Orca #21 Love It!! You learn something every day.https://www.pprune.org/images/infopop/icons/icon6.gif

And there was I thinking that all that was required was to be hirsute, have prehensile toes and a fondness for bananas.https://www.pprune.org/images/icons/46.gif

Brian48nav #15

If you add "suave and urbane" you get the VC10 Nav rather than the "Duelling Banjos" Herc Nav.

Oh dear, Fighter pilot and Jaguar in the same sentence 😁

slight aside ...... the Met Man has to have very thick skin.

I believe it was widely acknowledged that the ability pecking order was, Harrier, Jaguar, Bucc then Phantom. So Brian is pretty on the money.

CG

Hack, rack, and zoom, not now a days as its all systems. So a good systems operator (like a good ATC)

Charliegolf Dangerous territory, in this forum, equating mud moving minijet pilots with REAL FIGHTER PILOTS. Watch your six.!

TT

Don't understand your comment.

CG has got it absolutely spot on.

BomberH
Did you never meet a WIWOL ( or BEagle ) who told you what a REAL FIGHTER PILOT was ? It did not involve mud moving, but did involve lots of hand movements in the bar,, while describing various combat manoeuvres.

When I went into CAF, they told me it is not your total height, but your buttocks to knee measurement. They put you into a frame and squeeze your butt and knee together. If they can squeeze (gently) down to 106.4 cm you pass, otherwise you become an ATCO or admin officer. They will not take in any pilots that could not meet the tightest specification. I was about 1 cm short of the limit, and I am only 1.65m tall (5'6" in old money). There was a short-arm inspection which I suppose I passed, but they did not tell me the specification in that area. After that I passed a gruelling week of aircrew selection at CFB Downsview Defence and Civil Medicine Institute, only to be injured in basic officer training and told I could not continue in the CAF. I went back into electronics and had to pay for all my flying after that!

BTW one of my intake made fun of another, who wanted to be a helicopter pilot, saying he would rather m**t**b*te than fly a helicopter. He ended up being a helicopter pilot, and rescued 44 men off a burning oil rig, 2 at a time. Not always the fighter pilots that have the b**ls!

TT,

Hand movements like in this video?

Uncertain what BEagle has to do with real Fighter Pilots.........

My QFI at BFT was a WIWOL - excellent chap.

Absolutely nothing against them - they were great in their time.

But life goes on.

I did a bit of Jaguar, but mostly Harrier, plus a bit of USN and USAF, both on exchange, obviously.

I mixed with some pretty good fighter pilots in my time - unsure of their genetics though, to go back to the thread.

But CG is clearly a perceptive and intelligent individual.

Bit harsh, BomberH? Admittedly I only achieved 619 hrs on fighters (Hunter and F-4), plus another 146 on the Hawk - which is NOT a fighter to my mind. 47 on the Bucc too...

Anyway, you can take the man out of the fighter, but not the fighter out of the man!

I was chatting to an ex-Luftwaffe F-104 mate yesterday - and it wasn't long before the hands were moving!

beat me to it .

To answer the OP:
None of it. Had plenty of students in training with quite a bit of talent, or even natural talent, who washed out due to two problems:
1. Inability to learn quickly
2. Failure to work hard.

Had a number of them surprise me by earning the chance to fly jets and succeeding when I wasn't sure if their talent level was up to it. (Good on 'em!)

Caveat: There are some fine potential fighter pilots who never got to fly due to anthropometric* limits (which has to do with "what part of your body will you leave behind you if you have to eject" and "can you reach that switch under 6 gs?")

*Thanks langley, oops!

You really don't mean anthropomorphic do you?

F-16GUY #33

Perfection!

Isn't being able to learn quickly an innate skill as well? Or do you mean more in the sense of being able to objectively look at one's own performance/instructor feedback and able to correct mistakes through determination? Also thank you for a good response.