![]() Each student could be assigned to training events in any of those periods and otherwise sits around a flight room all day studying.Īs an IP, you show up for morning brief and can expect to fly twice during the day. (More about those another day.) The flight and simulator schedule is broken up into three periods. A training day starts with a morning brief and “stand-up” emergency procedures. In the Air Force, students are organized into classes of about 30 pilots, divided into two “flights,” and the whole class progresses together on a very set schedule. Luckily, I taught in the T-6, so I’ve been able to interpolate here for the sake of comparison. If you want it, you need to be good at what you do and start asking your commanders for it early in your career. It’s considered a pretty choice USAF assignment, and the fiefdom at Air Force Personnel Center that has power over this assignment guards it closely for the “right” people. He went nearly 4 years without checking his USAF email account. Pone worked on a Navy base, flew Navy aircraft, and gave Navy-style instruction under the Navy syllabus. Fortunately for Pone (though maybe not for us) his Active Duty assignment teaching in the T-6 at Whiting was about the least Air Force experience a pilot could have. I was hoping that Pone’s unique career path would yield great insight to the differences between teaching pilot training as a T-6 Instructor Pilot (IP) in the USAF versus the Navy. You need to start looking for jobs so you can get hired and start the transfer paperwork earlier than you would even give notice that you plan to separate or retire. You don’t do this on a whim after you’ve already started the separation process from your current service. The process took about 10 months for Pone, so it’s something to plan ahead for. Pone mentioned that doing the inter-service transfer was something that you don’t start until you’ve been officially hired by your new unit in your new branch. This isn’t something you undertake lightly or without cause. You have to go through all the regular out-processing stuff from your own branch, to the extent that you even get a DD-214, and then you have to go through the hiring/gaining process in the new branch. As you might expect, this process is a bureaucratic nightmare. Let’s get some boring stuff out of the way: If you are a member of one military branch and want to switch to another branch, you have to do what’s called an inter-service transfer. (Next time I go to Vegas, I’m going to bring Pone with me and stake him at the craps table because he’s one of the luckiest people I know.) Yes, he landed two dream jobs in one fell swoop. In considering his options, he realized that he had a shot at joining the reserve unit at Whiting Field, doing the same T-6B IP job he’d been enjoying for several years. He’d been hired by FedEx, but wanted to continue his service as a military aviator. That deployment was Pone’s last hurrah in the Air Force, and he returned home about the time his 10-year pilot training commitment was expiring. (Look for a full post about the BACN deployment on BogiDope in the near future.) While assigned to Whiting, Pone did a deployment flying the E-11A BACN, which is where he and I met. This is an Active Duty Air Force assignment open to just a few pilots at any given time. He flew the E-3A Sentry (aka AWACS) before taking an assignment as a T-6B Instructor Pilot at Naval Air Station Whiting Field. Pone started as a “late rated” officer in the USAF with four years of service before he became a pilot. CDR-select Albert “Pone Star” Rampone doing what he does best. This article is based on an interview with former-USAF Major and now Navy Commander-select Albert “Pone Star” Rampone. We’re here to help pilots from all branches though, and this article is for anyone who’s ever considered becoming a pilot in the Navy Reserve. BogiDope was founded by Air Force pilots and much of our work is Air Force-centric.
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