tac airlifter
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Posts posted by tac airlifter
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Surefire C3 Centurion. It's the brightest light for its size (6 inches) I ever seen.
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Iraq, 2008
What is that coming out of the -16? I'm ignorant of AR.
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The irony is it's sort of a microcosm of the AF: I try to lighten the tanker mood from the 15 pages of bitching about tail number calls and ego-checks w/regard to UPT rankings, and I get shwacked for not following the established procedure because I stepped into someone's pet issue.
Welcome to the forum, and nice pictures; however, you didn't get "shwacked" and this isn't someone’s pet issue. You failed to read the giant thread title that says "READ THIS FIRST." No big deal and I think you'll appreciate how they compile and organize threads here in a year or so when you are searching for a specific picture; you won't have to sift through pages of irrelevant data. Again, welcome to the forum.
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Not even if the Airlines needed me to sit behind the pilot and ask if we are over St Paul yet.
Zing! Well played.
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Pretty much any training in the AF incurs an Active Duty Service Commitment (ADSC). FTU, PME, WIC.
True but many of those run concurrent with your UPT ADSC; which I know you know. Just pointing out to the guy who asked the question that you aren't adding aditional time to the 10 years by doing PME, IP school or your masters or whatever, provided the ADSC's incurred by those items expire prior to the expiration of the 10 year ADSC.
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How a guaranteed 10 years of employment doing a job most people dream about can be a bad thing is beyond me...
Exactly. I still can't believe I get paid to fly cool missions and I don't have any civilian friends who enjoy their job this much (including pilots). Yes there is queep and a masters and PME, etc. But really the only reason I bitch about that stuff is because it takes away from time I could be flying. I fucking love this. That F-bomb is just for you Kuma.
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Since this is the Air Force, I propose that every member must complete the following CBT before being allowed to use the word fuck. Until you finally complete CBT after the fucking program crashes 6-9 fucking times, figure out how to get the fucking certificate to say your fucking name instead of "null" and then take the fucking certificate to the right fucking person who probably has already gone the fuck home for the day and it's only 14 fucking 30, your account will block you from saying fuck.
Wow, well played!
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Who gives a fuck about pilot training ranking? Sometimes it's indicative of further performance, often not. Yea I know some exceptions too, but the fact is most dudes near the top of UPT want -38's. The mistake is in thinking that because you're near the top of a UPT class there is any correlation to being the best operational pilot. UPT judges how fast you learn a concept, not how well you internalize the concept. At the end of UPT, even the top guy starts over as the worst pilot at his Ops squadron. At that point, I know a larger amount of tier 1 UPT performers who burned out and settled in as another mediocre pilot than guys who went on to prove they really were awesome pilots. Only two of the best pilots at any of the operational squadrons I've been in were UPT superstars. And what does any of this have to do with the tanker vs. fighter bitch fest I was enjoying?
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You stand corrected. We still practice 9-lines and CAS (did some of that in a mass exercise not too long ago). The nuke focus is merely ONE of our foci. We just have better support for that mission and the AF has seen fit to <s>resurrect SAC</s> give us a new command to provide appropriate oversight of the nuclear mission (does ANYONE think that nukes/B-52s/B-2s were ACC's top priority? It was stupid to put them under ACC in the first place).
What you practice in exercises and what you actually deploy to do are not necessarily the same. Do you know anyone in your community currently doing CAS operationally? Anyone that's done it in the last 5 years? I'm not being a smart ass, but none of the IP's flying -52's that I know are doing any of this anymore much to their disappointment; they just do show of force stuff. Glad you are at least practicing taking 9-lines, you guys did great work in early OEF.
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Not sure what you mean by "skill set" but I think it is a good idea for everyone to always be ready to add whatever they can to the fight.
By skill set I mean being tasked to do the same mission now. My understanding is that -52's are no longer qualified to drop ordnance via the 9-line for CAS due to a renewed focus on the nuclear mission. Consequently, if 9-11 were to happen again tomorrow and the nation needed to support ground teams to a geographically isolated location with assets that can hold for long durations... could we do it? I know there are assets I haven't worked with but I also know the -52's DID do this mission when called upon, did it well enough to earn kudos from the teams, but are currently not doing it with no plans to practice in the future. If I'm wrong and CAS support is a skill that -52 crews maintain, then this discussion is moot and I'll stand corrected.
Sure, everyone should always be prepared to put as much into the fight as possible. That is the point of the thread-- should aircraft not packing heat start doing so? I don't know what is best, I just think we're at a point where in the mind of the AF adding one capability takes away from another. Add CAS to -52's take away nuke readiness (big blue's opinion, not mine), add CAS to the W (DS) take away LL AD, etc. So I'm curious with your experience, do you think more assets that could be CAS players (not dedicated experts like you guys, just able to employ iron) would help or get in the way? I'm sure there would be examples of both, but on the whole, do you think we need more guys able to orbit and drop?
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Lessons relearned which will likely be relearned again.
That's an interesting insight, and it is sad to see lessons learned and forgotten time and again. I realize what they (B-52's) did was not equivalent to a dynamic type 2 or 3 CAS with TIC, but from the ground perspective all the dudes I know were very glad to have the overhead despite the limitations. That being said, do you think the -52's should have kept that skill set or do you think that was just extraordinary measures for extraordinary circumstances?
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Those are the exact words that rang through the hallways at Nellis when they started giving CAS tasking to bomber guys during the ME phase. The response was always the same "Yabbut, the B-52s saved the day at Khe Sanh!" (not sure why the BUFFs always want to claim all the credit for that, as if there were no other CAS sorties flown during that siege).
History repeats, assets are in short supply, CAS is sexy, adding missions makes you "more viable" in the budgeting process...all factors in the recipe to make this happen.
Didn't -52 dudes bring a lot to the CAS fight during the opening days of OEF? I know some ground guys who wish the -52 still did CAS.
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I went on a trip with him, he was kinda weird, loved singing karaoke, and he didn't drink.
Was he fabulous at Karaoke?
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Tanker Ops always briefs left to right tanker in the countless Red Flags I've participated in (since it's in ATP-56B). And what will always happen is you'll have a four ship of Eagles or Vipers come up and I'll hear,
"Baja25 I'm going to send 2 and 4 to the right wing and three to the boom and I'll be on the left wing. Only 2 and three are getting gas."
"Negative, please all rejoin observation left wing and send who you want to refuel first to the boom."
"STATE REASON."
"Because those are the standard flow procedures we're using."
I'm not asking to be dickish, so don't take it that way. In my job we also support customers and although standardized procedures exist, different users have different preferences. I always flex to the user regardless of what the reg says; in fact our "flex to your demands" approach has made us very popular and useful. So with my experience, I'm curious why you'd tell the customers how it's going to be instead of the other way around? I know there are times when you have to tell the user "no" for whatever good reason, but if they want something and your only reason not to acquiesce is because you are using a standard flow and you don't want to modify.... bro, that seems like exerting aurthority solely to exert authority and not helpful to the dudes in the fight.
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Standing by for: "If they had an FE they'd never go NORDO!"
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HOA and the PI are both still OEF.
With the exception of the Pedros I doubt there are many aircrew that find themselves, as the instructions dictate, in grave danger from hostile fire. Not sure a manually aimed 12.7mm, regardless of your MDS, should ever qualify.
Are you sure about that first part? You may want an update on HOA. As for the second part, how much experience do you have with non-CAF airframes and missions to back up that assertion? If you are in the WEZ for 12.7mm or anything guided and going 110 kts, it can ruin your day.
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Have subsequent operations been approved by the chief of staff?
As of now, HOA and OEF-P both count as seperate operations. If Kosovo is still a designated combat zone it would count as well, although I don't know if it is. And obviously, anything can happen in the future.
The AFCAM has been an embarassment. I was told by the first 0-6 in my chain of command that LR would not authorize the awarding of any AFCAMs unless someone higher dictated we should. Meaning, I tried to submit my guys for one after a 3-shot one night, and was told that my home unit wouldn't even foward the package to the board unless we did something worthy of a DFC in which case we'd be told we also qualified for the AFCAM. By the way, same 0-6 had a BSM herself for managing operation at the Deid.
Life isn't fair. Medals are not the measure of any of us; but as a leader I wish I could ensure the 19 year old airmen doing his job at war while his peers are smoking pot and living at home is recognized accordingly. I have philosophically accepted the injustices of our awards system, but I don't want to rain on the idealistic kids who still attach worth to ribbons.
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1. You can't get two AFCAMs. Or even a device. It's a one-time deal.
From the AFPC website: Only one AFCAM may be awarded during a qualifying period. Subsequent qualifying periods will be determined by the secretary of the Air Force. Only one award per operation is authorized. Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom are considered one operation. Subsequent operations will be approved by the Air Force chief of staff and will be indicated by the use of gold star on the ribbon and medal.
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I found this excellent article in the Washington post. The key emphasis items for me are two-fold: First, I find it interesting that after this much war we still can't figure out how to recognize guys for doing outstanding work but not worthy of DFC. Some communities are big on single event air medals, some are not. If we're going to keep good guys motivated to be the best, we need to reward them publicly with some kind of medal/ribbon. I'm not a fan of increasing the bling, but seriously, the awards available to UAV guys pale in comparison to the value of their work. That needs to change, and re-defining the meaning of valor thereby diminishing the valor of army guys breaking contact is NOT the right answer (ref final paragraph).
Secondly, and this is highly controversial, I think all our senior/strategic thinkers failed us from the end of Vietnam to the start of the current wars. We had decades of guys writing issue papers about what the "next war" would look like and what assets should receive the most money/time/attention. The fact is, those guys uniformly failed to predict the importance of UAV's or the importance of winning guerilla war. I question our ability to think 30 years into the future when our senior leaders have been failing at this for so long. I know a former dean of the national war college who thinks we'll have to lose a war before we can radically change the content of the curriculum. The following article is long but excellent:
Combat Generation: Drone operators climb on winds of change in the Air Force
By Greg Jaffe
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 28, 2010
The question, scrawled on a Pentagon whiteboard last fall, captured the strange and difficult moment facing the Air Force.
THIS STORY
"Why does the country need an independent Air Force?" the senior civilian assistant to Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, the service's chief of staff, had written. For the first time in the 62-year history of the Air Force, the answer isn't entirely clear.
The Air Force's identity crisis is one of many ways that a decade of intense and unrelenting combat is reshaping the U.S. military and redefining the American way of war. The battle against insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq has created an insatiable demand for the once-lowly drone, elevating the importance of the officers who fly them.
These new earthbound aviators are redefining what it means to be a modern air warrior and forcing an emotional debate within the Air Force over the very meaning of valor in combat.
Since its founding, the Air Force has existed primarily to support its daring and chivalrous fighter and bomber pilots. Even as they are being displaced by new technology, these traditional pilots are fighting to retain control over the Air Force and its culture and traditions.
The clash between the old and new Air Force was especially apparent in the aftermath of the 2006 strike that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq.
Predator crews spent more than 630 hours searching for Zarqawi and his associates before they tracked him to a small farm northeast of Baghdad.
Minutes later, an F-16 fighter jet, streaking through the sky, released a 500-pound bomb that locked onto a targeting laser and killed Zarqawi.
The F-16 pilot, who faced no real threat from the lightly armed insurgents on the ground, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the same honor bestowed on Charles Lindbergh for the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
The Predator pilots, who flew their planes from an Air Force base outside Las Vegas, received a thank-you note from a three-star general based in the Middle East. Senior Air Force officials concluded that even though the Predator crews were flying combat missions, they weren't actually in combat.
Four years later, the Air Force still hasn't come up with a way to recognize the Predator's contributions in Afghanistan and Iraq. "There is no valor in flying a remotely piloted aircraft. I get it," said Col. Luther "Trey" Turner, a former fighter pilot who has flown Predators since 2003. "But there needs to be an award to recognize crews for combat missions."
The revolution
It is the job of Schwartz, the Air Force's top general and a onetime cargo pilot, to mediate between the old and new pilot tribes. In August 2008, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates tapped him to lead the service, the first chief of staff in Air Force history without a fighter or bomber pedigree, reflecting Gates's frustration with the service's old guard.
A quiet and introspective leader, Schwartz has turned his attention to dismantling the Air Force's rigid class system. At the top of the traditional hierarchy are fighter pilots. Beneath them are bomber, tanker and cargo pilots. At the bottom are the officers who keep aircraft flying and satellites orbiting in space.
Schwartz has also pushed to broaden the Air Force's definition of its core missions beyond strategic bombing and control of the skies. New on his list: providing surveillance imagery to ground troops waging counterinsurgencies. Today, the Air Force is flying 40 round-the-clock patrols each day with its Predator and Reaper unmanned planes, an eightfold increase over 2004.
"This is our year to look up and out . . . to ask big questions," Schwartz said in an interview. "Who are we? What are we doing for the nation's defense? . . . Where is this grand institution headed?"
One answer to those questions is taking shape at Creech Air Force Base, an hour's drive from Las Vegas, where the Air Force launched a trial program to train a first-ever group of officers with no aviation background or training to fly the Predator. Before the trial program, virtually all of the Air Force's Predator and Reaper pilots began their careers flying fighter jets, bombers or cargo aircraft and were temporarily assigned to three-year tours as drone pilots.
By 2007, the Air Force started to realize that it didn't have enough traditional pilots to meet the growing demand from field commanders for Predators and Reapers. When Gates pressed for an expedited program to train officers without an aviation background to fly drones, the Air Force initially resisted. Only a fully trained pilot could be trusted to maneuver an unmanned aircraft and drop bombs, some officials maintained.
At the rate the Air Force was moving, it would have needed a decade to meet battlefield demand. Schwartz changed the policy.
"We had a math problem that quickly led to a philosophical discussion about whether we could create a new type of pilot," said Maj. Gen. Marke F. Gibson, the director of Air Force operations and training. With Schwartz's backing, Gibson crafted a nine-month training program for officers from non-flying backgrounds, including deskbound airmen, military police officers and "missiliers."
The crash program has been controversial, particularly among traditional pilots, who typically undergo two years of training. "We are creating the equivalent of a puppy mill," complained one fighter pilot.
One of eight initial trainees was Capt. Steve Petrizzo, who joined the Air Force in 2003 hoping to fly F-16s. He was too nearsighted to fly planes, so the Air Force assigned him to a nuclear-missile base where he manned a concrete capsule 50 feet below ground, waiting for the order to launch.
Petrizzo leapt at the chance to fly the Predator. "I wanted to be in the fight," he said.
His first six months of training beginning in early 2009 focused on the basics of flying. The last few months of instruction were spent in a ground control station maneuvering a simulated Predator through video-game reproductions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
One day last summer, inside the cramped and aggressively air-conditioned ground control station, the tension between the old and new Air Force was obvious. Maj. Andy Bright, an F-15 pilot turned Predator instructor, was coaching Petrizzo through the simulations.
In one scenario, Petrizzo followed a squad of soldiers through a village. Suddenly, the troops were hit with a blast of sniper fire and sprinted for cover. Although Petrizzo quickly spotted the insurgent, it took him almost five minutes to maneuver his plane into a spot where he could get off a shot that wouldn't also spray the soldiers or nearby civilians with shrapnel.
Those few minutes amounted to an eternity to soldiers under fire. Bright counseled Petrizzo to think more about how he positioned his plane. "Flying a Predator is like a chess game," he said. "Because you have a God's-eye perspective, you need to think a few moves ahead."
Four hours and several ambushes later, Petrizzo and Bright sat across from each other in a conference room for a mission debriefing. Bright was professional. But it was clear that he had doubts that any officer could be ready to fly combat missions after just nine months of training. "I have to spend a lot of time with them on the very basics," Bright said of Petrizzo and his fellow officers in the program. "They are still learning how to maneuver a plane."
The graduation ceremony for Petrizzo and his classmates raised a new set of questions for the Air Force: Should the new graduates wear the same wings as traditional pilots? Did they qualify for extra flight pay? Should they even be called pilots?
Schwartz decided the graduates were pilots. Even though they didn't leave the ground, they would receive flight pay. On the day of the ceremony, the general flew in from the Pentagon to pin a specially designed set of wings on each of the trainee's uniforms. The traditional shield at the center of their wings was festooned with lightning bolts to signify the satellite signal that connects the ground-based pilots to their planes.
"You are part of the major new Air Force development of the decade," Schwartz told the graduates.
A few days later, Petrizzo and his classmates were flying missions over Afghanistan.
Top-down changes
Lasting cultural change won't take place in the Air Force until officers who serve in these new fields rise to the top ranks, which are still dominated by fighter pilots.
Because of the huge demand for drones, the pilots who fly Predators and Reapers aren't being allowed to leave bases such as Creech for other assignments that would give them the experience they need to ascend to higher ranks. Today, there are about a dozen officers with experience flying Predators and Reapers on the Air Force staff in the Pentagon, compared with more than 100 fighter pilots.
"My guys understand this mission is important," one squadron commander told Schwartz on a visit to Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico in late January. "But for them this tour is never-ending."
Some senior Predator and Reaper commanders are leaving the military because they probably won't make general. In a few weeks, Col. Eric Mathewson, who has more experience with unmanned aircraft than just about any other officer in the Air Force, will retire after 26 years.
The former F-15 pilot started working with the Predators in 2000 after he hurt his back and was unable to fly. As a squadron commander during a bloody 15-hour battle in eastern Afghanistan in 2002, Mathewson saw his Predators outperform the Air Force's most advanced fighter jets.
Dug-in Taliban insurgents had surrounded a dozen U.S. troops who were fighting for their lives. F-15s and F-16s screamed overhead. But the fast-moving planes couldn't get off a clean shot at the enemy's main bunker without also wounding the American troops.
Army commanders refused to bring in vulnerable helicopters to evacuate the dead and wounded until an enemy machine-gun nest was destroyed.
Crouched behind a cluster of boulders, the Army Ranger platoon leader radioed that one of his soldiers was bleeding to death in the snow. He needed help fast.
A pilot from Mathewson's squadron at Creech Air Force base guided his drone over the Ranger position. The Predator had never been used in a hot battle to support ground troops, and the Air Force controller embedded with the Rangers was hesitant to let it fire.
To prove its accuracy, the Predator crew launched one of its two Hellfire missiles at an empty hilltop. The hit was accurate, but it left the drone with only one missile. The pilot steadied his plane and squeezed the "pickle" button on his stick, setting loose his last missile and obliterating the Taliban machine-gun nest. "We would have all died without the Predator," the controller recalled months later to Air Force officials.
A few months after the battle, Mathewson unsuccessfully nominated several of his airmen for the Distinguished Flying Cross -- an early effort to win medal recognition for Predator crews.
Blocked from rewarding his troops with traditional battlefield honors, Mathewson searched for other ways to build camaraderie among his pilots and camera operators. Shortly after he arrived at Creech for his second Predator tour in 2006, Mathewson wrote a new mission statement for his squadrons.
"Most mission statements are long, complicated and italicized," he said. "Mine was three words: "Kill [Expletive] Heads." His troops shortened it further to "KFH" and painted it on the cluster of trailers that served as their makeshift headquarters. They emblazoned KFH on their unit letterhead. Everyone in the unit carried a poker chip bearing the three letters.
"It reminded us that our job was all about the combat and doing things right," Mathewson said.
After Creech, the Air Force sent Mathewson to the Pentagon, where he spent most of 2009 drafting the service's road map for developing remotely piloted aircraft through 2047.
The plan that Mathewson produced for the Air Force envisions unmanned planes not only providing surveillance and striking targets, but also hauling cargo around the world. Instead of flying just one plane, a single pilot would probably control as many as four or five planes simultaneously. "If I am doing a surveillance mission where the plane is literally just staring at the ground or at a road for eight or ten hours, I don't need a pilot actively controlling the plane," he said. "So maybe I have a squadron of 40 aircraft but I only have four or five people monitoring them." The Air Force and Mathewson have already demonstrated in training that one pilot can fly as many as four Predators.
Col. David Sullivan, who commanded a Predator squadron at Creech, describes Mathewson as one of the Air Force's "visionaries."
The next generation of unmanned planes is likely to demand even greater changes from the Air Force, Mathewson said. The craft will require new kinds of organizations, new types of bases and new kinds of officers who will never peer through a fighter-jet canopy in search of the enemy. Old notions of valor are likely to disappear.
A decade of drone combat has already led Mathewson to adjust his definition of the word, which is a part of almost every combat award citation. "Valor to me is not risking your life," he said. "Valor is doing what is right. Valor is about your motivations and the ends that you seek. It is doing what is right for the right reasons. That to me is valor."
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Thought this was a worthy addition to the thread.
Issue Brief
March 1, 2010
www.lexingtoninstitute.org
SEARCH AND RESCUE: ANOTHER BLOW TO U.S. AIR POWER?
Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D.
The U.S. Air Force is at the lowest ebb in its 73-year history. Although its capabilities still far surpass those of other air services around the world, it is gradually using up the arsenal it acquired during the closing days of the Cold War. Over the last five years, the Air Force has seen its next-generation F-22 air superiority fighter terminated at less than half the required number, its next-generation bomber delayed by over a decade, and its plan to replace airborne surveillance planes canceled. Planners also want to end production of the service's admired C-17 cargo jet at a mere 222 planes, even though the oldest C-17s will soon reach the end of their design lives and there is no chance of building something else.
You'd think at this point policymakers would be ready to train their sights on some other hapless victim of "rebalancing," but no such luck. Two articles in the defense trade press last week signaled that the next blow to U.S. air power will be aimed at the Air Force's search and rescue community, which for decades has led the joint force in retrieving downed pilots and other endangered personnel from harm's way. The need for agile rotorcraft and highly trained personnel who can survive in hostile airspace to save warfighters at risk used to be deemed so important that it was rated the Air Force's number-two modernization priority, second only to replacement of decrepit Eisenhower-era tankers. But apparently the rescue of lost soldiers and airmen doesn't command the constituency it once did, because both articles indicated service leaders are moving to embrace the least capable option.
The first article, written by Stephen Trimble of Flight International, said "The Air Force has decided to buy 112 Sikorsky UH-60Ms to recapitalise its ageing combat search and rescue fleet, despite a standing requirement for a larger helicopter." Trimble attributed this information to the service's senior uniform acquisition executive, Lt. Gen. Mark Shackelford. A second article appearing two days later by Marcus Weisgerber of Inside the Air Force cited Shackelford as saying no final decisions had been made on what would replace existing HH-60G search and rescue helicopters, but "it could be new H-60s modified to be rescue helicopters." Weisgerber noted that the search and rescue fleet had dwindled to so few flyable helicopters that the service was already buying new H-60s in 2010 and requesting six more in 2011 as replacements, but he described that as a temporary solution. Weisgerber quoted Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz endorsing an "off-the-shelf" solution acquired in the smallest feasible quantity, "given our resource constraints."
Clearly, Air Force plans are trending away from the more capable alternatives considered only a few years ago, when Boeing's HH-47 Chinook was selected in a three-way competition with the AgustaWestland EH-101 and Sikorsky H-92. That decision was later overturned because the Government Accountability Office questioned the way life-cycle costs had been calculated, but then defense secretary Robert Gates canceled the effort, putting the future of the whole mission area in doubt. What's so odd about this process is that an "analysis of alternatives" conducted by the Air Force in 2002 cast doubt on the suitability of the H-60 for the mission given crew workloads, lack of defensive features, and other deficiencies. More recently, the Joint Forces Command re-validated requirements for a new search and rescue airframe in higher numbers than the Air Force is now apparently planning. One thing is clear, though: the H-60s the service is contemplating buying are far inferior to HH-47, EH-101 and V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor alternatives that are readily available. So unless something changes, this looks like yet another mission area where the Air Force is losing altitude fast.
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Thanks, but I just did my job like you guys do yours. I just enjoy talking about it.
I enjoy listening, thanks for the responses here.
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Here's some Aeroclub facts:
-AFI 34-217 is a broad-brush description of what Aeroclubs are. Note that many Air Force safety and maintainance regs also apply to Aeroclubs.
-AFMAN 34-232 is the governing document for Aeroclubs and is much more detailed than AFI 34-217.
-At least at my Aeroclub, CFIs are not NAF employees like the club manager and chief pilot are. Instead, they're private contractors.
-Aeroclubs are required to be part 141 schools
-You can use Tuition Assitance to cover any Aeroclub ground school and the Montgomery GI Bill (but NOT post 9/11) to partially pay for training beyond your PPL.
-You can use an Aeroclub aircraft for TDY travel. It is sometimes more beneficial for the government to have you and a buddy drop you off and pick you up TDY in a GA airplane than it is for the government to pay SATO for our rediculous full-fare fully refundable airline tickets.
Slight thread drift-- I heard a rumor yesterday that there is a seperate pot of $9k, seperate from your TA, that can be used for a one time certification. I haven't yet had the chance to investigate for myself, but since I'm on here anyway thought I'd ask if anyone has seen this money used for an ATP or similar advanced flight certification?
I should have free time next week and if an answer isn't posted I'll have one from my education office for everyone else.
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Keep trying for a rated slot. The aero club at Eglin has twins and single engine. Mostly it's run by civilians. Your boss needs to sign a form allowing you to take a second job while on active duty. Not a huge deal, my neighbor is doing it and he's a major. That being said, I think whether your boss signs off depends on your job and how much time you have. I'm going to try working as a CFI or MEI at the aero club myself when I return from my next deployment; consequently I don't know yet how feasible it is. I'll keep you posted on my experience. Seems like a good way to fly a little on weekends when I can't fly at work; and since I'd fly 7 days a week if I were allowed, I'm interested.
Edited to add: I had some experience with the old areo club at Quantico about 13 years ago, not sure if it still exists. My experience there was pretty negative, like you said, a lot of grumpy old guys who didn't want to let anyone else into their club. But I think that was the exception, not the rule. There was one in Hawaii when I lived there as well, but that was about 18 years ago so my knowledge is quite dated. My experiences there were great.
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I bet the only change will be updating campaign stars for the medal - which is way overdue anyway... probably would add a star for the COIN implementation in 2006ish, then another would probably close out/start on 01 Sep 2010 to coincide with OND.
Dude, I'm kidding. I care about/earned 2 of my ribbons. The rest are useless.
F-16's Get Too Close To ASA
in Squadron Bar
Posted
Why is this even news? I get a TA on almost every flight. Even an RA isn't worth reporting. Do airliners have to report this stuff?