rickyrhodesii
Well-Known Member
You haven't seen the NEW "tactical" T-1's?!?
Guess what? The AF is painting them dark gray now too!
Millitary ATC rant
- Thread starter USMCmech
- Start date
You haven't seen the NEW "tactical" T-1's?!?
Guess what? The AF is painting them dark gray now too!
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
Not "ACM". Air Combat Maneuvering refers to a specific type of fight consisting of 2 "blue" aircraft and one "red" aircraft". 2 v 1 maneuvering is not introduced until the fighter FTUs.
By the way, as a total tangent, thanks to "Top Gun", everyone thinks that "ACM" means "dogfighting". The fact is that each type of air-to-air maneuvering has a specific name:
Basic Fighter Maneuvers (BFM) = 1 v 1 maneuvering
Air Combat Maneuvering (ACM) = 2 v 1 maneuvering
Tactical Intercepts (TI) = 2 v 2 maneuvering
Air Combat Tactics (ACT) = 2 v 2 or more maneuvering (2 v 4, 4 v 4, 4 v 6, etc)
T-38s do perform BFM, though -- 1 v 1 maneuvering -- as part of the IFF syllabus. IFF is a 6-8 week course that future fighter pilots attend after graduating SUPT and before going to the training units for their specific fighter aircraft. IFF is currently taught at all the SUPT bases.
The low-vis paint on the T-38 was the child of General 'Fig' Newton when the T-38C was originally born. The philosophy for the T-38C was that it would replace both the T-38A (for SUPT use) and T-38B (for IFF use). Newton decided that all T-38Cs would be universally useable for every mission. As the IFF jets were camouflaged for use in BFM training, all T-38Cs would thus take on the camo scheme.
So, again -- it has a purpose. It's not just to "look tactical" (although that appears to be the train of thought behind the T-1 and T-6 adopting the low visibility gray schemes).
MDPilot
Well-Known Member
Another funny..
I was on the Vance ramp watching my student preflight a T-38 one fine summer afternoon, when I heard a buzzing out of the west. Some unlucky fellow in a Cessna 210 was obviously lost and flew directly over the field at about 500 feet west to east. You never saw so many T-37s and T-38s in climbing breakouts, looked like a T-bird bombburst. Took 20 minutes to get the patterns reestablished.
I was on the Vance ramp watching my student preflight a T-38 one fine summer afternoon, when I heard a buzzing out of the west. Some unlucky fellow in a Cessna 210 was obviously lost and flew directly over the field at about 500 feet west to east. You never saw so many T-37s and T-38s in climbing breakouts, looked like a T-bird bombburst. Took 20 minutes to get the patterns reestablished.
Zondaracer
Well-Known Member
braunpilot
What day is it?
Ok, I know you are talking about extremely busy airspace and from talking with former and current pilots of the AF they themselves to particularly like to fly into the UPT bases. However, I have questions with other bases such as Scott AFB. Now I already know that this is a huge training base for ATC, first actual time broadcasting, but some of those procedures create so much extra work for everybody and makes the freq so busy that when I was training there the student was so overloaded and was barely able to hold on even after solo! Her is a sample of what ATC communications would be for a standard training flight for one time around the pattern.
ME-"Scott/Mid-America Tower Cessna 12345 Holding short runway 32L ready for takeoff."
TWR-"Cessna 12345, Scott/Mid-America Tower wind calm, cleared for takeoff runway 32L"
ME-"Cessna 12345, request left close traffic"
TWR-"Cessna 12345, left close traffic approved, report left base runway 32L"
ME-"Cessna 12345, left close traffic approved, report left base runway 32L"
ME-"Cessna 12345, left base runway 32L"
TWR-"Cessna 12345, Scott/Mid-America Tower, wind calm, check gear down, cleared for the option runway 32L"
ME-"Cessna 12344, gear down, cleared for the option runway 32L"
Repeat every pattern, this does not include any talk to ground control and don't forget that if you throw the KC-135 from the IL guard in the mixed they will make you do 10, yes TEN, 360's so that the 135 can do three ILS's. :sitaware: The tower has made me fly a 10 mile final, in a C152 because they didn't know how to handle me, WITH TRAFFIC IN SIGHT, and a Lear 35/C-21.
anic: I can honestly say they are not the absolute worst controllers, one controller in the tower at an airport very close takes that, but it is very difficult to see why they want to train their controllers to talk so much that they make it worse than MEM on the radio (yes, I understand MEM isn't bad, but with the afternoon FedEx push I can get that way). There are some things that I understand, like asking about the gear, makes sense because the AF doesn't have any aircraft with fixed gear. But why clog the airways? :banghead:
ME-"Scott/Mid-America Tower Cessna 12345 Holding short runway 32L ready for takeoff."
TWR-"Cessna 12345, Scott/Mid-America Tower wind calm, cleared for takeoff runway 32L"
ME-"Cessna 12345, request left close traffic"
TWR-"Cessna 12345, left close traffic approved, report left base runway 32L"
ME-"Cessna 12345, left close traffic approved, report left base runway 32L"
ME-"Cessna 12345, left base runway 32L"
TWR-"Cessna 12345, Scott/Mid-America Tower, wind calm, check gear down, cleared for the option runway 32L"
ME-"Cessna 12344, gear down, cleared for the option runway 32L"
Repeat every pattern, this does not include any talk to ground control and don't forget that if you throw the KC-135 from the IL guard in the mixed they will make you do 10, yes TEN, 360's so that the 135 can do three ILS's. :sitaware: The tower has made me fly a 10 mile final, in a C152 because they didn't know how to handle me, WITH TRAFFIC IN SIGHT, and a Lear 35/C-21.
anic: I can honestly say they are not the absolute worst controllers, one controller in the tower at an airport very close takes that, but it is very difficult to see why they want to train their controllers to talk so much that they make it worse than MEM on the radio (yes, I understand MEM isn't bad, but with the afternoon FedEx push I can get that way). There are some things that I understand, like asking about the gear, makes sense because the AF doesn't have any aircraft with fixed gear. But why clog the airways? :banghead:
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
They are required by Air Force Instruction to say that.
Even when I report, "Dude 01, final approach fix, gear down." They still have to ask, and look for my landing light.
You're clogging the airways, by the way, just as much by doing things like using your full callsign and repeating "report closed" and "report base" instructions.
Comm brevity goes both ways.
braunpilot
What day is it?
Totally understand and agree, however the AIM does not allow me to shorten the callsign until after ATC does it to me. Plus try to teach proper radio technique to someone who has no idea about radio communication with 0 time and not expect them to repeat everything verbatim. But I totally agree airways get clogged both ways, not just ATC. Thanks for the info!
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
Well, sort of.
The AIM uses the terms "should" and "may" in the verbage on this topic (4-2-4.1 and 4-2-4.2, in case you're following along in your own copy). Neither of those words implies compulsory participation. If that's what they meant, they would have used the words "shall" or "will".
At the beginning of the AIM, it also says the following (emphasis added by me):
I must say this topic is interesting to me in that I just quit working at Woodring (WDG) last October after being there for a year and a half and before that I was stationed at Scott AFB for six years. Maybe I can offer some insight into the complaints. As for Martex, Vance treats arrivals from the east pretty much the same as guys like you coming from the west. I used to joke with a Be20 pilot all the time about his "Shuttle arrival" 6000ft, 3 miles from the field. In Vances defense, they are a busy base at least in the radar (sorry I don't give a lot of credit to the tower guys when they really only control one runway out of the three but thats another story) and AF wide there is a lot of training. Keep in mind too Vance has quite a few civilian DOD controllers with a lot of experience so it's not always an airman vectoring you around.
As for Scott AFB procedures I see no problem in making an aircraft report base every pattern. So far after 5 facilities (3 AF, 1 contract, 1 FAA) I've yet to find one that doesn't promote having aircraft report their position at a specified point in the pattern. Additionally, the whole C172 vs. KC-135 is something I've always hated in towers. You've got mismatched speeds, wake turbulance like no tomorrow and everything else going on in regards to your other traffic. At Scott they need to make the ouside runway all IFR practice approaches and keep the inside one for T+G's or full stops and departures. Keep in mind also that the pilots at Scott are in the same squadron as the controllers so my biggest customer was my boss. To me it was a huge conflict of interest but I imagine the officers liked it knowing we wouldn't screw over our own boss. The cessna will always be last at Scott for that reason. Is it right? No and thats why I punched out. Military cares about military. On the flip side though, at the FAA facility I work at now we make T1's do 360's in the downwind all day long for other aircraft and don't think twice. :laff:
HD
As for Scott AFB procedures I see no problem in making an aircraft report base every pattern. So far after 5 facilities (3 AF, 1 contract, 1 FAA) I've yet to find one that doesn't promote having aircraft report their position at a specified point in the pattern. Additionally, the whole C172 vs. KC-135 is something I've always hated in towers. You've got mismatched speeds, wake turbulance like no tomorrow and everything else going on in regards to your other traffic. At Scott they need to make the ouside runway all IFR practice approaches and keep the inside one for T+G's or full stops and departures. Keep in mind also that the pilots at Scott are in the same squadron as the controllers so my biggest customer was my boss. To me it was a huge conflict of interest but I imagine the officers liked it knowing we wouldn't screw over our own boss. The cessna will always be last at Scott for that reason. Is it right? No and thats why I punched out. Military cares about military. On the flip side though, at the FAA facility I work at now we make T1's do 360's in the downwind all day long for other aircraft and don't think twice. :laff:
HD
braunpilot
What day is it?
I appreciate it. Make a lot more sense. I don't particularly enjoy the position reporting but I guess I can understand it. I just don't see why the AF doesn't add discretion to the reg so that during high traffic times the tower can focus on the important communications. It does make sense about military taking care of the military. Thanks for the insight.
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
Uh huh. So that's not 'right', but making "T1's do 360's in the downwind all day long" is.
Whatever.
I worded the last part poorly. What I meant was that I run my traffic now to keep the flow going and don't jam myself up just so the military gets absolutely every approach they are requesting. I don't give 360's for fun or amusement, however I also don't hesitate to use them when needed. Do I ever feel guilty about? Nope, and I never will. Just the same, civilians should get quality service when they transit a military area or land at SAFB, which is supposed to be a joint use facility.
hd
hd
