newest primary drops.

[petescheu]

JAX-
This is in my humble opinion, and I can only say so much since I haven't built up a similar amount of time in Navy training yet, and I did the exchange deal for Primary. But right now I have a kid in my class from Vance who did 37s. I've talked to him and compared notes. It is not THAT bad, come on now. It really doesn't sound a whole lot different than what I went through... I have multiple friends doing T-1s now too, and the A/F stuff aside, they say that thing is an amazing piece of technology, and you get treated better than in Phase I/II. A/F training gets a really bad rap on this forum, and that's understandable, it is the Air Force after all. Real pilots land on the back of a moving ship (be it a DDG/CG/FFG/CVN) in the middle of the night as far as I'm concerned, not a 12,000 foot runway, no offense to the P3 bubbas. But I dont think it should be trashed right and left either, and I'm gonna have to stick up for it. Yes, it sucks at the beginning. Yes, stand up sucks. Yes formal briefs suck. Yes they can treat you without respect at times (which comes hard when you had to deal with a HUGE BS factor for years). But in the end I think you have to look at the quality of training you get out of it. Personally, you couldn't pay me enough money to do it all over again, but I also wouldn't trade the experience for a whole lotta money either. One of the best parts is that you have a really close group of people that you work together with a lot. I still talk to/see all 9 other people from my class. I don't know of a whole lotta people that do that outa Navy training, unless they were friends before hand. And you get more instrument and form time (which is the best part of primary, anyways), plus if you go to Moody you get to fly the T-6, which is a really great time. All the equiptment is well taken care of (although I can't speak for the tweet... that's gettin to be a little old), and the facilities are really nice. Besides, if you DOR outa that training, I'm gonna argue that you really didn't have the heart to put in the work to be a combat aviator in the first place. That's part of the whole idea of why they do it.
That's just my two cents.
navy101- Try and switch to moody if you still can, if you're going to do A/F training you might as well get to fly the -6 instead of the 37. The stucon people probably won't care, all they want to do is fill the A/F slots. And when you get there, put in your time at the beginning when the learning curve is really steep and get on the crest of that wave, and after a couple months you can just ride it out. Trust me on that one.

 

[webmaster]

Real pilots land on the back of a moving ship (be it a DDG/CG/FFG/CVN) in the middle of the night as far as I'm concerned, not a 12,000 foot runway, no offense to the P3 bubbas.

Flying for hours on end at 300 feet over the cold ocean, at night with no moon, "alone and unafraid", 1000 nm for nowhere, with an autopilot that last worked when I was born doesn't count? :icon_mi_1

BTW, I don't need a 12k foot runway, its nice though for those 3Ps that flare high and carry a lot of speed (maybe they will get down by the 4 board, or maybe they wont...).

 

[Vic]

Come on, shoo. AF training sucks donkey hose!

 

[petescheu]

web- Sorry, bad reference, I was trying to infer A/F pilots didn't have to do any of that stuff, I know the P3 guys do some crazy things. I heard a 3 engine landing in that thing is SOP these days, any truth to that?

Haha, i was waiting for you to say something Vic. I-check yet?

 

[EODDave]

Jackson,

It doen't sound like the AF training is as laid back as 28. I hear there is a change of command some time soon at 28 as well. Meridian is ok. THe jets here are a blast. Anyways just wanted to say whats up. Tell all of the other 28 bubbas that I said whats up.


Dave Porter

 

[BigWorm]

Shoo – would you mind enlightening me into the world of stand ups? I’ve talked to a few people about it, but still can’t picture what it’s about.
In the Navy FAM stage, it was all about PCL to idle, and “simulated” over the ICS. I get the impression that instead of simulating what might happen, the AF requires students to perform a monologue as though they were actors. Any truth to that?
Someone was also saying that you really don’t do EPs in the plane – what’s up with that?

 

[Jaxs170]

Shoo – would you mind enlightening me into the world of stand ups? I’ve talked to a few people about it, but still can’t picture what it’s about.
In the Navy FAM stage, it was all about PCL to idle, and “simulated” over the ICS. I get the impression that instead of simulating what might happen, the AF requires students to perform a monologue as though they were actors. Any truth to that?
Someone was also saying that you really don’t do EPs in the plane – what’s up with that?

Requires students to perform a monologue as though they were actors, now that's about the best description I have heard yet for standup. It just beats out: completely unrealistic way of handling an an emergency.

I saw one AF duo get a wingfire at the 180 during touch and goes for a standup, and it took them over 20 minutes to land (vice the 1 minute it should have taken) because they are so programed to do everything by the book, and I have l little doubt if it had been real they probably would have killed themselves.

 

[Jaxs170]

Jackson,

It doen't sound like the AF training is as laid back as 28. I hear there is a change of command some time soon at 28 as well. Meridian is ok. THe jets here are a blast. Anyways just wanted to say whats up. Tell all of the other 28 bubbas that I said whats up.


Dave Porter

Dave, just saw the post. Yeah, there are now 6 (that I know of) 28 guys here and all of us hate this place. I am 11 flights from being finished thank God, so I should be finished in 3 weeks and get winged 5 weeks from Friday. I had heard that the new XO showed up to 28 a while ago. Its gonna be sad to see skipper Price leave, he definitely made that place great while we were there. Eddie McKinnon said that one of higher ups told him that the group of students that finished from Janruary till July was perhaps the best group of primary students to ever go through training.

Hope things at Meridian are going well for ya. If Rich (Dick) Daly is in your squadron say hi to him for me, we went to college together. Till then, see ya.

 

[petescheu]

Bigworm-
Well if you reallllly want to know... I'm sure Vic and Jax can fill in details too.
Yeah it's pretty much a monologue. To understand what's going on, you have to understand the concept of the A/F flight room. Basically it's a real big room with a real big table in the middle (where all the students sit around). There are lots of desks around the walls of the room, that's where all the IPs sit. So pretty much all the students are sitting around this table with all the IPs sitting on the outside watching them. The STAN/EVAL (ie the training officer for the flight) IP will get up and stand at the podium at the front of the table and say ok, today this is your situation... (for example, you are in this MOA, you are at this altitude, you have this much gas, this much airspeed, etc etc, you are doing a barrel roll or something and all of a sudden you hear a tone and see lights out of the corner of your eye). So you get it all and you can ask questions if you want, and then the IP will call on one of the students. (If you have a big class (ie 15-20 studs), that's good, because it means your turn only comes up once out of every 15-20 times you do stand up. Although you do stand up most days of the week.) So the student gets up and goes to the end of the table facing the IP with the big audience watching them (the whole situation is designed to make you pretty nervous, although you get used to it after awhile), and they have to (to make a realllly long story short) talk their way out of the EP and bring it to a logical conclusion, which is either landing it or ejecting (for those A/C with a seat). Rarely will they give you a martin baker patch situation though because that's too easy. There are different stages you have to go through, ie how you will maintain control of the aircraft, what you'll do to analyze the situation to determine what your EP is (and then you have to verify it with other indications, instruments, etc), what you'll do to take care of the EP, and then how you plan on getting on the ground in one piece. Contact EPs aren't so bad. Where it get's to be really long is with instruments, and formation. Formation gets real interesting because you have two studs up there who have to work together to solve the EP, and if one person doesn't know what they are doing, it gets really bad, and funny too actually. I think the worst one we ever had was a formation electrical out in IMC. That one went on for an hour and 15 minutes, no joke. I think the longest I was up there for was 45 mins or something, but I can't really remember. It doesn't seem like it at all. The key though is doing it all right and not making a mistake, because if you do you get "Sat Down" which means you just hooked (failed) an event (hooking an event and getting a down are two totally different things, downs are much more serious, although not like hooking something is good either) and now you have to do all the BS assiciated with failing an event, plus you don't get to fly that period.
I really don't know which method is better, I haven't had enough exposure to in flight EPs yet to make a decisions. Anyone that's done both methods have any thoughts? I do know that with the stand up ones you have all the time you want so it allows you to think of every single consideration that you might have to worry about in the plane, whereas I can see someone forgetting to do something important in the plane because they get so wrapped up in the EP. You also review the whole checklist (plus warning and cautions) every time you reference your PCL, so you get to know a lot of the checklists for different EPs by heart because you hear it so much, which is def a good thing. Although hands on experience I'm sure is extremely valuable.
One thing I don't understand about the Navy is that their mentality with declaring emergencies is way different that the A/Fs. My impression is that you need to be in serious dire straights before you declare. I've heard of some really rediculous times when Navy planes bit it or made things for themselves really hard because they wouldn't declare. That's just stupid I think... The A/F has no problem declaring emergencies. Sometimes it might get to be a little excessive, but better safe than sorry, right?
Anyways, there's a snapshot for you... stand up is a grand old time. BTW Vic, you haven't had a real standup until you've had Capt H for it, haha. I'm sure you're glad your flight got him from ours.

 

[BigWorm]

That's more of a reply than I expected - some good insight. Probably the best way is a combination of all of the above. As students, we have to dissect the theories since we have no experience to base things off of.
Although, there is a concept called the weight on butt switch, where you just get stupid in the airplane. On a simple fam 11 smoke and fume elimination, where we rode the plane into Barin convertible with O2, I got a little backwards with the way I explained a few things...when we were on deck, he asked me the EP again and I could spit it out verbatim (Notes and all)...that whole aviate, navigate, communicate - in reality it has to be done simultaneously.

 

[petescheu]

Yeah try doing simple math once you've been cleared for an approach, it's even better. Strap on the plane and you become and idiot. Forget the fact that at once you learned differential equations and all that jazz, try and do just simple division once you're inside the IAF. It's fun...