scawtiedog

The refuge has somewhere around 100 campsites and plenty of hiking and rock climbing. As was mentioned before, no alcohol allowed there.

9 people passed over with a DP - all no AAD.

We've had no problems with USAA. Use them for everything - Banking, Insurance, Realtor, and Mortgage. We've used them twice now for our mortgage and have never had an issue. Always closed on time and their rate beat the local rate. We also just had to deal with a bunch of hail damage (new roof, gutters, etc.), and while everyone else had to work with their insurance and mortgage company to get the money we got our check direct-deposited within 48 hours since our mortgage went through them.

Names have been released - http://www.elmendorf.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123215785. Godspeed brothers.

Here's the news release - http://media.adn.com/smedia/2010/07/28/20/c-17_release.source.prod_affiliate.7.pdf

Done.

Rumor is deployment/TDY schedule is changing (less deployments, more TDY's) but I wouldn't hold your breath. Young booms can plan on 3 60-day vacations to the Deid with a few short TDY's each year. As for a cross-trainer, you'll probably get sent right out the door as soon as you finish MCT. After that, it will more depend on your rank, but assume at least 2 a year still. As far as the base itself, overall it's fairly nice. I'll agree that our BX is one of the worst I've seen. But there's really no problem since Wichita has anything you could need. Plenty of stuff to do, tons of places to eat. KC and OKC are only a couple hours away if you want to get out of town for the weekend. Shoot me a PM if you're looking for any specifics. Do you know which squadron you're coming to yet?

Having the same problem. Now it's coming up with this error: Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 666924 bytes) in /home/flyingsq/public_html/wiki/includes/Setup.php on line 61

-135 side is pretty similar to the -10. Biggest difference is we don't really do cargo missions, don't have the room. I have taken a fully loaded jet, but it was full of our own maintenance/support gear. On the plus side, we don't do consolidation. The RT's only take gas if there is a receiver that needs it. Defintely do the business efforts, fighter drags, and DV missions. Expect to be deployed half the year. Typical rotation is 2 months out, 2 months home (or less).

Jughead got most of it, few changes since your last RT. Now pretty much everyone at McConnell gets qual'd on spec ops and the squadrons share the burden on the RT, equally split among all 4. Don't get me wrong, I think the airlift mission is great, but don't go around thinking all we do is go to the Deid and make left turns for 8 hours a day.

Where did you hear USAA won't accept gray scale? I have been scanning checks since they began the program and mine are always gray scale, never had a problem. If their website's not letting you, I'd give them a call and find out if there's some settings messed up in your account.

Out here right now and I've used my credit card every time I've made a purchase.

Did the same thing last time I was out. Had a brand new MX guy our crew chief wanted to get. In the tanker world you drop down one of the overwing hatches. So we had this MX guy running all over the place in front of our jet with a door. He never figured it out. After a good 10/15 minutes we finally gave up and finished our preflight. Wish I had my camera that night!

My last tour, we had one of our ADO's get pulled over by the cops for doing 1 MPH over the speed limit! Sq/CC just started laughing when he heard.

Quick note, I checked out the tracker this morning and they're actually tracking your T/O fuel vs planned, not your landing. So even better, if there's a last minute change (weather, etc.) that causes you to bump up your fuel, you're highlighted.

I was at Scott last month for GRACC and A3V was showing the system off. You could see exactly how much extra gas each AC was landing with. I think they said the goal was within 5% of the CFP fuel load. Granted, it doesn't factor anything (canx receiver, winds, etc.), it's just raw data so you could be completely justified in your landing fuel and still have your name highlighted.

Had a similar experience coming back from the desert. Leg from Mildenhall - home, CFP supposedly "winded". Of course we end up with an extra 100 kts on the nose and burned all the extra gas we took. Which is why I'll never let some guy sitting in his cubicle tell me how much gas I need. I don't mind the estimate, but don't get on me (sts) when I add an extra 10k because I know your winding sucks. I agree, it's only a matter of time as they get more restrictive.

"2", same applies for McConnell, 1 - 2 60-days a year, plus TDY's.

Most of your trips will be to the desert. We are finally starting to get coronets more commonly and medevac's once in a while (although the guard and reserve tend to pick up most of the medevac's). We don't really any cargo transport except for sitting maintenance bravo once in a while (go pick up a part and mx team and deliver them to a broken jet somewhere in the system). I'll tell you up front, it's getting more and more tough to get a nav on our TDY's due to money unless we can justify some sort of training with it and sell it to the OG (all depends on who's in charge). With that said, we've been able to send navs TDY pretty frequently recently (just had one do a coronet, another do a local TDY, both within the last month). As for TDY locations, it varies quite a lot. We have coronets going east (Turkey, Souda Bay, etc.) and west (Hawii, Japan, etc.) as well as some random places. I went to South America for 2 weeks on a banner mission, been to Edwards for F-22 support, etc. There's definitely opportunity to "see the World", although maybe not quite as often as the airlifter guys.

I'm a pilot at McConnell right now, so I'll try and help you out a little. No, that's not the case at all. You will normally only plan the missions you actually fly on. There are a few exceptions (i.e. the SOAR shop plans all SOAR missions, so if you work in there you will). As a nav, you will deploy at least every other rotation to the AOR and fly SOAR (typically 20-25 missions per 60-day depending on what's going on at the time). They are currently in the process of adding more comm/SA systems to the SOAR mission, so I don't see the navs leaving any time soon. Doing a rotation as a 135 nav will leave you a number of different options. I know a lot of people that have been picked up for a pilot slot after 3 years as a nav. There are also other places to go (including UAV's if that's your thing) Absolutely not. I have a lot of respect for my navs and if I had it my way would fly with one every sortie. They are invaluable for our SOAR missions when there's a lot going on and an extra set of eyes to keep you out of trouble. I've never heard of this, probably some bogus rumor (or maybe a USAFA thing?). As far as I know, McConnell is the only base left, although I've heard there are some special-duty assignments at Mildenhall (from a Nav friend of mine that was looking at his options). Definitely have some time to get your masters between your time at home and also while deployed. Also have time for civilian flying if you want (maximize your PCSM, etc.). Hopefully that clears some of it up. Let me know if you have more questions, I can always pass them along to some of my nav buddies over here. Scott

As far as the motion sickness goes, I was one of the worst pukers on record when I went through UPT (logged about as many sorties in the chair as I did in the Tweet) and yet I still graduated. Not sure how Nav training goes, UPT had a cut-off for how far in the program they'd let you go with airsickness before washing you out (and I pushed every limit they had), but it shouldn't affect your chances of getting selected - with most people it's something they can fix. PM me if you have more questions about motion sickness or my experiences with it.

Our daughter was born at Baptist last year (once of the last ones before the new ward opened I believe) and we had no problem, was a great experience. Definitely liked how close it was just in case (my wife was induced, so it ended up not being a factor for us). We had some friends who had a baby in Amory and it seemed like such a long drive when we went to visit them. I'll second Dr. Holzhauer, that's who we had and he was great. Everyone we talked to said to get him.

SCI approval is required by the time you graduate UPT. But you're right, shouldn't be required prior to even starting. Only thing required prior should be getting your paperwork done and initiating the process, it'll take the full year to do all the interviews/background checks. I know I had an investigator scrambling to get all mine done a couple weeks before I graduated. [ 01. September 2006, 20:53: Message edited by: scawtiedog ]

Yep, Squadron Stan/Eval maintains the pubs kits, you just double check that it's not missing any recent updates when you check it out. OG Stan/Eval maintains the electronics pubs. You just click the little update button on the program and it downloads any updates from OGV. Now whenever a new pub comes out or a change, it's listed in the FCIF and they just mention in that same FCIF that a new electronic update is available.

Luckily McConnell has gotten smart. No longer requires you to carry/maintain your own pubs. Squadrons have rolling pubs kits you check out before you step (has Block 30, 40, plus all AD's, etc.). We're now getting issued 1GB flash drives to keep all our own pubs (for study, etc.) with an automatic update you just download. Pretty nice way to go for studying and table-top discussion. Agree though on the jet hard-copy is much easier/quicker.