I apologize in advance for the long OT post.
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Originally Posted by fr8tdog
I envy you for having the opportunity to fly F-18's. Yea! you would know Dean if he was anywhere near your time frame  awesome crazy Character (my Cousin). He flew Hornets out of Lemoore and then went to United Airlines. I'm flying for Fedex, but came up through the civilian route. Nice to meet you. Cheers
Joe |
Thanks for the kind words, and nice to meet you as well. I hear Fedex is the way to go. I knew a former P-3 pilot in Annapolis who got out and flew for Fedex. He was doing VERY well for himself around the time the airlines were all getting pay/pension cuts. I couldn't have done the civilian route- too expensive!
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Originally Posted by r4gs
^goodness me, i'm a pilot too! well, almost  5 months out from wings
there's got to be a correlation between sexy jets and fast cars.... |
Congrats! It's funny... half of the cars in the officer spaces are performance cars. My old CO drove a red Z06. Right now we have several C6 Vettes, an STI, Evo, E92 M3, 335i, Porsche Cayman S, and my M.
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Originally Posted by fr8tdog
Yep.... don't forget fast woman and old scotch  and then we get married to nurses or teachers
CONGRATS!!!!!! |
Truer words have never been spoken.
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Originally Posted by mfanatic325
How about flying jets? I have to have 20/20 vision, and tons of credentials/training? Wasn't it like....1% of all examinees get to fly jets?  |
It's all based on what the Navy needs. I went through the Academy, which is definitely the most difficult route. The Academy likes to say 10% of applicants get in; I don't know if that's 10% of
qualified applicants that complete the entire screening process/medical exams/obtain a congressional nomination/etc. or 10% of people who tell a recruiter they would like to go there end up actually going. 75% graduate. 25% of graduates get a Navy pilot slot. 80% finish API and Primary flight training. 15% get jets. Only a fraction get single seat.
It's not easy to convince the government to hand over a $40 million supersonic strike fighter loaded with ordinance to a guy in his mid-twenties and have him land it on an aircraft carrier. The other way of looking at it is this: the high value unit of a carrier strike group is the carrier; the purpose of the carrier is the aircraft; tens of thousands of people bring the ordinance halfway across the world, but one pilot is trusted to bring it through the final and most dangerous few hundred miles to support the guys risking their lives on the ground. It's a lot of pressure. I never had to drop in combat and won't take credit away from those that have, or pretend to be a war hero when I'm not. But, all through training it's constantly in every pilot's mind, especially when we are dropping real bombs on real targets during CAS flights. Hell, it's even intense from a financial standpoint- one LGTR (laser-guided training round) costs about $12k, and each flight hour probably costs about $15k. With that math a division of four jets for two hours with two LGTRs each is over 200 grand for the flight.
These days jets are extremely complex, a vast number of safety procedures have been added, and PRK (a type of laser eye surgery) has been approved. So, with a greater number of people physically qualified to fly and less aircraft (and money) available, the Navy is able to pick and choose who it wants. Like anything in the military, the demand for jet pilots goes in waves. I didn't originally get a pilot slot out of the Academy. The Navy kicked out too many pilots in training and had ten more slots open up; I got one of those ten. There were guys with much higher grades than I had through Primary that didn't get jets, simply because they graduated from training a month earlier or later. To be honest I didn't even know if I would graduate from Primary because my grades started out so low, but I was able to rock the later stages and eventually met the jet minimums. That month they needed jet pilots, so I got a slot.
It took three years to get my wings after four years of the Academy. After that I had an eight year commitment. Air Force pilots get their wings a little more quickly- I believe after "intermediate" whereas the Navy does it after completion of "advanced" training, but the Air Force commitment is ten years instead of eight. After that you're so far into your career that it's extremely difficult to transition to any other community and restart the pipeline. If you decide to be a pilot, that's pretty much what you're going to be doing for your career.
Jets are loud. Because of this, once you get to a squadron you will probably be stationed in the middle of nowhere (Lemoore) or in an area where the Navy had to compensate each resident $30k because of the jet noise even though the base was there long before the houses were built (Oceana). You'll work extremely intense 15 hour days and be away from your home base 8+ months out of the year. It's hard on families, and you'll see the best and worst in relationships. There are a lot of days when your only motivation to continue is the fact that you're flying military jets, and you took someone else's dream slot. Then there are other days where you see and do things so cool you're unable to articulate its coolness to anyone you know... except to someone equally as cool as you are, another jet pilot
I guess my point is this: don't join expecting to fly jets. The best you can do is work hard and pray the chips fall where you want. There's a lot of luck involved. Anyone who says they got it solely because they are good is full of shit. No matter how good you are, there's always someone better who can take away your spot. At the same time, there's a reason most Navy recruiting commercials have a loaded F/A-18 screaming around on the screen. It's the closest a man can get to playing God.
The civilian route is a different kind of hard, and a different kind of sacrifice, as fr8tdog could probably tell you. Captains live the good life, but they went through a lot of study and expense to get there... and had a career of "not screwing up."
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Originally Posted by fr8tdog
If you're wanting to fly military jets, you will need to jump through a bunch of hoops. You're age, college degree, and an officer candidate school. I'm not sure what the age cutoff is or the commitment requirement is, but I'm sure one of the other guys do. Just guessing I would say the max age before starting an OCS would be around 27 with a 4 year accredited degree already completed and yes an eye sight requirement. There are other options like applying to a guard unit, but you need connections and still have the above requirements. I'm civilian background, so I'm sure one of the other guys will have some better info for you. Good luck!
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As far as I know this is entirely correct. The chances of joining a Guard unit are slim to none, as a lot of active duty guys try and join Guard units when they finish up their commitments. No one in their right mind would spend $4 million to train someone up to fly jets on the weekends. If they show up with wings on their uniform and 2000+ flight hours, it's much easier to hire them on.
Anyway, back to wheels: If you don't spring for the Apex wheels, check out the Advan RS. The RS-D have the dish, and the RS have concavity. They break from the 7- or 8-spoke norm, and look a little larger than they actually are.