sputnik

First of all, I could give a flying fuck if the guy doing my travel voucher weighs 300 lbs, or the guy fixing my jet. I care if they can do my voucher or fix my jet. As someone far more eloquent than I (Slacker?) put it, I have yet to see Al Queda challenging me or 98% of the AF to a track meet. Still, every unit I've been in the PTLs have been the lowest ranking new guys. I've seen opportunity for fairly blatent cheating ("sir how many pushups did you do?" "uh, none yet, I thought I was here to test." "ok, how may are you going to do?" "ok, this is why STEP promotions exist, and take tomorrow off.") At best no one understands the fucking waist measurement, and there is a wide range of what makes an acceptable push up, sit up, etc. And self reporting of run times, the A1C who isn't quite up to busting his Ops Sup, etc. At the very least, I, just like Gen Chandler who thoughtfully brought all of this upon us, have noticed walking around many bases that there sure are a lot of folks shuffling around that don't look even remotely like they could pass the waist measurement yet somehow the fail rate is/was pretty low. Whether it was cheating, inconsistent standards, or good luck who knows. What PACAF went to, and I assume the AF in general will do 1 Jan, is testing at HAWC by civilians. At Elmo they are actually pretty good dudes, why they choose a life of giving PT tests 8 hours a day I have no idea, hopefully they're well paid. They criticized some of my push ups, I thought they were full of shit, but they were nice about it and gave me a chance to correct what they called. You can tell they aren't out to hammer anyone, they genuinely want people to do well. Centralized testing is what it is. At the very least you'll know that everyone is tested to the same standard. To your question, what's the integrity issue? They are civilians, they don't take the test. All the ones at my base are about 21 and are probably physiology majors and are in good shape, I suspect they wouldn't have much trouble maxing it (as with most of us when we were 21 y/o) if they had to take it. Which they don't. For the guys talking about pushups in a minute. For me it's easy. I know, aren't I special? Still, the situps, that's f***ing impossible. I don't know what I'm doing wrong but I can't seem to do more than 50 a minute, is there a secret I'm missing?

Interesting, hadn't heard that. My ground time in OEF was a long time ago. Still I remember a few of us trying to figure out just what exactly ISAF stood for. So we asked our LNO, a RAF officer. "I Suck At Fighting" and "I Shoot At Friends" were the top two definations he could come up with. Not trying to start a pissing match, I just thought it was funny. Still do. I can see why ISAF might not like him, I hear he closed their bar. I did spend some time in Kunduz with the Germans, great food (fresh bread daily!), nice bar. Going outside the wire aggressively--not so much. Sorry for the thread drift.

I'd take a 365 to virtually anywhere over the 'Deid. I agree with you, the suckiest part about that place is that it sucks for no reason. You lost me completely on teh "McCrystalization." No idea what you're referring to, but I'm curious. Details?

It's actually good to have both. The public has a right to know what happened to their millions of dollars of equipment and/or aircrew. That's the AIB. From an aviation point of view, we want to know asap what caused it, and more importantly how to prevent it happening again. Thus we can offer immunity to just about everyone off the bat in the interests of getting honest answers fast. Note that in case of any indication of criminal wrong doing the SIB shuts down and turns everything over to an AIB. AIB there is no promise of immunity. Thus less incentive to talk. As crew you might be willing to talk to a SIB, you can't really get in trouble for it. Not so true with an AIB. You can say aircrew should man up and you might have a point. Not necessarily true of a manufacturer who could be opening themselves up to a multimillion dollar lawsuit. There's be some interesting divergences between SIBs and AIBs lately, I'm not going to try to talk around the subject with specific cases. Sometimes it's hard to know which one is right. In the past I've found the best way is to read the white elephant myself and draw my own conclusions. I've noticed when doing that occasionally I've drawn different conclusions than the SIB, so I suppose it's not unusual for the AIB to get different results when they're not even looking at the same stuff.

With complete humility I take back any and everything bad I've ever said about finance. It worked. Thanks

I was curious to see how they'd handle it. Came back at 3.50 a day. I just sent them a question and attached that document to it, we'll see what comes back. With paper vouchers going to Ellsworth I was curious if it would happen, I had been thinking it was an Elmendorf thing but apparently not. I'll let you know their response. I (along with rest of crew dogs) appreciate the help.

Guns, walked in with two ARs, no one blinked an eye. Funny as HI gets good marks from gun control groups, yet all they seem to do is prohibt hi cap mags and make you register. I didn't bring any mags into police station, I think you might make someone nervous, like you're carrying loaded. Driving, parking, carrying was a pain in the ass (walking through downtown Honolulu with an armload of long guns just seemed weird, but hey, it's the law), but actually doing the paperwork was a non-event. Cars, not sure about Hilo but it cost a grand to ship from west coast to Oahu when I did it. So moving two cars can add up fast. On the other hand, buying a new car in Hawaii, expect to get raped on price and there's no way out of paying the sales tax. If you want new it might be cheaper to buy on mainland and register there, then ship it and re-register as a previously owned vehicle when you get to Hawaii. Car inspection is an annoying BS safety inspection. No emissions, they check lights, brakes, tires, obsession with window tinting. Costs 10-15 bucks I think, a little more if you have tinted windows. What's funny about it, you will everyday see lots of big ass trucks in complete obvious violation of all the safety requirements driving down the highway and yet the police don't seem to notice. I moved with military. Going to/from Hawaii the movers pack everything into wooden crates, about 4x8x8, which they take off in truck, then put in shipping containers which you never see. A lot of guys did DITYs, hire a company to bring a container to your house, then as you say. Might be able to pay some guys to help you. Keep in mind depending where you end up living, there's a lot of very narrow streets, driveways are small, etc. It won't be easy to park a 40' shipping container in front of your house, definately not for long. It's crap they don't pay you for the move. Keep your reciepts you can write off unreimbursed moves. Hawaii is expensive, to include moving there. Good luck though, it's a great place. You in reserves?

Never had a problem with the locals. Generally speaking, the only people I did know who had problems were loud mouth a-holes, somehow it didn't surprise me they had issues. Do a little research on which beaches you go to, etc, be polite, and you'll do fine. You're not in America, you're in Hawaii, be a good guest and not the ugly American and you'll do fine. My take anyway. Cars, guns etc are a pain, but it's just something you deal with. Cars aren't much harder than anywhere else, you have to get them inspected (total bs) and registered in the state. Good news is it was kind of cheap when I was there. Guns you have to take and register with the police. It's a huge pain to buy guns there, but registering the ones I had once I got there was easy. Though it did feel odd to walk into the PD with an armload of guns. Check out the state laws before you move, the main thing that sticks in my head was you couldn't own any magazines with greater than 10 round capacity, felony if loaded I think. And congrats, my family loved it there. Lived on Oahu but visited the Big Island many times, great place. If I lived there long term that's the place I'd want to be (if I could get a job). You going Kona or Hilo? Totally different places, both nice though.

Thanks for that. Pushing my luck, can you point out where in JFTR it shows per diem on travel days?

Thread revival. First off, yes this is a money grubbing aircrew question, specifically posted in hopes of benefiting my money grubbing crew, and the rest of my squadron. Slam our greed at will, but understand I already know it. Deployed to Incirlik in support of an AMC squadron. AMC guys get 3.50 a day except for the days they fly. In which case they get a full days per diem. I'm from PACAF, our finance has long maintained AMC is wrong, and our crews get 3.50 a day fly or not. Reading the cut and paste selections from JFTR, I'm happy to admit I'm not smart enough to understand it. So is my finance right or wrong? Adding to my confusion, they state that while we cannot get per diem for the days we fly we can file missed meals. Which financially works out about the same, but I still think our finance is full of shit. Unfortunately I thus far have no way of proving it. Help?

For whatever reason shoulder holsters kill my back, every brand I've tried. On the rare occasion I carry I use a belly band similar to this http://bellybandccw.com Yeah it gets sweaty when it's hot, but then so does everything else. Pop's sells faux Louis Vuitton shoulder holsters, saw a load wearing one. Petty funny. I ate dinner at Bagram yesterday, saw plenty of people wearing standard holsters (horizontal). A rule that didn't last or is widely ignored.

I saw one flying in Afghanistan yesterday. I was wondering why it was there, who was flying it. I know Europeans fly it, but I thought they all called it the G-222 or something similar. Wonder if it was the beginning of the Afghan AF. Or, less interesting, maybe the US Army finally got some.

??? Story?

Never have so few been led by so many from so far

"Brah?" Seriously? My kids were born in Hawaii, I'm pretty fucking confident no one there would be impressed with you CoC quoting ability. We'll walk up the leeward coast together and see which one of us gets knifed for our reg quoting skills. Dipshit. Nice having a pointless quote about soldiers. You a soldier? I didn't think so. Reminds me of a surprise little drill when I was a soldier. Our platoon leader, an ex-enlisted force recon Marine gave us a quick couple marching commands. More than half of us ended up facing the wrong direction. His announcement, "exactly what I would expect of an outstanding infantry unit, you can't march for shit." Change of Command ceremonies in peacetime are fucking retarded. In combat it's your excuse to do it in an airplane with two dudes present and call it good. Here's a hint, if your unit has a reason to exist in a combat zone, pretty hard to get them all together in a fucking formation isn't it? I finish where I started, choke yourself.

Choke yourself. First put your junk in a blender so you don't reproduce.

Reminds me of a deployment to Iraq with the Army. We did a practice evac. The dumbest mf'ing Sgt Maj I've ever met (and that's saying a lot, I've met many and most were stunningly dumb....I digress) is somehow in charge of the clusterfuck. He says, with a complete lack of irony, that instead of evac'ing to the shelters, we'll evac next to the shelters, that way they can gin up "little bears" (his speak for "litter bearers," took me a while to figure out we weren't looking for care bears) to go back into our now collapsed, shelled workspace and collected casualties. I asked why we would abandon a hardened, though bombed, facilty to stand next to a really hardened shelter in the aftermath of an attack. Instead of say, standing in it. And if there was a concern for care bears, we could appoint them from inside the shelter as easily as we could in the open field. I shit you not, he did not understand the question, but you could tell he was pissed off at the smart ass AF officer. Sorry, go back to bashing on the 'Died. I'll be there next week and am very excited to have a reunion.

I'm with you brother. Did deployments with Army to both Afghanistan and Iraq. During both I had reason to visit 'Died. First thought was always, "my god I can't wait to get the fuck out of here and back to ___." The worst thing about the 'Died is that it sucks for absolutely no fucking reason. There's nothing dangerous, no reason whatsoever that you're not staying at the Intercontinental downtown instead.

Yuk on, but I can recall slamming countless Tweet studs with the same thing. Airplane trimmed up, hands in air, we'd shift gravity left (lean), plane would roll left, shift gravity.... sound familiar? Tweet was better set up, could do it with your feet vs knees. I can recall zero studs figuring it out, and now, years later, That said, I'd forgot all about it, something for my next ocean crossing. Far as kids hitting buttons go, I always let them go all out. I figure it makes the following preflight more interesting. Kids I like, the adults I find annoying. First, I fly the damn things, I don't build them. Ask the FCC what the xxxx xxx xx does, all I care is that it works when I need it and is not obviously broken during my preflight. My favorite has always been the photo geeks. Look, we let you take the camera on the jet, no one cares. But they think you do, so they sit there and surreptitiously sneak photo after photo. Dude, pick up the damn camera and aim, you're not getting over, we don't care!

Think of this as a promotion board that doesn't necessarily line up with an actual promotion board. I'm a MAF guy, so no idea what AFPC shows as your "standard" career progression, nor where you fall on the O1-010 spectrum. But the DT (Developmental Team, headed by a general officer) looks at everyone's records in your year group, and provides a "vector." If you were in the senior capt/young maj group, it might say "jt staff" if you're considered a young God, it might say "send to underwater basket weaving" if you're not. Your records are involved. Obviously they are what they are. The one place you have an impact is your ADP..."Airman Developement Plan(?)" basically what people usually call your wishlist. Common misperception is that you only need to fill out and keep current when you're due for an assignment. Actually I wouldn't call that a misperception as in my opinion it's the only time it really matters (note, I'm not on shortlist for CSAF). However, if you're trying to move your career along, taking the time to fill out and keep your ADP current is your chance to tell AFPC what your next and long time goals are. If you read board president outbriefs, for any boards, a common complaint is that a significant percentage of those meeting board (or whatever) don't have a current ADP on file. Message being, if you can't bother to take the time to tell us what you want with your career, why should we bother trying to help further it?

Pretty sure it's the same thing as setting up a non interest paying checking account. You don't file taxes on your personal checking account because there's no income. I think you're thinking too much. At any rate, all I did was walk into base credit union and say I wanted to set up a class fund, what do I do? Concept was not new to them, they told me what to do and why. Taxes never occurred to me, but it did to them. Try that, I promise you you're not the first class to do it, bank/credit union will have the answer.

We set up a zero interest checking account.

Wow how to respond? I guess only to say that in the C17 we usually fly single pilot, and unlike every other large or small aircraft out there, there is no significant slipstream noise to not notice when the gear doesn't come down, so we don't have the clue your high tech stratotanker does. Nor several other warning systems. Nor often 1-many other people on flight deck. Copy your lack of ability to detect humor slamming my own community. Enjoy your motors

Yeah, well, we can land gear up without ruining our motors. So there. Plus our floors aren't made of plywood.

That was an awesome patch. Who is the retard who signed off on it in the first place? How did it last two months? http://www.dbarbour.com/shocker.jpg Edit to add patch