Originally Posted by
OldFlyGuy
After flight school you took a written test and got a commercial instrument centerline thrust ticket. A B-52 person.. at least a left seater... could take a copy of their B-52 checkride and FAA gave you a commercial, instrument, AMEL. BTW, the buff was a way bigger pita with an engine out than most.. with an outboard gone you nailed the rudder to the floor and "thought about" letting it out for a long while... thing would roll over. Unless of course you were joking? OFG
That must be some G model stuff, because I got 1k in the -H, and it wasn't that bad. Two outboards out got your attention but it won't roll over with half rudder at speeds above region of reverse command. We just trim that sucker out and presto. Usually most ACs would ask to take out the trim for landing so you had better fidelity to handfly the thing into the runway. Now, 4 out on the same side is the one where you're likely toast and consideration is given to getting out of the aircraft in lieu of trying to put it back down. But the statistical odds of 4 out (non-combat damage, and let's be honest, these days... WHAT combat?) is a non-issue afaic. Inboard outs or combo outs on both sides at lower weights was a non-issue, as you could just pull back the mirror engine on the other side and presto, back to symmetric you are. Hell you could do it two for the outboard outs too, but the SEFE folks didn't like it because they wanted us to demonstrate rudder control for the checkride, which is fair enough for real-world heavyweight scenarios where you wouldn't have the luxury of mirroring the opposite engines. That was the thing you could do in the buff you can't on 4 or less engined airplanes. Pretty pimp actually.
As to the centerline restriction, the Buff doesn't have one, so if you turn in your AC Form 8 to get your multi-commercial, it comes clean. I didn't have much use for multi in my civilian side and already had CPL-IR-CFII in single engine land before the military, so I slacked off getting the multi-add until I was out of the community. But eventually I did bring it in, and the MEL was added to my CPL, no CL restriction. Had I not had a CPL before UPT, and attempted to mil comp out of UPT but before AC check in the Buff then yes, I would have been given a CPL-ME with CL restriction, due to the T-38.
Another interesting one is now as a 38 IP, I went with my latest form 8 to renew my CFI and asked the FSDO for an MEI on account of T-38 IP and got told no dice. So it turns out, a T-6 IP (I was one before the 38) can go and mil comp himself a CFI and a CFII, but a 38 guy can't even get the CFI (no single engine), only CFII stand-alone, on top of no MEI either. Talk about subverting the spirit of intent.