• Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?

    Go here:

    Edit Account Details and Profile

Primary to Jets

Status
Not open for further replies.

Jeff

Registered User
I am a die hard want to be a jet jockey and I will be crushed if I end up anywhere else. I know everything is based on the needs of the Navy. I keep hearing that now is probably the best time in history to become a combat pilot, however I also hear that classes quite often only send one, or maybe two if your lucky, guys into the jet pipeline. So I am wondering how classes may be broken down coming out of primary now. What are the ratios into each pipeline,on average? How big is a primary class on average? I report to OCS in September and API from there, so heres hoping the needs of the Navy are jets when I go.

Any insite would be great......
Thanks
 

Dave Shutter

Registered User
I also have some questions along these lines. Judging from CNATRA's site, there are five squadrons that do Primary, what are the odds that more than one squadron/class is graduating at the same time (thereby generating more competition for desirable slots)? What do they do when you have a tie in NSS, what is the determining factor to who choses first?

D



Edited by - Dave Shutter on 7 July 2000
 

Phoenix

Registered User
Yeah, that´s what I want to know. By the way, how is the NSS score calculated? Dave, do you know anything?

DEATH FROM ABOVE!
 

webmaster

The Grass is Greener!
pilot
Site Admin
Contributor
quote:
there are five squadrons that do Primary, what are the odds that more than one squadron/class is graduating at the same time (thereby generating more competition for desirable slots)?

Dave, I thought I covered this earlier, but maybe I didn't word my post well enough. Anyways, every week on thursday there is selection for all five squadrons (VT6, VT3 and VT2 in Whiting, and VT27 and VT28 in CC). These are from SNAs that completed Primary in the previous week. As stated before, you fill out a dream sheet with your 3 choices, and end up waiting all day, in some cases some people get told to come back the next morning to find out. As for a tie, I would think it would be difficult to get one, since the NSS is broken down to decimal points (though I am sure they have some sort of means of breaking that apart also). As for how many are selecting that week, I selected with 35 people (8 from my own squadron, a pretty fat week). Some weeks there may only be 3 or 4 selecting at the squadron, or on others even more, depends on how fast they can pump them out the door. Once again, you can't tell how many people you will be competing against, my thoughts were, the more the better (ie open up more potential slots of the airframe I wanted), and let my grades do the talking . Oh well, need to get going for my FAM 0 brief on the T44 and meet my new Air Force OnWing.


Edited by - John Wickham on 7 July 2000
 

Dave Shutter

Registered User
quote:As for a tie, I would think it would be difficult to get one, since the NSS is broken down to decimal points (though I am sure they have some sort of means of breaking that apart also). As for how many are selecting that week, I selected with 35 people (8 from my own squadron, a pretty fat week). Some weeks there may only be 3 or 4 selecting at the squadron, or on others even more, depends on how fast they can pump them out the door. Once again, you can't tell how many people you will be competing against,

Thanx John, that answered my question about possible ties, but as to heads graduating, I'm guessing you're saying that SNA's graduate on an individual basis rather than a class as a whole? Makes sense.

Phoenix: Click on LINKS, go down to GOUGE and the hit the MIT ROTC link, look under NAVAL AVIATION TRAINING PIPELINE/PILOT and they have the numbers all layed out. I've mentioned this info before and not heard from any actual student that their NSS info is incorrect, but they also say interm' is a 6-9 week course for everyone at Whiting before being selected for a community Which is very incorrect...grain of salt!

D
 

webmaster

The Grass is Greener!
pilot
Site Admin
Contributor
Dave, yes, unlike the Air Force training program up at Vance, you don't necessarily select during the same week as say the people you initially started ground school with. Some factors that may affect you making good/bad time through the pipeline: going med down (unable to fly, ie ear infection, flu etc..), weather, OnWing unavailabe, planes not available, stuck waiting for a partner for FORMs, or waiting for the next RI ground school class, and holidays especially long ones like Xmas. Then of course you have the contention on which squadrons put their students through faster and flies more hours/Xs. Which luckily in my case, VT6 flies you every day, where VT3 and VT2 don't get you through the program as quickly. This is were you hear the term Time to Train, and the numbers mean alot to the respective squadrons.

VT6 could put some people (rare) through in 18-19 weeks, but mostly around 22 weeks, where the other squadrons were sitting around 27-30 weeks. In my case I went med down for a period of 4 weeks plus the Xmas stand down, and that killed my time to train numbers. At least in 6, as your time to train got up there, they started trying to push you through to make up lost time.

As for intermediate, some people choose not to go on cross countries (I don't know why, I mean you are given the keys and the gas, all you need to do is find an Onwing you like and pick a location!), so they take longer to get through Intermediate training. On a side note, a guy I selected with in Primary who got P3s and was in VT2, just a few weeks ago reported here to Corpus for Advanced, while I have already started and been in Groundschool! So you can have guys that go through and take that full amount of time that is slated for Intermediate.
 

Dave Shutter

Registered User
quote:As for intermediate, some people choose not to go on cross countries (I don't know why, I mean you are given the keys and the gas, all you need to do is find an Onwing you like and pick a location!), so they take longer to get through Intermediate training.

Dude...I want hours, especially if the Navy's flipping the bill!

I'm surprised to hear that you can pick and choose your syllabus events, especially at an advanced level! But why would someone who chooses not to do cross country hops take longer to finish! You lost me.

Also, in your advanced training for P-3 your flying the T-44 Pegasus correct? In advanced will you get intro's to any of the missions the P-3 flies in the fleet, ASW, anti-shipping, etc. Like how jet students get intro'd to strike, ACM and of course CARQUAL?

D
 

webmaster

The Grass is Greener!
pilot
Site Admin
Contributor
quote:
But why would someone who chooses not to do cross country hops take longer to finish! You lost me.

Dave, basically it is like Matt said. You have the option to take the plane on the road, and knock out your flights in one cross country. For me, I completed 8 syllabus flights through the course of my Intermediate training on that cross country. And visited various military and civilian airfields, in addition to talking to different Centers and Approach outside of the Whiting Field local area.

But for the people who for some reason or another don't put in a cross country request, they sit at home and are put on the schedule during the regular week for out and ins, or round robins as Matt said. So then you are subject to weather, aircraft/instructor availability, standing duty, etc. So what took me one weekend to finish 8 events, may take another SNA two weeks. Case in point, I came back from my cross country, and I only had 4 Visual Navigation flights left to complete Intermediate, and it took me a week and a half to knock that out on two seperate out and ins! So in effect, if I recall correctly, there were only 12 Intermediate flights for us, plus the groundschool.

Basically, Intermediate training for people going into either Props or Helos consists of more indepth IFR knowledge of RI and AirNav procedures. Also it is the first time you can take advantage of a "copilot" and offload some of the cockpit duties. Primary is preparing everyone to be jet pilots, to see who can handle the load and stay ahead of the plane. In Intermediate for Props and Helo tracks, the emphasis switches to taking advantage of the resources available, and offloading some of the flight duties. The instructor acts as a somewhat "stupid and non proactive copilot", its up to you to assign tasks such as taking over the coms, dialing up nav aids, briefing him to back you up on altitude and heading, depending on the approach to call out checkpoints, etc.

As for Advanced, yes VT31 (the squadron I am in) has the T44, while VT35 has the TC12. The majority of the syllabus after the initial 13 FAM flights and a couple of Night FAMs is Radio Intrument procedures training. Then we get into two FORM flights and some Over water Navigation flights. There is a portion of the training where we do low level photo recon practice, or "rigging ships", that I am definitely looking forward to.
 

djxprice

Registered User
Hi All,

Here's some info on percentages of NAVY SNA's going into the three major pipelines by training squadron from 01 Oct 99 to 09 July 00. This came from student control at VT-6:
Goal: Helo 60%
Jet 30%
Prop 10%
VT-2: Helo 44%
Jet 27%
Prop 22% (E2 6%)
VT-3 H 33%
J 30%
P 22% (E2 15%)
VT-6 H 43%
J 24%
P 20% (E2 12%)
VT-27 H 38%
J 34%
P 13% (E2 15%)
VT-28 H 38%
J 30%
P 23% (E2 9%)

I hope this helps. Have fun!

Dan




Edited by - djxprice on 19 July 2000
 

Jeff

Registered User
djxprice

Thank you so much for that last post. I have been trying for months to find figures like that out.

Jeff
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top