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DustyNuts posted:Right here my man: http://www.public.navy.mil/bupers-npc/reference/messages/Documents/NAVADMINS/NAV2013/NAV13053.txt I tried using that when I separated and already had a job lined up (one of the other conditions in the NAVADMIN). Got into a nice long fight with the lady in charge and my NCC. She claimed there is no way to just do day 1 and 5, and would drop me if I skipped DOLEW, despite what that document says. I dropped the class and took the rest of the week off and did the JKO equivalent classes... you can add and drop those as much as you want and can just take the pretest until you get 100%, then pass the class. You can do those in like a day then print off the certs for the "capstone" event.
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Mar 1, 2017 13:13
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Wingnut Ninja posted:Enjoy the Central American microbes on your counter-narcotics dets. Try not to get murdered by drug cartels. I did 6 months on that det. Didn't get murdered and only got the comalapas once... Before an 11 hour flight. Would do again regardless. Of course I got out and fly into hurricanes now, so infer what you will about my sanity or opinion of the VP community.
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Jul 30, 2017 13:03
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It's pretty interesting doing the hurricane stuff. It's kind of crazy how long they've been doing it and how long some of these guys have been around. It's still kind of unsettling every time I go awhile between storm flights, but most of the flights aren't as bad as you'd think. Occasionally you do get some really nasty ones and those are miserable.
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Jul 31, 2017 01:49
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A White Guy posted:Hey Navy Goons. Are there any NOAA officer corp goons that are still posting? I'm curious because it sounds really cool. I am. I transferred from the navy last year to fly their hurricane hunter P-3s. I don't know much about the boat side of the corps since I went straight into aviation. The guys that did that seems to have mixed experiences based on homeport and age of ship. Regardless they transferred over to aviation from there so t probably wasn't that great. The bulk of our aviation work is light aircraft looking at whales and flying scientists around for various experiments, etc. The P-3 and the G-IV mostly do weather stuff when not tasked with hurricanes (I was on for a tornado project and another one studying winter storms in the North Atlantic last spring). NOAA Corps is a weird asterisk of a service. Coming from the Navy it's a weird change since there's no enlisted. We have a bunch of GS employees that run the backend stuff and maintenance, and the meteorologists are all Feds too. The boat side has wage mariners which I guess is similar. They all have a collective bargaining agreement, which is probably frustrating for a lot, but it seems to make my quality of life better since management can't gently caress us all over like the navy could. Still weird. Can a noble without any teds to boss around really be called a noble?
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Dec 9, 2017 01:32
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A White Guy posted:Oh holy poo poo, I legit did not expect there to be any NOAA goons. I'm more than likely the only one on SA, but I have such a weird career path with my transfer that I'm not the most knowledgeable on new recruits. Still, it's a similar process, you just have to go through our version of Officer Candidate School. https://www.omao.noaa.gov/learn/noaa-corps/join/eligibility-requirements I'm sure an environmental science degree is exactly what they want to see. It's 48 total hours of STEM basically, that first link has all the different kinds of stuff they'll give you credit for. If you're really interested you should give the recruiter a call, it looks like the next BOTC class application deadline is in January. https://www.omao.noaa.gov/learn/noaa-corps/join/applying There are multiple application periods a year so don't worry if that isn't enough time. You can't enlist in NOAA; you apply, then get an interview with a NOAA Corps Officer, then get selected to go through BOTC (Coast Guard OCS plus some extra NOAA stuff) and commission as an Ensign. After that you'd go to a boat most likely for a few years and then have the opportunity for other shore assignments or to transfer to aviation if you can get selected for that.
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Dec 9, 2017 04:18
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The port calls vary by ship and mission obviously. I was asking some of the guys who had ship time and it ranged between 3 days total in some weird Alaska port to having a wetting down in Kwajalein. NOAA interested me mostly because I think it has a very important domestic mission. I got annoyed with wasting time and burning holes in the sky in the desert and chasing readiness while in the Navy, and within my first month I had flown through Hurricane Matthew from Colombia all the way to North Carolina. I was busy as hell this season but still felt like what we were doing was very important. There is a divide between aviators and ship guys (most of the Corps are on ships), similar to the Navy. We are pretty top heavy with Officers from the Marine side because unlike the Navy, we generally don't drive off SWOs and other Junior Officers for whatever reason.
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Dec 9, 2017 14:34
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I checked in with khakis and then just did the A-pool muster thing in PT gear for a few months in 2009. Though every 6 months or so some new hilarious Ensign fuckup makes them knee jerk some new bs for everyone. For us it was endangered bird hunting and breaking into the schoolhouse to steal tests.
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Apr 7, 2018 13:02
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BIG HEADLINE posted:Congratulations on getting free training on one of the most popular airliners in the world. The sims are a full motion 737 flight station that can link up to the "tube trainer" with the tactical crew for training events. It simulates all that fun stuff to include all the missile avoidance systems and weapons. We had to stop shooting down crews when they were coupled with the pilot trainer because the motion was so violent that it was messing with the mounts in the sim bay. I've been away from it for two years but there is a ton of stuff coming online as the navy starts to fold all of its lesser known P-3 based missions into the P-8 and Triton UAS. Probably lots of growing pains in the straight stick MPR community as well.
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May 15, 2018 11:58
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vulturesrow posted:I confess I'll never understand someone in naval aviation being excited about being in a non-carrier based aircraft. When I went through flight school pretty everyone wanted jets. When I was a DH at VT-86 a few years back a lot more people were picking big wings as their first choice. Mostly what everyone else has said wrt per diem and boat life. Not a lot of studs really know that MPR is full of huge dorks and has some weird culture issues. I still don't regret it though. For the flight school guys, at least when I was there 9 years ago, everyone was falling over themselves to avoid 86 and the intermediate phase of 10/4. Basically the gouge was that jet guys hate NFO's and that 86 and beyond would be dealing with assholes at a time when cutting scores were jumping up and they were trying to cut guys out of the pipeline. Everyone wanted to flee to the safety of fat kid land basically.
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May 18, 2018 12:08
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Jimmy4400nav posted:Oh snap, I have a few instructors who were just getting in around that time. One of my LTs told me how in the API student pool they had too many people, so they offered ROTC and Academy grads the opportunity to drop contract and leave the military and not have to reimburse their education expenses. Whats crazy is at least right now they're still working overtime trying to fill a bunch of slots and vacancies that are getting ready to open up, so at least NFO-wise the cutting scores aren't as much of an issue. Yeah it was very similar to that wrt the pink sheets back then. Jumping ship to VP-30 got you away from that IIRC so that was part of the drive. It all comes in waves but it sounds like you are in a good part of the accordion. I was in A-pool as an ROTC grad when they offered us out, but couldn't guarantee we wouldn't REDES to SWO. They eventually started just letting people leave with no commitment - rumor was someone had done academy and then grad school at Notre Dame before starting flight school, then asked them point blank in front of the mass of ensigns and volunteered right there. After that the NSS cutting score started ticking up to the point that people got dropped from API because you needed like an 85 average on your tests to maintain a high enough NSS. Of course the rumor when I separated was that they over-corrected back then and now will have to jack up the bonus and everyone will make O-4 hasn't happened either. Though pretty much every pilot from my year, even the biggest kool aid drinkers, bailed and are now flying airlines, so who knows what'll happen.
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May 18, 2018 21:30
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The Valley Stared posted:You're too old for Sub (waivers only go to 31) so you're already limited there. I think NFOs can be up to 35, but if your eyes are poo poo, that's another no go. That might be a situation where you can go to 35 if you have prior time in. Depending on how hosed up his eyes are, he could still NFO. Pretty sure he needs to be correctable to 20/20, not colorblind, and probably some other stuff. There are plenty of NFO’s and glasses jokes.
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Jun 7, 2018 13:58
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Jimmy4400nav posted:For the Jacksonville area, are there any spots in particular to avoid for renting a place? A few of us in my flight program are looking to rent a place down there when we go to the FRS. I'm trying to figure out if it'd be better to be closer to base or downtown. Trying to pocket as much BAH as I can. There’s not really much of a downtown in Jax. A lot of the single people live in Avondale/ Riverside- gentrified and hip older area north of base. Lots of good restaurants and bars. Can be some sketchy stuff on the fringes once you get near Murray hill or Springfield. Most people will be coming in from south of the base, so you should have a pretty easy commute. Most of the traffic coming onto base comes from Fleming Island/Orange Park/Argyle to the south. Those are full of suburbs and can be a nightmare for traffic. I’d avoid that area. Some people live at the beaches or by Town Center. There would be more apartments available that way. You would go opposite traffic until you cross the Buckman Bridge, then you’d join with the rest of the people slogging in from orange park on 17 going North to base. Longer drive but generally traffic free until you get near base. Likewise for Mandarin or Southside; those are less hip and more suburban but a little closer on the opposite side of the river. TLDR - don’t live anywhere south of base on the west side of the St. John’s unless you have kids.
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Jun 30, 2018 16:21
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When I switched over to the NOAA Corps I learned that “shipmate” is a positive or at least neutral term. I’ve done my best to corrupt and use it derisively.
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Jul 14, 2018 12:41
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I had a friend in college that got a Nuclear and Radiological Engineering degree and wound up selecting Naval Reactors after we commissioned. It sounded much better than being a regular nuke officer. And possibly more engineering related than a standard nuke. Of course I don’t know actually anything so YMMV.
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Jul 19, 2018 11:58
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I did the whole Maine in February thing. It was cold and I learned that you can get stuck in a snow drift if you walk away from camp to piss in the middle of the night without snow shoes. My advice is to never cross the road and don’t sign anything. Also eat and drink so much in Portsmouth the week before you don’t lose any weight during your outdoor adventure.
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Jul 30, 2018 23:18
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The Valley Stared posted:Bellevilles are good boots, but take a while to break in. They can be resoled too, so if they start to deteriorate on you, find a cobbler and get them fixed. I like my bates boots. They have a sweet zipper up the side and a composite toe so they’re super-light compared to my previous Bellevilles. Though we use them for flight so I get replacements for free.
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Aug 28, 2018 16:10
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Does anyone wear any kind of Oxford shoe other than the bates ones with their uniform? Specifically aviator brown shoes since it’s a weird poo brown color. About to have to wear khakis for the first time in a year and I can see the soles starting to crack. Prepping for a bates blowout, I’m thinking I’d like to spend some extra to get something that won’t disintegrate sitting in my closet. I’ve heard of some model of Florsheim or Allen Edmonds that look similar, but I’m hesitant to buy if there’s a chance it’ll look off.
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Sep 27, 2018 15:23
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vulturesrow posted:I wore the Florsheim ones that I bought at the 32nd ST NEX after a Bates blowout. I wound up ordering those. The amazon reviews for the one I got are mostly people saying they got them after a Bates blowout and they look pretty close. Got them for 85 off the Florsheim site so basically the same cost as a pair of Bates anyways.
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Sep 29, 2018 04:37
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Jimmy4400nav posted:Also we're putting in our preferences for squadrons tomorrow! Anyone know anything about any of the VP (except VP-1) squadrons up in Whidbey? I heard all of them were alright, but wanted to see if anyone here had any insight? Which ones are good or bad seems to change every few years depending on front office and other stuff. I’m sure the old Hawaii squadrons are a little more chill than the whidbey ones, but that may have been beaten out of them by now. I know a DH at 40 and the skipper is also my old PPC. I’m really not sure how I’d like working under either of them but they were both good dudes a few years ago. I also know the super JO (if you’re a giant nerd and do weapons school/level 5 stuff you can do this for disassociated sea tour) at 47. She absolutely hates it but I’m not sure if that is due to her being a weirdo who hates fun or a bad command climate. Beyond those two I don’t have any recent experience with them. I think I’m the only other VP officer that posts in here, but hopefully someone else knows something more. Once you find out where you’re going I can probably ask around to see what the deal is.
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Dec 13, 2018 01:28
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A lot of what was frustrating for the current iteration of Super JO’s is the weird place they sort of fit into in the squadron. With the P-8 transition, they were supposed to help to push new tactics and try to get the community to change up how we do things. The issue is that they have to push back against pretty much everyone senior to them in the squadron to do that. So that’s like 8 DH’s, a bunch of chiefs secretly, and the front office. They usually wind up just getting stuck with all of the poo poo jobs the DH’s can get away with pushing off on them. Experiences may vary but that seemed to be what I was seeing with the first wave or two of them. WRT 47, I wouldn’t judge it based on anecdotal evidence from someone like my friend. Usually having a good front office can help to change things for the better. It’s nice to know someone like a PXO that may be able to advocate for you later as well if you wind up in the same squadron. Eventually you’ll be competing with your peers for Mission Commander and Instructor TACCO spots.
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Dec 13, 2018 12:52
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maffew buildings posted:So I got an approval for an MRI and scheduled with the local provider tricare authorizes (scheduled before approval went through). It just got approved and is telling me go to a site 350 miles away at my home of record. Anyone else had this issue, feedback on quickly correcting? I’ve had it happen across town, not something as extreme as yours. You should be able to call the tricare referral line and have them switch it. I don’t know the specific number for it, but you should be able to call the main tricare phone number and navigate phone tree hell to connect to them.
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Jan 20, 2019 13:54
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The intel officers I worked with on the MPRA side didn’t seem to do too much when we were home, and when we were deployed it was mostly making sure their IS’s did all the post mission products and debriefs correctly. You’ll spend a lot of time behind a locked door in an office without windows regardless. No idea what life is like at larger staff commands where there are a bunch of intel nerds clustered together.
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Jan 22, 2019 16:12
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ManMythLegend posted:It's more that your story conflicts with everything else I've ever heard over the last 15 years with respect to MPRA NFOs. That doesn’t quite mean that life is better as an MPRA NFO, just that the jet pipeline is that much more miserable. You get three failures for all of flight school in Pensacola, if you hang around for two years doing jet stuff for that much longer you are in the crosshairs to get booted. It sounds very similar to when I did it all 10 years ago. They get your whole class in a big room at the end, you confirm your requested platform, and they crunch the numbers in another room. Like an hour later they come back, say who got what, and the MPRA guys go home and wait for orders to Jax. The rest of them start ground school immediately and are miserable. One guy in my class cried when he didn’t get MPRA. Quality of life once you are in the fleet probably varies, and MPRA is notoriously full of uptight jerks, but I’ve heard the same hornet and growler anecdote as well. In conclusion, the navy is a land of contrasts.
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Jan 22, 2019 22:40
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One of my friends in API had his pay frozen for a month while they sorted out a $50 overage or some nonsense right as he started. He was taking loans from all over just to pay rent.
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Apr 9, 2019 23:36
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Yeah he will be fine. It’s a low bar for a new JO in a VP squadron, though having your first impression be missing deployment because of random admin issues probably wouldn’t look great. Sounds like he is fixing it anyways. I wouldn’t try to loop yourself in to fix it or whatever upon check in, just give the next guy who picks up sponsor duty a nudge once you’ve been there a minute.
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May 4, 2019 02:53
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Make sure it’s Manama Bahrain and not Sheik Isa Air Base Bahrain. The latter will get you 3.50 a day in per diem and a truly lovely permanent expeditionary airfield experience.
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May 4, 2019 22:14
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Qatar is pretty much the same WRT per diem, but it’s basically Air Force Disney Land there so the amenities are nicer. We did a split site deployment to both - Isa had less rules but Qatar had better internet/galleys/lodging. Also an indoor and an outdoor pool and two gyms. And Dairy Queen and stuff. It’s kind of a pain to get out into town and you can’t drink or do overnights either in Doha. Isa is a bunch of tents and trailers 45 minutes from Manama. There’s usually a bunch of VP guys there, as well as a bunch of army and marine turds getting in fights and taking up room in the gym. Also there is a prison on the other side of the fence. The Bahrainis make them do PT and prayers really early so you will hear a bunch of weird yelling and every call to prayer 5 times a day. Also feral cats will fight under your trailer at odd hours of the night. You can at least get off base fairly easily and blow your entire deployment of per diem drinking in Manama. I wouldn’t volunteer for either personally, but if you don’t mind not getting out in town or weird Air Force stuff then I guess the Deid is probably better.
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May 4, 2019 22:54
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I’d hazard a guess that it is far better for fishing than the other spots you mentioned at least.
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May 4, 2019 23:14
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Still burgundy as far as I know. Diplomatic passports are black I think. I don’t know if other counties recognize both to jump lines though. It would have been useful in Japan. Sometimes you have to send the red one off to an embassy for whatever country you are going to for a Visa stamp, so it is useful for those. I had to do that for Chile and Colombia.
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May 6, 2019 00:50
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You can complete the individual component class if you get 100% on the pre-test. You can also add and drop the class as many times as you want. So just keep printing out the completed pre-test until you figure out the correct answers and drop/add the classes as needed. I finished all of them in an afternoon. E: worked in 2016.
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Sep 7, 2019 23:49
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I remember instructing that guy! The weapons and inflatable boat stuff seems weird but the smuggled flash drive stuff is probably not good. E: Instructed in ASW tactics, not espionage. Good thing I’m incompetent so they probably didn’t get any good info from me. Wonder Free fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Oct 19, 2019 |
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Oct 19, 2019 19:50
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It’s apparently a VQ wardroom tradition to do dramatic readings of this book https://www.amazon.com/Born-Fly-Untold-American-Reconnaissance/dp/0767911113 Not sure if he is still around or not but it wouldn’t surprise me if all the senior guys got quietly benched and given poo poo orders until they separated.
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May 20, 2020 20:05
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CMD598 posted:Was this training anything like they're data security training? Water survival is a giant fake helicopter fuselage with a bunch of seats you have to escape out of blindfolded. In flight school you also have to swim a mile in boots and a flight suit. You get kicked in the head a lot. My understanding is that they didn’t really do data destruction drills prior to that. When I went through P-3 training in 2010 there were formal procedures and checklists and we had to do it each flight in flight school. When the P-8 rolled out, they carried a nail gun to shoot through hard drives and stuff, but they replaced it with some electronic hard drive erasing thing.
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May 21, 2020 13:20
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We caught a guy recreating the cover of Splinter Cell or whatever on one of our flights. Suspended himself upside down from a hand rail with NVG’s on dual wielding pistols. Looked cool but I’m sure the chiefs chewed his rear end.
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Jun 19, 2020 03:51
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We launch ashes out of our plane into hurricanes sometimes. I usually do about one a season. Generally just old hurricane hunters though.
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Aug 2, 2020 06:17
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When I transferred from the Navy to NOAA they gave me my own laptop and an iPad mini with Foreflight and cell data. It was... confusing? I was blown away after 8 years of sharing two computers amongst the wardroom and having a fleet of PFPS and JMPS laptops nobody knew how to update or connect to the network.
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Aug 17, 2020 12:49
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P-3 only. You only fly one or the other since their primary mission is hurricanes and you can’t be in two crews at once. The 24 hour tower will be nice since we fly all sorts of odd hours for hurricanes and other stuff. I would guess Lakeland’s next move is to try to lure commercial airline service back in again. Looking at a possible deployment for a wave coming across the Atlantic now. A bunch of tracks bring it into Florida next week, so that’ll be a mess again.
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Aug 18, 2020 12:01
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Have you considered the PHS Commissioned Officer Corps? Not sure how their recruiting works but I know they take PA’s. https://www.usphs.gov/apply-now
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Dec 2, 2020 00:33
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There’s also some schools that have ROTC and let you get aviation degrees i.e. Navy would pay for all their commercial tickets plus a bachelors degree. I think Jacksonville University and maybe Auburn had programs for that, though maybe I’m misremembering. However, NROTC (15 years ago anyways) seemed weighted towards feeding people into Engineering and hard sciences primarily. Reading between the lines they really want people they can force to go nuke. Competition for scholarships for degrees they aren’t interested in is intense since it was heavily weighted toward STEM. Some schools will also give ROTC kids free room and board, but it’s pretty rare. Academy is really the only “free ride” out there.
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Mar 13, 2021 20:26
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It’s not like NROTC is a nuke only pipeline, it’s not. Out of my class if 15, we probably had half go nuke; but I also went to an engineering university and most of those guys had planned to go nuke from the start and wanted all the bonuses. About a third of us went into aviation and the rest went SWO. I don’t remember anyone getting railroaded into nuke. There’s no harm in applying for NROTC. I think you can get the first year of the scholarship before you sign a commitment as well if he is worried about that. If he is in VA and not interested in fake academy stuff, steer him away from the combo of Virginia Tech and ROTC. They have a corps of cadets and are huge dorks about it.
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Mar 14, 2021 14:00
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