skinny

YGBFSM... http://voices.washingtonpost.com/compost/2011/02/what_happened_to_lara_logan_wa.html Bastards need to be strung up and left for dead...

I honestly don't see the CSO nomenclature being used very much at all outside of the school house. Once we leave here we'll revert to more traditional titles of Nav, EWO or WSO depending on what assignment we drop. Could be confusing on an airframe with multiple CSOs all performing different duties. "CSO-Pilot", <confused look> "Which CSO is he talking to? The Nav, EWO, FCO, etc?"

Agreed. The AF is screening students who can go to IFS and be successful with zero hours as a base line. If you show up with hours or a license, that's all great and everything, but to preempt the AF screening program with an IFS Prep course defeats the purpose of SCREENING. If they just wanted people to be successful, they'd hold your hand and give you as many flights as it takes to make sure the candidate passes the checkride. This is obviously not the case. I understand that you may have a leg up if you can shack a steep turn or plant it on the numbers every time, but all that does is help you get through IFS. Once you hit UPT/UNT/RPA, you start from scratch and the goal of IFS is to identify those that will have a greater chance of success early on so as to avoid dumping loads of training dollars on someone who will never hack it.

As reported from Afghanistan by a friend of mine:

I'm just over halfway done with IFS right now. Just thought I'd pass along that the first full up RPA flight is in my class, I think about a dozen of them. Anyway, their syllabus is about 7 weeks long and includes, solo, VNAV, X-Country, and night sorties. They end up getting around 38-40 hours. I asked if they get a PPL out of the deal and they said no but they can go take the FAA written and practical at an FBO after they leave here and they'd be done. I know the question regarding RPA IFS was brought up on a different thread but I figured I'd keep the 11 page IFS thread going instead. Another fun fact, now that RPA guys are coming through here, the classes are huge. I'm in the last class that will not have roomates while we're here. From here on expect two to a room with twin beds. On the bright side, you'll have a flat screen in the room. Downside, you won't have time to watch it. However they are installing windows in all the rooms! No, just kidding, still no windows. Cheers...

Ha! That's good shit right there!

I'm totally okay with Jordan owning/running a team. He at least has an interest in the sport. It's sad that racing has come to this; being so broke that they must seek sponsorship from no-talent ass clowns like her and then having putting her under contract requiring her to attend the races. I will concede however that while she does have a great rack, she's better suited to carrying an umbrella and pretending she knows what's going on around her.

No failure here, apparently you're not allowed to use the name P a r i s H i l t o n on bops.net as it automatically changes to the uglier blonde's name....who knew

hilary clinton sponsoring a 125cc GP motorcycle team!? I knew road racing has hit hard times financially but really!? http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2010/12/20/paris-hilton-motorcycle-racing-team-seriously/

I'm bettin on the Tyndall guys being dual qual'd 22/38.

If you're casual, don't worry about it, you'll be able to take leave. Just make sure you tell them (STUCON) as soon as you get here. Also, they're pretty good about allowing you to go 10 days in the red on your leave balance. They'll explain it all to you more when you get here. Cheers...

No buzz cut, must be tapered. Get it the day of or the day before as you will not have an opportunity to get a haircut for a couple of weeks.

This one s completely up to you. Keep in mind, German style furniture is a lot different that furniture you would find in the states. I would definitely bring the bikes! Bicycle riding in Europe is much more respected in Europe than in the states, i.e. people are actually keeping an eye out for you. Storage shouldn't be an issue, most of the newer houses have an attached one car garage. FMO has washers and dryers that they will loan to you during your stay there however, the full size ones can be hard to come by. You could get stuck with the smaller european versions. Some rental homes there are pre-wired for US washers and dryers but some are not. If the landlord caters to American renters chances are your US washer and dryer will be okay. Freestanding German houses are usually pretty big. They build their houses big enough that generations of families can live there. The house I lived in was so big that the landlady split the three floors into three separate apartment style homes. To get a good idea of what you can expect, go to www.ahrn.com. This is the same website that the housing office uses to provide you with a list of available houses. Hope this helps. I left Ramstein in May 2010 but Contraildash is out there right now so he may have more up to date information. Best of luck!

Here is the ceremony at the White House earlier this week.

10% of the class earns DG at ASBC. So in a class of 300+, you'll have roughly 30 DG's, hardly "distinguished" if you ask me. But good filler for the OPR for sure.

Here's the 60 Minutes story from last night...talk about humility and selflessness.

I just went through the housing office here at NASP yesterday. It is truly a first come first served situation for the single folks so it's almost beneficial for you to be one of the last ones to fill out a housing application. I showed up with about a dozen other people and the first three were put on base in the last three rooms available. The rest of us are off base. Granted there were a couple of married types too but you get the idea. Gladies Wooten (USAF POC at housing) is awesome to deal with and does not play favorites so good luck sweet talking your way into being off base.

Children/dependants, semantics in my case really. It's all the same as far as the AF is concerned, unless of course we're talking child support coming out of your check. That's the only instance when the AF takes notice. When it comes down to it, unless you have sole custody The Man doesn't give a flying fvck if you have a kid and actually want to be a part of that child's life. Unless you are in DEERS as the sponsor of that child, they don't really give a shit. It's unfortunate but true. So to bring this full circle, I'll show up at P-Cola, tell them that my daughter will be coming out for visits a few times over the next year and they will ask for custody paperwork or ask if my daughter is on my orders. Because she's not they will look at me and laugh as they explain that unless she's my dependant and on my orders, I will be considered single and will be forced to either not have my daughter come out while I'm there OR piss off my roommate because I have a 4 year old in the house for a few weeks. Lose lose either way. I understand what you're saying nsplayer and I appreciate the words, I've just had way too much bad luck in the custody arena in the past few years that I expect the worst. Like the fact that I'll come back to CONUS and the ex will inevitably get orders OCONUS. Stupendous.

Negative, the ex old lady is also AD AF and my daughter is listed under her name in DEERS. According to the AF I have no children.

I wouldn't say you're reading it wrong but for a few particular situations, this policy seems pretty iron clad with no wiggle room. Call me nuts but I don't want my furniture sitting in storage for a year while i live in the dorms. I also don't want a roommate to have to deal with the times when my 4 year old daughter comes out to visit. I'm not knocking anyone but i think that at 29 years old I'm a bit too old to be having a 22 year old for a roommate........unless of course she is a smoking hot blonde.

Tell me about it, 10 years in for me and it's been about 8 since I've had a roommate. A household full of furniture, motorcycle, etc etc... really hoping for an exception to the rule. Anyone know if Gladies has a favorite beverage or flower arrangement? I'm not above bribes.

Word on the street is that this is already creating a shit storm in PACAF. They've had to kick maintainers out of break rooms and off computers to get back to work. This is a bad idea big blue.

Great buy for your first bike! Not to mention easy as hell to prep for a track day or track school if you so desire. Congrats!

PopSci Chances are these engineers used to burn ants with magnifying glasses when they were kids.

RFID tags are incredibly cheap, around the $0.50 mark. They use them in some racing organizations for timing and scoring. The costs would more than likely come from the receiving equipment on the tanker and all the associated support systems to gather and compile the data. Interesting nonetheless. If they've signed off on ATP-56, I would assume so. Even before ATP-56 we got tail numbers from NATO receivers but that's a completely different billing process, FMS case codes and whatnot. <bracing for Rainman's reply>