tmaca
Member
This IS sort of late in the game, but...... if your goal is to get a fixed wing license, there IS a trick, sort of. You don't even need to go through Rotary Wing School. But it won't be free, just cheap. Some Army bases have fixed wing airfields that aren'r strictly limited to military aircraft. And some of those have flying clubs, where instuction is a fraction of what it would cost anywhere else. I started at Ft. Sill in 1981. The club had use of Post Army Air Field, and hanger space either free or for next to nothing, I forget which. Except for an old Army T-41 (Cessna 172) that the club had somehow gotten ownership of and used for high power instruction, The aircraft were owned by members . The owners of the planes essentially gave the club the use of the planes in return for no psarking fees and the club keeping all the maintenance current. And there were club members with A&P tickets. The only drawback to flying out of Ft. Sill was that AF trainees out of Sheppard AFB used the field for touch and gos. I think it was about my 4th time in the air, just turned on final, when the control tower told me to "make a low approach". So I gave them a "low approach, Roger" then looked at my instructor and said, "Huh?", not having any idea what it was they meant. He said "It means you've got a Tweet (USAF T37 jet trainer) on your ass coming in for a touch and go. Go to full throttle, maintain altitude, and get the H--- out of the way by flying straight down the runway, then turning back into your downwind leg. It's Army control talk for go around." That didn't happen a lot, but when it did it was a pain. At the Ft. Sill club I could have gone as far as an instrument ticket and high performance land for a fraction of what it would have cost at a normal flying school. I got sent to Heidelberg a few months later, and continued on when I found a military flying club at Coleman Army Airfield in Mannheim. I don't remember what I paid back then but I do remember it was an hourly wet rate that was about 2/3 what any civilian dry rate was, and the instructor was, pretty much, free, instuctor rated club members doing it for a combination of liking it and piling up free flight hours. Basically a non-profit flight school, with really low overhead and even, if I'm remembering right, cheap fuel from the Army because they were offficially a MWR activity. They had no investment in aircraft (except that T41 probably cost something originally, but I doubt it was much), low fuel costs, low maintenance costs, no payments to the airfield, and just about no other overhead. So hourly rates, either or for instruction or rentals, were incredibly cheap.
So that's the only "trick" there is, really. You'd have to find a military flying club, where you can get trained on the super cheap. And if you do, I've heard that there's a way to use GI Bill benefits even before ETS, which could make it essentially free. I'd been out from '70 to '79, and my GI Bil, such as it was for Vietnam vets, was within just a few months of expiration date when the 10 year clock stopped because I reenlisted in Oct. '79. So knowing I didn't have much eligibility left anyway, I never actually looked into it.
Unfortunately, there's no way to get into fixed wing Army training short of going through rotary wing and then being selected for fixed wing. And the odds for that are incredibly bad.
So that's the only "trick" there is, really. You'd have to find a military flying club, where you can get trained on the super cheap. And if you do, I've heard that there's a way to use GI Bill benefits even before ETS, which could make it essentially free. I'd been out from '70 to '79, and my GI Bil, such as it was for Vietnam vets, was within just a few months of expiration date when the 10 year clock stopped because I reenlisted in Oct. '79. So knowing I didn't have much eligibility left anyway, I never actually looked into it.
Unfortunately, there's no way to get into fixed wing Army training short of going through rotary wing and then being selected for fixed wing. And the odds for that are incredibly bad.
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