FAA FC1 vs. USAF FC1

[hockeydork]

2 hours ago, Guardian said:

I’ve never heard of anyone looking at aerobatic time as anything other than “oh that’s cool”. It might help you personally as a pilot and if two identical people with exactly the same personality (guard and reserve only) and one has aerobatic time then sure. Active duty only cares about hours up to 201. Anything else needs to show in certifications or community involvement then yes.

But I’m general your best chance is through guard/reserve for people who would request a waiver for you after being hired.

Active duty only cares once you have wings generally speaking.

Sounds like the move than is go with the CFI gig, dump the defense contracting gig, try and enlist. As long as you're flying something I feel like you can't really complain about life.

[AlexLM12]

On 10/13/2021 at 2:23 AM, Tiger said:

Honestly that’s not unlike my situation.  The military flight docs (and later some shoe-clerk O-6 at the pentagon) kept telling me my condition was “progressive”.  Complete BS because every published medical article on the condition says the exact opposite.  It was almost like they just started making stuff up to support their reasoning.

Yeah, that checks. I think it changes primarily based on manning requirements. If there are more applicants than positions anyway, why continually examine the medical literature to determine if some conditions can now be waiverable? It's easier for them to just deny and move onto someone who doesn't have the condition. It's not fair, but that's how the system functions. Eventually it catches up, and I'd imagine shortages might drive changes in waiver allocations. Yes, flight standards don't follow the most up-to-date medical science. One such example is that the Air Force medical guides, up until this summer (I believe the Navy still does), considered PPI-REE as a subset of a condition known as EoE, even though medical literature has for several years gotten away from that distinction. Does it matter? I'm not sure, but it demonstrates your point

[yervis]

On 9/1/2021 at 11:37 AM, stuckindayton said:

Standards are actually established through experts in each field (i.e. gastro, ophthal, ortho, etc), although you are correct that flight docs frequently are tasked with interpreting and enforcing them.

I won't sit here and defend all standards as I personally don't agree with all of them either, but sometimes there's more to them than meets the eye.  For example, a GI problem may not be a big deal for an ABM, but it may be a problem for deploying so it applies to all flying classes across the board.  I don't know that for fact, just throwing out a possibility.

 

Agreed wholeheartedly.  It seems the AF spends a lot of money training many career fields only to have them split after the ADSC.  I would say the majority of my medical appointments at the MDG utilize some type of student, resident or intern simply because the AF has to keep training folks to replace those who don't stay.  Nothing worse than a phlebotomist who is still learning the trade.

During my FC1 the phlebotomist stuck me with the needles for blood draws and drew blood then essentially said “whoops, you’re not allergic to shellfish are you?” after he applied the iodine swab to me 😅. Not allergic to shellfish, but it makes you wonder what else they’re missing.