ANG Pilot 5,000 Hours in Viper

SoonerAviator

SoonerAviator

Final Approach
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SoonerAviator
GD man, that is a lot of hours in that thing. Most of my viper hours were a .3-.7 at a time. Takes a very long time for that to add up to a 5000.0. (granted CAF and deployed Guard fly much longer sorties) Well done good sir
 
SoonerAviator said:
Pretty cool story about a local Oklahoma ANG pilot out of Tulsa. Lt. Col. David Gritsavage "Grits" has been putting in the F-16 hours since '97 and recently became one of 11 pilots worldwide known to have logged over 5K hours in the Viper. That's a lot of seat time!

https://www.newson6.com/story/62c65...evIS3HhMzvJX9J84TPhAK0M4Nzwt1fp-LzgChne70VoC0
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Well, it coulda been Grits, or it coulda been Savage. I woulda kinda liked Savage. At least they didn't call him Gravy. Hey, it's Poa, ya gotta get food worked in somewhere. Ok, I'm done. Cool story.
https://cookpad.com/us/recipes/9199579-grits-and-gravy
 
35 AoA said:
GD man, that is a lot of hours in that thing. Most of my viper hours were a .3-.7 at a time. Takes a very long time for that to add up to a 5000.0. (granted CAF and deployed Guard fly much longer sorties) Well done good sir
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Yeah I thought the same thing. Even with quick 1-2hr training runs it takes a ton of time to rack up that many hours. I'm sure flying the cargo stuff could be easier to rack up hours as the flights are longer, but still. I liked that he gave so much praise to the ground/maintenance crew as well for keeping the birds in ready condition. Nobody will accuse him of flying a desk!
 
I think he's probably #12, I seem to remember that Joe Bill Dryden surpassed 6,000 hours in the -16 way back in '93, before his accident. Joe started flying the -16 in the FSD program, way back in 1974.
 
Someone’s been padding their logbook taxiing to arm/dearm, hot refuel, etc. I’m calling Tulsa FSDO.
 
Lindberg said:
One pattern at a time?
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Average Sortie Duration for active duty AF F-16s is something like 1.3, IIRC. That’s a planning factor, but is fairly accurate.
 
Lindberg said:
So we're missing an hour.
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TCABM is speaking to USAF/CAF hours I imagine. We use our Vipers entirely for red air (also known as adversary - USN, or in USAF terms - aggressor), though you do some currency flights every now and then. The real short flights were normally BFM, aka "dogfighting", and occasionally as a bandit flying red air on a high speed profile (normally mach 1.5 ish or a little more). Either of those situations involved pretty much continuous use of full afterburner, and IIRC we started the jet up with only 7300# of gas w/o centerline drop tank (we normally kept the A models slick/no tanks), so a .4-.5 was often all you had the gas for. Actual mission ready USAF birds certainly fly longer, even in training, and they also often are carrying 1-2 external fuel tanks which helps. Still, as was said before, tactical jets in general have much lower hour sorties than heavies, with a notable exception being operational/combat sorties which are frequently longer. But 5k hours in any tactical jet is pretty impressive, regardless of service branch.

Of note, most of our training sorties in the F/A-18 are on the order of 1.3-1.5, so TBCAM's number is pretty consistent with ours. The F-16A/B fleet is just a bit of an outlier. Though to be fair, we did often fly it for >1 hr (even up to 2.0) in less aggressive flight profiles.
 
nauga said:
Any pilot who has a callsign that's a play on his/her name has at least one other one they're not telling you about.
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I have a friend from my newhire class that came out of the A-10. Can't remember what his callsign was (or if it was even mentioned), but years later I flew with an FO that also came out of the A-10, and of course he knows my buddy:

"MILFER!"

"Huh?"

"MILFER. That was his callsign back when he was my T-38 IP."

So of course as soon as we land I fire off a text to my buddy: "MILFER". Within seconds I get a reply: "Who the **** are you flying with???"

:p :p
 
nauga said:
Any pilot who has a callsign that's a play on his/her name has at least one other one they're not telling you about.

Nauga,
just Nauga
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Or vice versa. There was a USAF pilot, last name Cummings, callsign Taboo. Rumor around airshows was that Taboo was his Public Affairs-approved callsign. His real one was a play on his name - Keeper.
 
Had a CDR in ROTC by the last name of Boner. Callsign: Woody.
 
kayoh190 said:
I have a friend from my newhire class that came out of the A-10. Can't remember what his callsign was (or if it was even mentioned), but years later I flew with an FO that also came out of the A-10, and of course he knows my buddy:

"MILFER!"

"Huh?"

"MILFER. That was his callsign back when he was my T-38 IP."

So of course as soon as we land I fire off a text to my buddy: "MILFER". Within seconds I get a reply: "Who the **** are you flying with???"

:p :p
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So did give up how he got it? Was it something, how shall we say, juicy?
 
Although I was in the Oregon Air Nat'l Guard, I didn't have a nickname............but in my frat......."Grabber."
 
Had a gal in my squadron we WANTED to call Mary.

Skipper, generally a reasonable guy, was having NOTHING to do with that. I mean NOTHING.

To be fair, it was immaculate conception related. That’s all I got to say about that…
 
Tools said:
Had a gal in my squadron we WANTED to call Mary.

Skipper, generally a reasonable guy, was having NOTHING to do with that. I mean NOTHING.

To be fair, it was immaculate conception related. That’s all I got to say about that…
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Mary: "is that hair gel"?
 
Went flying as a Pseudo RIO twice with the West Coast F-14 RAG VF-124 Skipper back in the day. He had something like 3000+ hours in the Tomcat. Fleet Time, Acceptance Test Pilot at the Grumman Iron Works and the RAG. He wore a Tomcat sleeve patch that said “10 Hours”.

We did BFM, intercepts on an F-4, carrier ops and I kept my cookies. I was issued “Can Do”, I think because I found the right circuit breaker in the forest to reset when a spoiler wouldn’t retract on startup.

Cheers
 
They just had the second T-38 squadron commander sacked out of DLF over callsign naming ceremonies gone foul, since I left that place in '18. Callsign games used to be cool, now they're more hassle than they're worth.

But yes, at the bro level we still keep the NC-17 callsigns and stories, even if they have to remain underground for official duties.

--brk brk--

Kudos to the Guard dude on the 5k patch. He's certainly my spirit animal. An enviable run at doing the flying you enjoy, from where I sit. Lord knows most of my Viper (more so than Eagle) flying age-group peers don't have the neck/spine health left to stay in that seat for that many sorties. That part I don't envy (knock on wood I still have neck/spine unworthy of a VA disability rating). It's not all fun and games for sure.
 
There used to be a real reason for Hollywood call signs in a time when secure commo was problematic…even in the Army they were used in the attack community…quicker than call signs from a rapidly changing CEOI and got your attention in the fight…thus my name of this board Warlock..bestowed upon me as a young test pilot at Ft Eustis. 5K in a Viper is just epic…
 
Tools said:
Had a gal in my squadron we WANTED to call Mary.

Skipper, generally a reasonable guy, was having NOTHING to do with that. I mean NOTHING.

To be fair, it was immaculate conception related. That’s all I got to say about that…
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Smart man. That woulda been front page news. We're talkin' congressional hearings here. But don't ya wish he woulda allowed it and said....

 
Warlock said:
There used to be a real reason for Hollywood call signs in a time when secure commo was problematic…even in the Army they were used in the attack community…quicker than call signs from a rapidly changing CEOI and got your attention in the fight…thus my name of this board Warlock..bestowed upon me as a young test pilot at Ft Eustis. 5K in a Viper is just epic…
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It was kind of funny listening to the audio + HUD (and other) footage from the 2017 Fitter shootdown in Syria. The guy who shot it down was (previously) a training O/weapons officer in an old airwing of mine who I'd briefed/flown with before and have since many times, and 2/3 of the rest of them in that 4 ship were instructors of mine when I went through the TOPGUN course. All of them, to a head, would have absolutely crushed me for not using concise, ALSA brevity comms. And here they were, out in the wild, just using their personal callsigns on the radio, and total cowboy talk. It was awesome. That isn't a criticism at all. It is just human nature in such a situation. It's still weird, in my civilian flying job, NOT having people call me by my callsign. Not that I would ever ask them to, but it is strange. Agree that 5k is epic, and agree with @hindsight2020 that this guy is my spirit animal too.
 
From a civilian point of view 5,000 hrs probably doesn’t seem like much but that’s a significant amount of time in the military. Airframe has a lot to do with it with it though. As a general rule I’d say ranked by hours in order would be transports, EW/C2, helicopters, fighters. So 5,000 in a fighter is quite an accomplishment.

I was about 300 hrs shy of a 4,000 hr patch when I got out. Wasn’t about to take a 2 year ADSO (promotion) to get to 4K though.

736AA599-74EB-4C78-9FEB-FB108BAF2201.jpeg
 
Velocity173 said:
So 5,000 in a fighter is quite an accomplishment.
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Especially these days. We used to joke about other countries lack of fighter pilot flight training hours, now we resemble the remark. This is especially so for 5th gen. The 4k/5k patch thing is gonna be a vestige relegated to 4th gen airframes going forward, me thinks.
 
hindsight2020 said:
Especially these days. We used to joke about other countries lack of fighter pilot flight training hours, now we resemble the remark. This is especially so for 5th gen. The 4k/5k patch thing is gonna be a vestige relegated to 4th gen airframes going forward, me thinks.
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That was a point of emphasis in the brief interview they did in the news story. His flight time was considered a huge asset because of the experience he could convey to lower-time pilots as well as exercises with other units. The reporter they had in the back of the 2-seater Viper was nothing but a grin from ear-to-ear after she got out of their short hop/PR flight.
 
luvflyin said:
So did give up how he got it? Was it something, how shall we say, juicy?
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No stories other than the obvious implication. I don't tend to ask questions of my military buddies - if they want to open up with a story or two that's great, but otherwise I leave the esprit de corps to them. :)
 
kayoh190 said:
No stories other than the obvious implication. I don't tend to ask questions of my military buddies - if they want to open up with a story or two that's great, but otherwise I leave the esprit de corps to them. :)
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Ah dang, You ain't no fun. But smart. If ya ratted them out they'd get revenge on you.:D
 
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