started the site. If it wasn't for Baseops, I'd still be on Active Duty living in Nebraska...which wouldn't have been terrible, but I'm much better off because of all his work and the help of all those who went before me and contributed to this site. I know many former navs who owe their pilot wings to this site. Thanks Baseops. Rest in Peace brother.

3

...unless you took gym in a Catholic school in the '50s

Just got back. Good course. A lot was geared towards the GATM capable dudes and the new technology with GPS/RNAV, which put the C-130 and most of the CAF guys to sleep. I did learn a lot. Definitely agree with doing your FAA testing, be it ATP written or CFI there at Tinker. The price is right (free) and a lot of the stuff gets covered, which goes hand in hand with the test prep. There are two sim days the second week that are about 2 hrs long. Take the test on one of those days. The Sheraton Bricktown was nice...no free wifi but the gym was wicked nice, which offset all of the beer I drank. Seems most places downtown did not have free wifi, but it was no big deal for me with a 3G phone. Even with the class and the test prep I had ample free time.

Don't hate...join. Do it before they TAMI/Force Shape/VSP/non-retain or RIF you.

Yeah, it's kinda hokey, but I gotta give them good marks for effort. $5 said some shoe made them put the core values thing in there or they wouldn't get the funding to shoot the vid. 'Dude, stop that goddamn singing and grab ATIS'...that made me laugh out loud.

C'mon Beaver, he got on camera, proclaimed he is the "Hardest Working Fighter Pilot in America" and put it on the internet. He's never gonna win anyway, so the $100K is a moot point. Toro Johnson is right. EDIT: Wait a second...you get free deodorant too? Who's got a video camera I can borrow? EDIT 2: Can you even do shit like that in uniform? What about that "No Federal Endorsement" bullshit? (Spoken like a true wing airshow rep...legalese got beaten into me)

I've got 69,000 examples of dudes doing exactly what he is doing so I'm not even going to waste my time because I am so busy because I AM THE HARDEST WORKING TANKER PILOT IN... Just kidding. That video was pretty brutal. He's no different than any of us in a squadron with an additional duty, coaching a little league team or two, trying to pass the PT test and doing his PME and his Masters/CCAF/whatever between deployments all at the same time.

I've heard horror stories from other units, but IMHO, it's going quite well in my little corner of the tanker world. There is a steep learning curve (for both sides...pay, funding, who gets to go TDY, what the hell is a SUTA, what do you mean your a civilian right now...you're wearing a flightsuit...) but we are coexisting nicely.

I hear this argument all of the time. We tried for about 2 years to come to your Active Duty pity party in the desert back in 2007. We volunteered. They said "Thanks. Minimum of 30 days aircrew, 60 days MX, 120 days leadership" We said "Well, we can't really do that, since we have people with jobs and there are 4 units in our 4 month AEF bucket. Can we do 15 day rotations with leadership/staff swapping every 30? Most of our guys have been there before and we can have those guys spin up our crews at home station at drill. You can get all that stuff off of the SIPR you know..." Big Blue "No" Us - "Okay, then will you mobilize us?" Big Blue - "No" ANG - "Well, I guess you don't need us that bad then. Mobilize us and we'll be happy to help. We're right here, all you gotta do is call..." Two years later, they finally let us play. First, they did the old location "bait and switch" on us (hey you're going to Manas! Oh, did we say Manas...what we really meant was...). The DRMD dropped, then it changed and changed and changed 69 times. Finally it ended up that we had to leave a lot of our ground staff/leadership at home (negative requirement) since the AD wanted to keep those slots. We ended up jerking a lot of folks around (you're going..no you're not...well, maybe...OK, maybe not) Next time we go, they only want crews, no staff at all. I understand "continuity" and all, but come on. So, it may seem from a crewdogs perspective that the ANG gets all the good deals. Most of that is undoubtedly true. However, you have to remember that we have a lot of citizen airmen that fill our ranks. Some have very liberal airline schedules. Some do not...especially our enlisted aircrew and MX. That's why we get some of these shorter trips. On the big deployment side of the house...AMC has to fill X number of deployment requirements with tankers. The ANG/AFRC makes up a percentage of that. AMC tells us (NGB/AFRC) which requirements it wants filled when it's our turn in the bucket. Sometimes we go East, sometimes we go West, sometimes we go South. Finally, I did two individual deployments to the Died so some Active Duty guy didn't have to. Once by myself, once with a whole crew from my unit. The second time I went, there was only one Active Duty pilot and no Active Duty booms on the whole airplane. 3 Reserve crews and 1 2/3 Guard crews. I know each unit's philosophy varies, but I would like to go to CENTCOM more often, but each time they make it more painful with pre-deployment requirements, time you have to spend there and then the whole Died ass pain thing (see the Leadership in the Died thread) makes it difficult.

I spent my first 8 years AD and have been in the Guard for the last 7. I'm glad I started off on Active Duty and I'm glad I made the jump to the ANG. No regrets.

His pet fish or the bottom of his shoe?

Holy SHIT! That's FUCKING PERFECT! We were going to order some pink ones and sneak into the mobag section and replace some reflective belts for our next exercise, but these work too. I'd wear it just to piss people off. You want me to wear a reflective belt? OK, fuck you, here's my belt. Now, go re-write the reg pencil neck and waste more of your shoe clerk effort standardizing how many colors are allowed. EDIT: $29/belt is a little steep to outfit half the squadron. I may just have to save up for that special someone.

There was a Navy P-3 crew we kept running into over there that had a round yellow reflective belt material patch that said GARB in the middle. We finally cornered them to ask and they said "GARB..you know, like clothes..." Yeah, bullshit we said. My guesses were Goddamn Airforce Reflective Belt, or Gay Ass Reflective Belt, but only they know for sure. How the hell did I forget about that...my reflective belt AND my backpack's reflective belt. Oh well, just heard we're headed back in our AEF bucket. Should be nice.

'Round here, we call that the "Corporal Agarn" (he's the one on the left). M2, CH and the rest of the old guys will remember the show...

Pawn, It's been done before see page 2 of this thread and then it goes away, then an AEF cycle hapens and it all comes back. Good luck. It's gonna happen. Just be more ready than I was to light that REMF up. It helps if you're not hungover.

You all can have the BPC. Move as many of you fuckers out so we can have peace and quiet and not be quadrupled up in a closet.

...all I got for that last one

I see your point now. I thought you were being "that guy", which is not typically your style... While there are minor differences and a higher workload, a tanker "combat" sortie is orbiting and offloading gas to multiple receivers with real bombs and missiles (which is good, 'cause we ain't got none) on a longer duration mission flown out of a forward base over a place with a higher percentage of people who don't like you and would shoot at you except for the fact that AK-47 rounds, SA-7s and rocks don't reach that high. The basic flight pattern is the same. It's just over bad guy land. The durations are longer, the missions are more dynamic and challenging (most of the time, sometimes they are mindnumbingly boring) and the opstempo is high...-135 guys time out by the end of the trip. We log the time on the 781 as "combat." when we are overland.

Same things the KC-135's do. Orbit over the AOR and provide gas to Strike Eagles, Hogs, Vipers, gunships... EDIT to remove sarcasm born from being only halfway through a really long week