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WeagleWeagle

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Posts posted by WeagleWeagle

  1. My IFS date is March 2013 and UPT June 2013. Would it be more realistic to expect January or February for an EAD date/orders?

    Yes it would. My dates last year were moved similarly to yours and ended up getting moved to February of this year. My IFS/UPT dates were Feb/April. Lots of studs got caught in the same situation... Find a job or start your masters.

  2. Cell phone carrier:

    Verizon has the best coverage on base. Haven't had any problems, I get 3 bars here in base housing and inside the squadron. I've heard AT&T is less than satisfactory and I can't say anything about the others.

  3. looking for recommendations for a gun-shop around CBM...

    I went browsing through Gary's Gun & Pawn today, they have a nice store, more of a gun shop than a pawn shop, really. Very good selection of rifles, shotguns, and handguns from what I saw (new and used). Plenty of accessories to go with also.

    http://maps.google.com/maps?q=gun+pawn&hl=en&ll=33.530234,-88.428097&spn=0.048295,0.104628&sll=33.510556,-88.426294&sspn=0.048306,0.104628&t=h&gl=us&hq=gun+pawn&z=14

  4. Just remember, we'll teach you the way we want you to do everything when you get here.

    ...

    While UPT is a fire hose, there is an occasional "valley" in the work load and more like a marathon.

    I'll caveat what I'm about to say by seconding that any and all preparation will only serve to help and not hinder you at IFS and anywhere down the line.

    Disclaimer aside, I finished IFS within the last few months and aside from the initial academics and the first few flights, the supposed "fire hose" was not that challenging. There were plenty of those work load "valleys" at Doss as well. I was a zero-hour guy coming in, but pretty much breezed through the program and got seriously bored throughout the last two thirds of it. By that point I was spending about an hour a day doing mission planning and maybe another 30 minutes studying General Knowledge. The rest of your days you can pretty much plan on watching a lot of Hulu and playing volleyball with the other studs.

    I'm not god's gift to aviation by any means, but I didn't come close to hooking any rides either. My suggestion to all is to simply chill out, and don't fret about studying anything but Boldface/OL before you arrive. You will have ample opportunity to learn everything by heart when you are there.

  5. Also I read about the AETC patches which I have from previous tech schools, but I am coming TDY from an operational flying squadron...do I replace my MAJCOM patch and any others to conform (I have no issues with it, just wondered)

    Is your next stop UPT? You've got to go through AETC to get your wings, might as well adopt the pain now

  6. So in essence, don't hold my breath until I get actual orders cut? I'm trying to rack my brain around why I got that date and all of my UPT hopeful peers got EADs closer to their IFS dates. Do they pick EADs out of a hat and it's luck of the draw?

    Exactly. May 2011 Grad, Sep 30 EAD date, moved to Oct 8, then mid-september moved to Jan 28 2012. Unless they cut you actual orders, expect to be in the same situation.

  7. seriously? I've always saluted back when one has been given to me at the gate, regardless of what I'm wearing. It's a sign of respect. I've even returned the salutes of civilian gate guards who rendered them to me.

    Don't get me wrong, I have always acknowledged the salute and been cheerful and polite to the guards. In fact, if there was a Maj out there checking IDs, I would not have felt compelled to salute, being in a vehicle and particularly because of the civvies. Until today I never had reason to believe I was acting out of the ordinary. I feel pretty bad that for the past few weeks my ignorance has probably been mistaken for arrogance. The :rainbow: reaction by the guard this evening was unnecessary, but at least from it (and here) I learned something new. :salut:

  8. I'm just a SNAP at CBM, but I had a little shoe-ish encounter today that maybe some wise men can help clarify for me:

    Wife and I go off base to a gym and to see a movie. Come back on later that evening, but at the gate the A1C checks my ID and pops a salute, while still holding my ID in his other hand. Me and the wife are in civilian attire. I give him a head nod and say good evening, and am about to leave when I realize he still has my ID. So I ask for it back, and he mumbles something incoherent. I think he's being coy and playing some sort of joke on me, so I just ask again if I can have my ID back. He responds, "once you render the proper customs and courtesies, sir". After a blank look from me for a few seconds, I realize he wants me to salute him back, while wearing my civilian gym attire. So I go ahead and give him one, and we drive off. What is the true protocol on this and should I do in the future?

    Edit: for brevity

  9. Here's some actual SA. A friend of mine who was selected in same board as me a year ago was EE. He was getting pretty worried as it got close, because a policy came down the pipe which stated that only the top two-thirds of EE's who had OM's high enough for rated slots would actually be assigned those slots. So even if your OM was good enough, you had to beat out 33% of all the other ROTC applicants in your major in order to get what you wanted. The bottom third was cut, I assume assigned to engineering or development AFSCs.

    From my experience, I can tell you that having a tech major can help you out in two ways. First, a lot of commanders will keep your studies in mind when ranking you against your peers. Bottom line is that someone pushing out a 3.5 in a technical degree takes a lot more work and dedication than that same GPA in basketweaving. PAS's know this and some will use that as a quantifiable ranking metric. Second, the skills you develop while hacking it out for four or five years in a tougher material will help you develop good study/work habits and an analytical way of thinking which will be crucial to your success in UPT.

    There will always be other opinions about the academic major issue, but if you have the will and the brainpower, I say don't just pick something that looks easy and marginally interesting to you. Challenge yourself, add some real skills to your life that would be heavily monetarily compensated in the civilian market. It will always give you a career to fall back on if/when you leave the military, but it will prove to be a rewarding decision that you can look back on with great pride and accomplishment for the rest of your life.

  10. Question about trailers -

    I'd like to rent a trailer from U-Haul or such because I can't quite fit everything in my pickup truck, and I don't want to buy one at this point. As long as I don't count the weight of the trailer, is using a rental kosher? From a lot of sites I'm getting the impression it's fine but I haven't heard of anyone doing that before.

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