Scuttlebutt on NFO pipeline/API drops??

[Squid]

Someone please confirm:

The NFO pipeline is being cut in half. This leaves a large number of students backed up waiting to start the pipeline. Meaning... the API classes that had 5 NFO's per class is now 1, 2, or none! On the plus side, wings come faster.

API classes have been put 'on hold' until the graduate students get into a class. I guess they were promised such-and-such a class date... This moves everyone back a couple of weeks. Truth?

I don't want to put out misinformation since I didn't muster Thursday to hear it for myself. I do, however, want to put it out if it is truth, as it will affect most people not in a class.




Also, I heard something like 145+/- new Ensigns coming in May 15th. Should be chaos!

 

[nittany03]

Not may 15th, June is what I heard for the next year's commissionees. But yeah, there's supposed to be a pile coming in like two weeks after May commissioning. Hopefully I won't be there to find out! From what LT D. said Thursday, the reason the pipeline is getting cut is b/c they've been forced to close the Tomcat pipeline earlier then expected.

 

[beau]

Lets put it this way. Friend in Flight Management arrived here a month ago (december grad, SNFO).....and she will not start until August........(said something about F-14 NFO slots being cut off for good)......thats the gouge.....and is subject to change at any moment!!

 

[nittany03]

Yeah, a buddy of mine is an SNFO who graduated with me last May and got shafted with December orders . . . hopefully he won't get shafted again with the new classup dates. Oh well, CNET'll probably swipe a bunch more people for grad school now.

 

[nittany03]

Oh, yeah, ENSsquid, to answer your question you're right. There are class dates on hold for us Grad school folks, b/c we all reported here in June-August of last year. That was the deal we got for volunteering for 6 months of grad school; we got guaranteed a class date and our wing of choice.

 

[TurnandBurn55]

Let me throw a little more gouge your way...

VT-10 and VT-4 are overloaded with SNFOs right now, and the Tomcat pipeline has no effect on that. You're waiting three or four weeks after ground school ends just to start flying. One or two planes go down for maintenance, the weather's a little foggy, next thing you know, people are rolling back a week. At first it was the T-6 guys who were having trouble getting into the air, but the other day we started cancelling a boatload of -34 guys because of aircraft issues.

I'm betting this has as much to do with Trawing-6 saying they can't handle this many new folks every week, what with two aircraft they hafta train people on, as anything else.

 

[Squid]

does the grad school thing MEAN anything? I got the official mail message talking about it. it seems that it's only relly good towards the masters if you finish within their cirriculum.

no ****, tomcats closing down now? i read into it as though the pipeline was shortening, like start to finish. am I wrong?

 

[nittany03]

Well, whether it "means" anything or not depends on your plans for higher education. I was an Information Sciences and Technology major in college, so it was right down my alley should I want to get out of the Navy someday (haven't made up my mind yet on the whole career thing). Basically it's 4 courses that count towards seven (I think) different majors at NPS. Good start considering the career hit you'd take to go to NPS physically. Information Operations, Space Systems, can't remember the others. I'm sure you could probably transfer the credits to another college if you wanted to, also.

Personally it's helped me get more in depth with some things I learned in undergrad. Nothing aviation related, just networks and databases. And the information operations course is really cool, getting into PSYOPs, deception, etc.

 

[Squid]

Good Stuff. I was an IS major as well! Ha. I used it as an easy-out and into the Navy, as our degree program was transitioning from Library Sciences to Information Studies in the last few years, and so were a little behind the times. I would be interested in taking the classes someday. I just needed to be out of a classroom environment I didn't care to be in. How is the workload/coursework?

 

[nittany03]

Fairly easy actually, but then again the first quarter was an in-depth rehash of two courses I took my sophomore year of undergrad. If you ask around A-pool you might hear the tale of 15 Ensigns driving around downtown Pensacola, in uniform, for 2 hours, holding wireless network antennas on the roofs of our cars. Long story!

Overall, this quarter's profs seem to be easy graders, but then again (again) I'm being kind of paranoid about my grades. :glasses_1 Information Operations this quarter is pretty cool, but there's only so much you can teach about it in the unclassified realm. I'll withold judgement on the Space Systems course until I get a grade on my midterm paper!

 

[Squid]

Doing a little War Driving eh? But why IN UNIFORM? I have been known to *ahem* browse 2600: The Hacker Quarterly at Barnes & Noble and have *heard* of doing this.

www.wardriving.com

I have all the time in the world in A-pool. Care to tell the tale?

 

[nittany03]

Actually, it wasn't that exciting; I guess it'd make a pseudo-funny sea story since we all looked like total goofballs doing it. One of our group assignments for the networking class was to drive around our local area with this "netstumbler" software from our prof. The point was to show us just how many people set up wireless networks and don't bother to secure them by having us write up a report about it. So the plan was to meet after muster (hence the uniforms), drive around, find networks, and then hit up IHOP for breakfast. So we piled something like 15 people in 3 cars with two or three laptops, a GPS, and and a couple of cell phones and off we went.

I'm surprised we didn't get pulled over by the cops, driving 25mph down Palafox and Garden streets, getting passed by little old ladies and jumping out every once in a while to wave computers and antennas around. Actually I'm glad we WERE in uniform; otherwise they'd probably have thought we were terrorists!

The software we had didn't work worth squat, so we tried to resort to stuff like holding antennas out the window of the car, trying to search for networks to associate with, etc. At one point I was sticking somebody else's laptop through the sunroof as we were driving along. One of the most bizarre things I have done while sober. So anyhow, that's the story, such as it is. The things I do for an A. :glasses_1