+1. Two obese humans in the back of a BK-117/H145 is a non starter. Loading with these doors is great however even two skinny victims/patients makes the medical crew revert to the two bulkhead rear facing seats - access to head and airway only. And if someone is obese/rotund, forget it - I’ve left many a second victim in the LZ despite having the power.
How first-hand do you want? I spent 8 weeks there last fall going through the instrument flight examiner course in the Lakota sim. Some of my classmates were IPs at Rucker. I have friends who teach out there. What do you want to know?
Some good arguments, but I think the author missed a few points and criss-crossed basic trainer and primary trainer a couple times.
A look at the “old fashioned way.”
Chuck's reddit post is fairly accurate. The article in smallwarsjournal, not as much. The author doesn't appear to have hands on experience with brand new aviators coming out of Rucker. My disagreements with the article warrant a separate post.
I spend a great deal of my time working with the product produced at Ft. Rucker. It is inferior to what I flew with as an FRS instructor in the late 80s. Try as I may, I just can't chalk that up to starting in a fixed wing aircraft. It has a great deal more to do with what I believe to be a lower bar or standard. I struggle with this on a daily basis, quite literally. I fly with these young pilots most days during the week and on weekends. FSXXI in NO WAY produces RL2 aviators. They have difficulty flying in the national airspace system outside of the Ft. Rucker bubble. But the same can be said about some AD Army pilots to some degree. Most of their systems knowledge, or any knowledge, seems to have evaporated by the time they show up for the first time to fly at their unit. I admit, some of this is guard specific. Imagine finishing the FRS and then coming in only one weekend a month and trying to stay current or proficient, much less progressing to a higher readiness level. We try to bring in new pilots on orders for a month or so, but that can't always happen. And then you have those who still don't progress on orders because, well... the bar is lower.
To piggy-back, in a way, on what @RobLyman wrote my last military job was running a Pre-Mobilization Training Assistance Element. Basically I spent several months of weekends and ATs at Camp Craphole getting ARNG units ready to deploy so they wouldn’t have to spend three or four solid months at Fort Shithole getting ready to deploy. My last unit was a UH-60 battalion. They were good people, eager to do a good job, but instead of flying I was teaching them how to react to contact on the ground, IED avoidance, base defense, and other things that are good to know, but not as necessary as NVG flying, brow-out landings, and other scary aviation stuff. Sure, they got lots of work up flight hours, but the battalion commander was frustrated that many of his new guys wouldn’t be ready because they were busy spending time with training that while good to have was not as necessary as training you must have.
Off of the original topic: On a pre-mob we had to spend a day learning to inspect vehicles coming in through a security check point. I asked the SGT why we had to learn this. I pointed out that if we get to the point I have to inspect vehicles coming onto the FOB, we are in a BAAAD way. He said, "Chief, you never know when you might be the only left to do this." I asked when he got training to fly a Blackhawk. He looked at me quizzically, and said, Why would I have to do that?" Of course you know what my reply was. His response? "You got me chief."
I would have said, “Chief, I’ll get my Blackhawk card as soon as you train me. In the meantime, you forgot to look under that truck...get crawling.”
