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Primary After Action 2020 or, A Giant Wall of Text

Pags

N/A
pilot
My first underway, I rode the controls on a DH (now in the Nuke pipeline, great guy) on a daytime approach to a CG (also first time seeing a CG) and he tried to nickname me "SAS 3". ?

BT BT

I'll say the HOTAS nature of T-6 trimming, plus TAD, makes it a fuckload of a lot easier than the turbo-weenie. That thing required near constant trimming for anything.

Most of my on-wings were trimming pretty well by the end of FAMs. You'd see poor trim pop up again in Forms when all the brain cells were in use trying to not hit lead, but usually it'd tamp down after a flight or
I thought the role of HAC was to function as SAS 3? That and the hand of God on the collective or collective outer loop actuator.
 

SynixMan

HKG Based Artificial Excrement Pilot
pilot
Contributor
I thought the role of HAC was to function as SAS 3? That and the hand of God on the collective or collective outer loop actuator.

I think he took offense to me, a 300 hr PQM, being nervous about his approach and riding along.
 

DanMa1156

Is it baseball season yet?
pilot
Contributor
I think he took offense to me, a 300 hr PQM, being nervous about his approach and riding along.

Your story reminds me of my buddies who did a "check in flight" with the Skipper as we all did. Pretty low threat environment, CO was just making sure you weren't a complete knucklehead, but he was known to do things to force a CRM situation to see if you had guts.

Turns out, he wasn't in that mood on my buddy's check in flight, but he was looking out for every single thing:

Preflight: "hey sir, uh, you wanna put your gloves on?"
Midflight: "Sir, I think we should keep the conversation about the flight..."
On course rules home: "uhhh sir, I think you shouldn't be texting."
CO: "Oh, ok, do you want to text the Commodore for me?"

Classic.
 

taxi1

Well-Known Member
pilot
Half of all pilots are below average, and one of them was in my E2 squadron. We're sitting in the ready room listening to him haggle with paddles over a fair pass, where he's arguing that he went high because they gave him a "little power" call, which paddles vehemently denied. Finally the ACO, the NFO who sits in the very back of the tube, offered up, "Hey Barry, I felt a settle coming on." He'd given the call over the ICS.
 
Selections. Just put down what you want to fly in that order. Game it at your own risk if it makes you feel better. It’s your effort to get to this point. Something that gets lost in the noise is that no matter what you get picked for, you still have one of the coolest and most rewarding jobs in the world. If it makes or breaks your attitude to have a certain community think long and hard what that means and why you may feel that way. Be prepared for anything and celebrate the accomplishment of making it this far. I’ve heard many times, and believe it myself that anyone who gives their community a fair chance will fall in love with it, embody that sentiment or its obvious to everyone around you that you’re unhappy or dissatisfied.

Then again, my #1 and #2 were neck and neck and I got #2.




Thanks for the write-up - very well thought out and in detail.

I'm curious, what did you pick for selection. Did you see a large difference in the number of slots for a certain platform in TW-4 vs TW-5? More/Less Jets - More/Less Helos etc..?

Also, can you talk a little about the weather and waypoints in Milton vs Corpus? I have heard varying comments that Milton has harder flights than Corpus because of this very reason.
 

Dontcallmegump

Well-Known Member
pilot
Thanks for the write-up - very well thought out and in detail.

I'm curious, what did you pick for selection. Did you see a large difference in the number of slots for a certain platform in TW-4 vs TW-5? More/Less Jets - More/Less Helos etc..?

Also, can you talk a little about the weather and waypoints in Milton vs Corpus? I have heard varying comments that Milton has harder flights than Corpus because of this very reason.

I put the Navy tilt first and maritime second. Jets third because after #2 I had no preference and wasn't able to leave it blank. Because of my NSS and other factors in training (or at least how I perceive they were considered) it was basically a throw away preference slot.

I've never heard anything even remotely credible about a correlation between primary training location and community selection. In fact anyone tangentially related to the process swears that is not considered. Someone smarter than me kept tabs on that last year and I believe their conclusion was it's a wash.

The generally accepted idea is that whiting course rules are more complex. That's subjective as no one has ever done primary in different locations twice and if they did one in primary and the other in advanced the aircraft and experience level would have more of an affect on that evaluation IMO. What is objective is that alert area 292 is some of the busiest airspace in the world (depending on how you define that). All in all course rules isn't the tallest peak in primary or even contacts.

The curriculum for primary allows for about 2 weeks or so IIRC, longer at whiting due to avg wx and other small factors. I can personally speak to how infuriating late fall and winter mornings are trying to fly VFR at whiting. Cant say i see the wisdom in that location... Ill find out about corpus here this fall and winter.

All of the above points regardless of how they actually affect training/selections would be low on my list of considerations for Whiting v. Corpus. in a re-do

What I would consider for putting down your preference is...
Do I want to move? (you could conceivably live in the same place from day one of NASC to primary complete or even wings if you go Milton/helos)
Would I like p'cola or corpus more? There is a type for each, corpus seems more "western" to me and has different recreation within (normal times) liberty radius, Pensacola and Milton was VERY stereotypical Florida in every sense of the idea.
Any family/friends or other personal ties to either place or area? Going home for holidays could be a lot easier and more frequent in one place or the other (in the before times and maybe the future)

In the long run, location likely wont affect your training in largely tangible ways. Study, chair fly be on time and ready to roll with a good attitude and either will work fine.

What does matter beyond all else is that the beer selection in Corpus is undoubtedly better than Pensacola.
 

Meyerkord

Well-Known Member
pilot
Did you see a large difference in the number of slots for a certain platform in TW-4 vs TW-5? More/Less Jets - More/Less Helos etc..?
I kept track of this last year over the course of 29 weeks of selections. Based on my numbers, there was a slightly higher % of people from TW-5 that stayed in Milton for helos. Similarly, there was a slightly higher % of people from TW-4 that stayed in Corpus for multi-engine. But the numbers aren't big enough to where it should sway your preference of where you do primary. My data probably looks way different than data from other years, too, so I wouldn't sweat it.
 

zippy

Freedom!
pilot
Contributor
I love that all of you think they Navy is smart enough to correlate primary location to platform selection.

Maybe there is hope for the future after all.

When it happens, it usually comes into play for budget reasons when PCS funding is running low.
 
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