Scooter14

Oh good the Gucci boys finally get to call someone else a prima donna after holding that title for 40-something years!

My thoughts exactly. Nightmare scenario on an airplane.

Apparently the CBT folks didn’t get the memo two years ago either…

That looks like a lot of drag to me…

Apparently I need to get smarter on electric cars. I honestly had no idea that they did that.

Right. Clearly it would not make sense to fly with a RAT deployed in a turbine aircraft with two generators on your engines and one APU as a backup if a generator fails. But if you’re going 75 on a highway and you throw a small RAT out there into the slipstream or like herkbum said have it in your wheel to charge the battery… Not sure what you’re getting at with the “unfamiliar with the concept of conservation of energy.” Feel free to amaze me with your engineering degree I guess.

I’m not sure what other USAF aircraft have it, but the KC-46 has a Ram Air Turbine that can deploy to generate emergency power. Most modern airliners have some variation of this. That would be handy on a long highway trip…deploy a small ram air windmill type device that would at least generate power to extend your range?

“Grandpa ATIS, what did you do in the war?” Every day at 1500 I would bang on the wall and make sure Scooter was awake for the O&I. Somebody had to do it…

154 days and I’ll be in the same boat amigo!

HTTPS://arcnet.sso.cce.af.mil/ARCNet/VRS/Volunteer Tons of open positions out there for Capt-LtCol

I don’t think Buff EWOs are dropping anymore according to the Buff guys on my last deployment. There’s some sort of mod to move that functionality to the two WSOs downstairs.

It’s not just you. That is disconcerting if true.

I’m not being facetious. If there’s data out there, it’s worth taking a look at. We all made decisions based on what we knew and believed at the time. Delta was the prevalent variant up my way last winter. A lot of people got vax/boosted up here (myself included) because the hospital data showed the majority of those in critical care were unvaxxed. That wasn’t the case in other parts of the country. The news has been COVID quiet. No more money in it and it’s a new administration so no more gloom and doom. People are burned out and it’s not a threat anymore. It would be interesting to see what happens moving forward now that “COVID’s over”…which I believe to be true. People said that if you got the vax you’d be dead in 6 months. I’m still here. Some people said it would affect birth rates. Hasn’t yet around here and we are a highly vaccinated area. If the protein or the mRNA is persistent in the body, that’s disconcerting and ID like to read more about it. Time will tell I guess.

Do you have any links to the studies? Everything I try to search just brings me to a 2020 study or the CDC website.

Awkward FO- “Parking checklist complete. Good flying with ya, maybe I’ll see you on another trip soon!” CA - “Yeah, about that. Here’s my employee number. Do me a favor would ya…”

Well, that’s never stopped them before…why start now?

For both you and tac airlifter, I’m all for innovation. Accelerate change or lose, right? However the air refueling enterprise as a whole must ensure we can safely and effectively be on time, as fragged with the go go juice to project and sustain combat airpower over the duration of a conflict as that is priority #1 for a tanker aircraft. Any innovations/tactics/ideas we implement must enhance and not detract from priority #1. You hit my point on your last line…Just because we can doesn’t always mean we should.

BTW This topic deserves its own thread. Huggy, On a good day from point A to point B, one could probably fly a KC-46 with a single pilot and a boom operator. But why? I’ve flown tankers for close to 20 years now. Air refueling missions range from the mundane C-17 training mission or two ship F-15 CAP to complex Missions where you have multiple tankers talking to each other, ATC or C2 and to the receivers that may or may not be showing up at the same time/when they are supposed to and may or may not be as English proficient as we would like. When you have multiple tankers and multiple receivers you need everyone listening up on the 3-4 radios and dividing the duties. It’s a lot, especially when there’s external factors like a retrograde, TIC, etc. A jump seater or an extra boom is a welcome addition in these scenarios due to task saturation. Someone (maybe in another thread) also alluded to some of the additional capes (datalink, etc.) and the discussion that ensued tried to delineate if these detracted from the mission or enhanced the mission. IMHO, they are designed to enhance the core competency of air refueling when utilized properly but, if we are not careful they can easily distract the crew or the squadron from the fundamental mission of a tanker. In an emergency/non-normal situation as well, there’s a lot to accomplish. In our sims, we train with two pilots and the sim instructor plays the boom or we bring one in. Are we bringing a boom into every sim now since they will now have to train for every EP? Will they be running pilot checklists while the only pilot maintains aircraft control? I guess flight engineers used to (never flew with one but I know they were integrated up front) so now the boom does it? I’m ok with that, I implicitly trust the booms but again, why not just have two pilots with the boom backing us up. Maybe I don’t have the big picture. I’m all for innovation but besides possibly ferrying aircraft in a wartime situation to either survive them or get them to a frontline unit where other pilots are executing a near peer fight and we need all hands on deck I can see no good reason to try and fly a 767 with one pilot. I see this as a distraction from the mission and not an enhancement to the mission.

Blue, you’re not wrong. It absolutely is like something out of a movie. The fact that someone getting executed (or critically wounded with life altering injuries) on the street with a bullet to their head for their cell phone is something we equate to Hollywood and what society sees on the big screen. It’s kind of sick if you stop and think about it.

Haven’t you heard? It’s cool to hate the -46. All the cool kids are doing it.

100%

I’d like to see stats on how many packages went up to ROPMA, with a WG/CC DNP to O-5, and made O-5. I would bet it’s less than 25%. I don’t have those stats, but if I was a major contemplating my future chances on O-5, I would not hang my hat on “Even a WG/CC DNP doesn’t really matter on the process in the ANG in ROPMA. “

Which unit are you with? The two ANG/AFRC units on the east coast have prior AV-8B, A-10, F-15E, F/A-18, MV-22, KC-130, E-6, F-16, C-17, C-5, KC-10, RC-135, guys who have exchange tours, former CRG guys, former loadmasters turned pilot or boom as well as KC-135 guys. Many flew the KC-135 pre-conversion, but don’t sell their experiences outside of the community short. The ARC also “purpose built” their units to incorporate guys with receiver AAR, Datalink, etc experiences. EDIT Plus, unlike the AD, the ARC units tend to retain this talent because they are not subject to a PCS cycle. I will agree when you have this melting pot it does take time to work out.

I’m not sure how true that statement is…

Another thing to consider on the ANG side is if you have any sort of desire to go beyond O-5. Sure, you’ll probably make it to O-5 as a flyer but that will be the end of the line with no ACSC. That may be fine for you, but it’s something to consider, especially if your unit sees you as a player for either group command or something at the State HQ level.