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Old 24th May 2006, 20:24
  #5 (permalink)  
raytofclimb
 
Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: UK
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Do it, ASAP, or you'll spend your life wondering.

Bear in mind that the type of flying you'll be doing as a military pilot will not be like tootling around in your cessna. You'll work long hours, planning missions that you'll be so wrapped up in that the view out the window (in the aesthetic sense) is way down your list; you'll be looking for people trying to shoot you down or crash into you (ask a recently bed ridden turkish F-16 pilot) while looking for your target/LZ/friendlies/tanker etc.

Yes most of the people on this forum whinge about the job, I do too, but lets face it, if it was that bad we'd all leave. I talk-the-talk all the time but the pay is good and I haven't got enough hours to go to the airlines. Yet.

The truth is, we forget what its like to not be able to do the job and get blase about it. The every-day takes over; same-old same-old. Oh, hang on thats same old 250' 540kts (not for bombers!) over Wales, going supersonic, rolling inverted at 40 nose-up looking all the way up the coast, air combat, getting gunned by real fighters*. Who else can do that? Bizarrely, its more fun thinking back over it, than it was at the time- see first paragraph.

Thats the training though. Training to get sent so some A***-hole corner of the world to project foreign policy; then it's not so good- hence we all whinge.

None of us are conscripted and I know I'll be ready to leave when the time is up so don't listen to all the moaners here. Its probably because we don't have a "Professional Pilots Big Themselves And Their Jobs UP" Forum that you don't hear of all the good things that we should all sit back and think of.

Oh, and if you fail OASC, you could always FLY NAVY!

I'm going for a cigar now.

Ray

*(soz- gp2/3 mates insert your own fun trips)
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