Hacker
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Posts posted by Hacker
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3 hours ago, HuggyU2 said:
A few years ago, when I ran the U-2 Recruiting shop, I met with a Vance SQ/CC who did not want his IP's coming to the U-2. Interesting conversation and perspective.
What was the timeframe? Stone Temple was a '38 IP at Vance at the same time I was ('09-'13) and he did a nice job talking up the Dragon Lady IMHO.
Might have been a different story down the street in the T-1 or T-6 squadrons, though.
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1 hour ago, Fast_N_Low135 said:
I fully agree being a major airline pilot myself. My comment was tongue in cheek, my sarcasm emulator is clearly malfunctioning.
Nah, I'd guess it's mine that needs to be written up.
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1 hour ago, Fast_N_Low135 said:
Does anyone else find it ironic that the airline tread has just turned into the financial advice thread, or is it just me?
Not at all.
The entire point of an airline career is to work little and get paid a lot...it isn't about the passion or enjoyment of flying.
An airline career gives you both the time and finances to enjoy life outside of work, rather than simply cramming your families, hobbies, and other passions into the little crevasses around that supermajority chunk of your time and emotional energy that a military career demands.
Manage that money correctly, and you'll be able to retire early and *really* do whatever it is you would do if you had financial freedom (like fly cool shit for fun!)
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5 minutes ago, HuggyU2 said:
It's been about 6 years since Miley Gate. What ever happened to the three guys that were wrongly accused?
Hopefully the universe provided the needed correction and they're all enjoying post-military careers which allow them the professional satisfaction and personal/family enrichment they deserve. 🙂
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On 9/27/2021 at 7:23 AM, MEMguy said:
And…our vacation system is THE BEST of the airlines. Which is a huge advantage to getting key dates off and knocking out trips.
I am currently in the middle of a 6+ week period of not touching airplanes for work based on using 11 days of vacation. Now, it has been mostly during the month of Sept, so not exactly an in-demand period of the year with respect to holidays, school breaks, etc, but that just makes it easier for a generally junior dude like me to hold. Plus, it is the month of the Reno Air Races, so a good aviation time of year to have off.
On 9/27/2021 at 6:53 AM, brabus said:Question for cargo guys (out of curiosity): all the cargo guys I know fly a circle around the world for ~14 days straight every month, so anecdotally it seems like that’s the “standard.” Clearly there are deviations from the standard, so curious what those are (besides reserves). Are there options to do a month that look a little more like pax (e.g. 3-4 day trip = transcon to a couple destinations and back home, or similar to one international destination, then back home)? If so, what kind of seniority and rate of occurrence is seen to make these happen?
Can't speak for anywhere but Purple, but any monthly schedule type you can find at a pax airline, you can find the same schedule in freight. The single-departure/round-the-world flying is certainly a type of schedule you can find on the fleets that fly internationally, but it isn't even the majority of schedule type at FedEx.
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10 hours ago, skibum said:
I'm not familiar with people jumping back on AD to fly the U-2 after leaving AD. Anyone else care to chime in?
Oh @HuggyU2! Your orange flight suit is being summoned!
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On 8/26/2021 at 9:36 PM, frog said:
Somewhere on the internet, there is a forum of virologists arguing about how to fly fighter aircraft.
Numerous forums I participate in have hilariously uninformed but spicy debates about military aviation between individuals of every other profession besides military aviation.
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https://www.wired.com/story/would-it-be-fair-to-treat-vaccinated-covid-patients-first/
Some salient points on the topic in this article, despite being published in Wired.
There is already an established triage hierarchy in medicine, and adding vaccination status into it introduces a whole new wave of other ethical decisionpoints that are unwelcome to the medical profession writ large.
Bottom line: by the time someone gets to the point where they need to be admitted to inpatient hospital treatment, they certainly medically "deserve" that level of care just as much as any other patient.
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29 minutes ago, hindsight2020 said:
Hard to get a line number when your FEF is speckled with bullshit AF Q3s. Not impossible of course.
Meh, I think the airlines have a more clear view of the (lack of) meaning of Q-3s from outside the AF fishbowl than we often give them credit for.
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As I learned at multiple levels of USAF legal review, a Commander has the authority to issue a Commander-directed Q3 at any time, for any reason.
It does not have to be given for a just reason, only that the CC wants to give it.
There is no standard of evidence or proof of whatever the rationale is for the Q3 required.
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1 hour ago, ecugringo said:
Gymnists get something called the "twisties" you completely lose focus, forget your routine. He said a lot of injuries happen from this.
Last night on TV I heard some former gymnast commentators mentioning this "twisties" thing, and it sounded to me a lot like vertigo/leans or one of the other somatogravic/somatogyral illusions. Things that to us feel very real and can be highly disorienting (even to the point of physical sickness) when we experience them.
Obviously in the aviation community we take that stuff very seriously....that gave me a little different take on her decision to step down.
That being said, the *real* problem is that she is being deified in the media for quitting, and that's just another indicator that culturally we are disincentivizing merit and promoting victimhood.
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14 hours ago, HuggyU2 said:
I've met a number of Navs... and even one Flight Surgeon... that would have made excellent SQ/CC's had the AF decided to actually let them command a single-seat flying squadron.
I've had both pilot and WSO Commanders, and there were good and bad out of both camps. I consider it a good thing that there are some who I'd really have to sit down and stretch my brain to remember if they were front seaters or back seaters.
That being said, I remember being at SOS and having one of those "senior leader seminars" with my flight. The guy who led the seminar for my flight was one of the original CROs, a big burly dude who was emphatic that any "leader" could command any unit, regardless of specialty.
I offered that such a thing would not work in a fighter unit, to which he scoffed and told me I just wasn't evolved enough in my thinking about leadership to understand that I was wrong.
I said, "in my community, our Squadron Commander generally is the lead pilot of the first formation to cross into badguy territory on the first night of the war. How are you going to inspire your warriors if on the first night of the war you're sending them into the IADS while you're going to watch them all take off into the night, then stay behind in the office and watch it on CNN?"
His only response was, "that's not a fair question."
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9 hours ago, Guardian said:
There are lots of drone opportunities in the civilian world and a lot of them do better than some airline pilots.
Just as a pile-on to the previous post on this, my two close friends from the fighter world who have been doing RPA contractor gigs for the last 5+ years are both having to tighten their belts as re-bidding has steadily reduced pay year over year.
One of them -- a retired O-4 who has been riding the contractor gravy train -- is having to sell his house in Vegas and move into an apartment because he's worried his job is going to go away entirely and he's going to be left holding the bag with a big mortgage.
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On 7/18/2021 at 8:21 AM, tac airlifter said:
As a philosophical matter: How can you know where the real edges are in combat if you never explore them in training?
Yes, combat ORM is a skill that takes a lot of time to develop and requires actual experiences (e.g. it can't be taught in a classroom), just like airmanship and judgment.
But just like airmanship and judgment, combat ORM it does not require intentionally violating rules or doing something unsafe to see and understand where those boundaries are. Generally the boundaries of the black and white are gently touched during peacetime training, and it is only in no-shit combat ops (and with that combat ORM already seasoned) that you can "live in the gray area" to get the mission done.
I say that as someone who had the special opportunity to wear my blues and describe my operating in the gray area to a board of rated officers.
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23 hours ago, Guardian said:
A true chief then is a unicorn.
Sure did not used to be that way.
I'm fortunate that in my first AF gig as a 21A1 MX Officer I had a CMSgt who grabbed me by my scrawny neck and showed me the ways of the AF.
Certainly not like the soy boy E-9s hunting for hurt feelings and missing glow belts by the time I was ready to retire.
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1 hour ago, StrikeOut312 said:
Any chance you could put a screenshot here for those of us that are without FB accounts?
It is a video, so that's probably not going to tell you what you want to know.
Short version:
- Interview process is now a video screening interview, followed by a single-day in-person interview in Atlanta.
- No more Job Knowledge Test
- During the single-day interview, there will be a panel interview, the MMPI assessment, and the psychiatrist session.
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On 6/6/2021 at 10:53 PM, Clark Griswold said:
Gripen with F-107 influence
Apparently they're not interested in high AOA maneuvering with that thing.
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On 5/28/2021 at 9:56 AM, TreeA10 said:
This was before my time but the most remarkable thing I've heard was from a dude that got lost in the system when the DC-10 went away. Somehow, the company just lost track of him and never scheduled him for training on a new jet so he went about a year and a half before they finally caught up with him.
There are several stories of essentially this happening at FedEx, although at purple it had nothing to do with anyone getting lost, it stems from that system bids are (and historically have been) very infrequent compared to nearly every other 121 airline. Sometimes it is every 9 months, or a year, or every 18 months. This leads to quite long training cycles.
Thus, when a fleet is being eliminated (like what has happened with the 727 and DC-10), the training cycle for pilots does not flow perfectly with the rate at which airframes are being put into the boneyard. Thus, after the last airframes were flown into Victorville, the last crew holdouts on those airframes had sometimes quite long waits for their training slots in their new aircraft. There are stories of guys sitting for a year or more, getting monthly guarantee to sit at home and wait for their training class date.
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3 hours ago, TreeA10 said:
Another way to look at it is efficiency. Most amount of work in the least amount of time.
I want to do the least amount of work for the most pay in the shortest time period. I don't understand the desire to do the "most amount of work" if the pay for less work over the same period is the same.
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4 hours ago, Ryder1587 said:
how dense the trips are.
Honest question: why is this ("density") an attractive attribute?
I completely understand the attraction to commutable schedules, as well as having schedules which both maximize pay and time off simultaneously. However, "density" implies a lot of work in a short period of time.
Personally, I want to do as little as possible for as much pay as possible in a given unit of time. I want to maximize my credit-hour density, and not my actual work density. In other words, let's say we're talking about a 5-day stretch that is worth 35 hours of pay. Credit being equal between the two, I'd rather do four (or three!) flights with three long layovers in that 5-day stretch than 4 legs per day with 4 short layovers.
My point is, "density" of work in and of itself isn't a measure of how to maximize the combination of pay and time off simultaneously. System form, trip rigs, min guarantees, etc, are what really determine this over the simple math of how many legs per day you're completing.
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4 hours ago, BFM this said:
The organized labor lens can angst all day that management is making money hand over fist in the current environment, but that can change over a commercial break, and chaining a company to a contract that will ensure the doors get locked at the bottom of the next cycle...even this pilot group understands that reality.
That is the best management logic for not giving a great paying contract that I've ever read.
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On 4/21/2021 at 9:30 PM, ThreeHoler said:
You can be RNAV without GNSS. You can be RNAV with INS only or even just NAVAIDs depending on how the system is certified. You need RNAV to proceed direct to a fix. You don’t need GNSS to do it.
The key concept is a system that allows you to navigate to a steer point without having to resort to the pencil method...and it must be one that is certified for the airspace in which it is used.17 years to the month later. Nice.
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On 2/2/2021 at 4:31 PM, uhhello said:
@Steve Davies Red Eagles got a mention today on Joe Rogan Podcast with Thunderbirds driver/MMA Ref
Here's hoping some of that huge Rogan audience decides to buy copies.
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On 2/12/2021 at 6:01 AM, SocialD said:
I wasn't NQ, just a Guard fighter guy not getting enough hours and ended up at regional. I actually had a good time, but then again I was home based, flew with Captains my age (mid-late 20s) and the FAs were mostly in the early 20s....good times. Pay sucked, but I had lots of fun and learned a lot about the airline world. That airline (Compass) is now no more..
I did a stint at CPZ, too, after I retired non-current and had a great time yanking gear and hanging out with the 20-something Capts and FAs as an ol' 40-something dude.
I enjoyed every day except payday; made under $17,000 my first year.
Most importantly, learned a ton about 121 operations that made the leap to the majors much easier than it would have been directly from Big Blue's loving arms.
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WTT 36L Issue A-2 Jacket for smaller 34R or 34S Issue A-2 Jacket
in Market Place
Posted
Want to trade:
My wife has a new-with-tags 1995 AF-issue Saddlery A-2 jacket in size 36L that has been sitting unworn in the closet for decades. It has always been too large for her. Jacket is in as-new condition, although a little wrinkled from being boxed up and taken on 8 PCS moves since '95 and sitting in long-term storage while OCONUS.
She would like to try and trade it for a smaller AF issue A-2, preferably 34R or 34S.
If not interested in a trade and you have one you'd rather sell, I'm open to that, too.
Thanks!