How To?

[Mongoose69]

Mongoose69, true if he wants to be USAF, by all means go for it, But not everyone will be as cool or skilled as you or as good as you to get fighters in the USAF, they might go USAF and fly C-130's, or oh my gad! Heloes. Second class citizens who cannot be USAF fighter pilots drift off into the other services and struggle to get by knowing they are second class citizens. Are you recommending if that happens to him he should drop out of flying? Is that what you are recommending? I was only giving the opinion of keeping all your options open, which I still think is a good idea. You will also have to admit you do not fly much compared to your civilian counter parts. I see resumes from 20 year military pilots, they average around 4000 hours for their 20 years, that is about 200 hr per year average the same as I flew except combat. So if someone is joining the military to build up flight time they may be disappointed.

This is the crap that I'm talking about. Do I care what other people fly or how they feel about what they fly? No. Do I care that I might ONLY get 4000 fighter hours in 20 years, instead of 10000 autopilot point to point hours in some commuter BE-whatever? No. I joined because I wanted to fly fighters, and I got that wish. I am happier than a pig in $hit and that is what I tell folks when they ask about what I do. Just because someone can't/won't/didn't get to fly fighters, they shouldn't try to turn someone else off from wanting to do the same.

One of my best friends in pilot training came to me halfway through Tweets. "Jason", he said "I can't make up my mind". "Part of me wants to fly fighters, but part of me isn't sure if I can hack it or even wants to be part of that lifestyle." "What should I do?" As far as I can tell, there are 3 types of people in the world, and here is what they would have said:

1) (If he's not sure, then he shouldn't fly fighters and take a spot from someone who is sure) "Don't do it dude"

2) (If he decided not to try for a fighter, that's one more slot for me) "Don't do it dude"

3) (Flying a fighter has got to be the coolest thing in the universe, and I think everyone should get a shot at doing that) "Dude, if you at least don't try for it, you'll never know if you could hack it or if you would like it. Go for it!"

I chose #3, he got a fighter (not necessarily just because of what I said), and now is an F-16 IP.

Sorry for the rant, but I get tired of reading all of the "you should join to serve, not just to fly" and "if you REALLY want to fly, you should be happy flying a cargo plane full of rubber you-know-what out of Hong Kong". I honestly don't know how I would have felt if I hadn't gotten to fly a fighter, but I'm sure "seriously disappointed" would have been close to the mark. I guess I'm just not up to everyone elses' standards...

Jason

 

[Wolf King]

nevermind

 

[frog_flyer]

i got some great advice from someone recently ( i think on here?)

you'll always be able to fly heavies when you get out.

fly the fighters while you have the chance!


I'll fly whatever the air force wants me to and i'll love every minute of it! ... and the hundreds of hours of desking in between those minutes!

 

[pilotyip]

Thanks Jason I am sure we all feel better now. We go back to the start of this thread, the guy did not say his son wanted to be a fighter pilot in the USAF. However it seems you assume everyone wants to be like you, you know that is not the case. I am very happy that you are very happy. Everyone should be happy, life is much easier that way. But you can not define anyone elses's happiness. If guy wanted to fly "rubber stuff out of Hong Kong", then more power to him. Keep up the good work and I wish you the best. BTW the Navy will keep the sea lanes open for you so your fighters cna be supported overseas. They will do it with SSN's, P-3s and CVN's

 

[stonewall]

Someone had a post over on PPW, the new site. He seemed to think every thread here, no matter how it started, degenerated into name-calling and my co*k is bigger than your co*k. Wonder how he came up with that?

Three posts into trying to help some kid, people are critiquing grammer and starting the fighter/heavy stuff. No help to the original poster. FI is starting to suck.