F3 fatigue. It's a long time ago now, so memory may fail me at points.
The intial calcs were based on FI counter readings, sortie code and sortie length. My job was to summarise these for Joe Bloggs aircrew and offer 'advice' on how FI could be managed. The calcs were rather crude, so for example one could suffer a high FI coding by doing ACT and landing after 20 mins, but less by landing after 30 mins. The advice thus consisted of stuff like "Do a practice emergency such as a SE PAR at the end to ensure landing after 30 mins".
Were we 'cooking the books?'. Well, by ensuring we didn't fall foul of the highest FI 'penalties', our average FI would have been lower than the boffins perhaps intended.
I did not fly ACT in 35 wing. I don't think anybody did. Some may have flown routine PIs in 35 wing.
I didn't lie about sortie code. A small minority may have done so occasionally.
I did not sharp or soft pencil any sortie lengths. I was probably in a minority here, but that had been going on for ages beforehand to meet other Group targets before FI ever arrived.
I did ensure my sortie codes and sortie lengths minimised the FI usage. Were those practice emergencies unnecessary? Who knows. I know that when I experienced real emergencies like SE & hydraulic failures etc, these passed off without incident and the practice would have had something to do with that.
Did we overuse the 'real' FI which caused the subsequent restrictions? Probably, a bit. Did the Sqn maintain operational effectiveness better than by obeying the FI 'rules' would have allowed? My Sqn execs though so, and we were at war 6 months later - everybody was bloody glad of the 'extra' LL Affil and ACT training at that point.
Lastly, could the 'correct' FI have been calculated after the fact by analysing the Sqn auth sheets/log books with a better model? Yes. There was nothing dishonest here. I regard it as the same as avoiding 'unnecessary' tax.
Last edited by Fox3WheresMyBanana; 3rd Nov 2013 at 13:20.