View Single Post
Old 12-05-2017, 04:56 AM
  #23  
Dirty30
On Reserve
 
Dirty30's Avatar
 
Joined APC: Nov 2017
Posts: 24
Default

Originally Posted by Albief15 View Post
I wasn't the 3000 hour regional guy, but was a 700 hour CFI. I will agree that about 3-4 rides into T-37s I realized "okay--I am not going to wash out. I can get this..." And primary was...fun. I still screwed up stuff, stressed like crazy, and at no point did I think I was head and shoulders above my peers--but at that point the outcome (wings) was never in doubt.

T-38s...well...holy *(&. Like everyone else I was told it wouldn't help, and I was smart enough to believe them. The good news was the confidence gained in tweets and staying off SMS and bad-boy lists probably gave me enough "halo" to skate a bit when someone else might have busted. I still managed to bust the contact check for TP stalls (any late 80s guys from CBM remember "Skeletor" May? He got me too....) But yeah...some of our folks who just hung on "bloomed" in the T-38 and ended up graduating near the top of the class. Some of us who never worked that hard in tweets found out what being way behind an jet felt like, when others already figured out how to catch back up.

My thoughts are some GA can help...but show up with an open mind and closed mouth. Some basic acro and spins would be a good start. Don't try to make everything you are taught "reframe" to your reference, but instead just roll and do it the military way. A few attempts and you'll understand why they do it that way and the sooner you just adapt the easier you'll be ready for the new stuff.

Those WSOs who showed up didn't just have air sense, they have Air Force sense. They knew how things worked, and how to be an officer, and what a CBPO did, and what a flight commander did, and how to play crud, etc etc. Sometimes I think the challenge (and fun!) of UPT wasn't just learning to fly, but to work in the (almost) real Air Force. My own example--when I went to IEU to get my flight suits on day 2 or 3 of class, my AF brat friend laughed at me for stepping out in my flight suit which I had put on OVER my blues. Honestly--I had never worn one, never worked where guys wore them, and thought they were like the coveralls I saw my dad wear on the farm. So I stepped out with them over my blues...to a lot of laughs. Just learning to be Air Force was tough for me--spinning a tweet was no big freakin' deal. A few years later I was a FAC in Desert Storm, and not long after that sitting alert in a 4x4 loaded F-15 in Alaska. So--I had a LOT to learn--fast--and it wasn't just about flying. Fortunately those people who taught me were some of the best and greatest I've ever met, and a few are (thankfully) still friends even now.
I agree with a lot of this, I showed up as a 0 time guy, went to IFS barely knowing what an attitude indicator was, and made it through UPT just fine. In my class, the guy that was a commercial pilot washed out, and the guy who went to the academy to get a free education, made a spontaneous decision close to graduation to become a pilot and won all the awards in UPT. It's hard to say who's going to do well sometimes.

Like Albeif, I thought UPT was stressful, and adding the officership part to it just added on more pressure if you were new to the service and learning how everything worked. It was the best worst year of my life, and in a way I'm glad I went in with no flying time, I was a clean slate.

Last edited by Dirty30; 12-05-2017 at 04:57 AM. Reason: Typos
Dirty30 is offline