I'm signed up for Dooley Day Out.

[SteveSS]

On Saturday, July 9th I'm picking up three 4th years. (That's what they call freshmen a the United States Air Force Academy.) They will just be finishing weeks of hell at the Academy. Really the 4th years get yelled at all year long but this is special. I'm done this for several years sponsoring several cadets. I get them for the day and usually give them $20 and let them go into Walmart for candy and supplies. It's fun the see the relief on the faces when they first get picked up and taken off base!

I think I've mentioned this before but we sponsored three girls one year and one got encephalitis. An infection in the lining of the brain. She almost died. We housed her parents for a month and she eventually got better. Unfortunately not back to her previous level and couldn't return to the Academy. That's not that uncommon when students get tossed into a dormitory setting.

 

[Cranky]

I remember very well my first time to get a break from basic training but my BT was easy.....sorry about the one that got encephalitis. We had a recruit that was in line to be a new drill instructor but he got sick while in training and well.....it didn't happen. We had the 'state of the art' dormitories at Lackland and well, in a hot setting, they sucked because the AC was too cold when no one was in them and when we came in from a march or anything, they were too cold and hot when full of 100 guys trying to sleep. Otherwise, being in the AF was a piece of cake.....but a lot of guys got sick because of the temp difference of the 'new' dorms vs outside. On the other hand, the old dorms sucked because they were hotter in hell all the time during the summer. The dorms were new when I got in and they weren't right I guess. My rented house didn't have AC when I went in so may have done better in the old dorms.

 

[5.7 hemi]

You AF guys had it EASY! Never heard of ac while in Army BT. Open the windows, honestly, just too damn tired at the end of day (whenever that was) to care how hot/humid FT. Benning, Georgia was.

 

[SteveSS]

We don't need AC at night here. Low 60's high 50's when the sun goes down. Right now at 9:22 pm, it's 60 degrees. I bet those cadets from lower elevations got a crash course on our low oxygen levels at 7500' above sea level. Hopefully, some of them got acclimated before they started their training here. As you probably know we have the US Olympic Training Center here. If you get used to the O2 levels here you can go anywhere and not get out of breath.

 

[Cranky]

You AF guys had it EASY! Never heard of ac while in Army BT. Open the windows, honestly, just too damn tired at the end of day (whenever that was) to care how hot/humid FT. Benning, Georgia was.

Did you miss the part where I said the AC in the dorm sucked an why? lol. I had been living on my own for a year before getting a draft notice from the Army....and didn't have AC in my place so I wasn't used to it. IIRC, the dorms at Lackland were brand new and we were the first ones to use it.

 

[hemi71x]

I remember very well my first time to get a break from basic training but my BT was easy.....sorry about the one that got encephalitis. We had a recruit that was in line to be a new drill instructor but he got sick while in training and well.....it didn't happen. We had the 'state of the art' dormitories at Lackland and well, in a hot setting, they sucked because the AC was too cold when no one was in them and when we came in from a march or anything, they were too cold and hot when full of 100 guys trying to sleep. Otherwise, being in the AF was a piece of cake.....but a lot of guys got sick because of the temp difference of the 'new' dorms vs outside. On the other hand, the old dorms sucked because they were hotter in hell all the time during the summer. The dorms were new when I got in and they weren't right I guess. My rented house didn't have AC when I went in so may have done better in the old dorms.

Went thru AF basic back in September, October 1973, which in San Antonio, Texas, is a HOT temperature time of the year.
I was in the "new" dorms, and don't remember any of us recruits getting sick from any temperature difference from the outside temperature, to the temperature inside the dorm.
But after basic, i got stuck in the old WW 2 barracks for awhile, awaiting orders to be shipped out to Sheppard AFB, for tech school, for training in jet aircraft mechanics.
So no air conditioning in the old barracks.

 

[Cranky]

Went thru AF basic back in September, October 1973, which in San Antonio, Texas, is a HOT temperature time of the year.
I was in the "new" dorms, and don't remember any of us recruits getting sick from any temperature difference from the outside temperature, to the temperature inside the dorm.
But after basic, i got stuck in the old WW 2 barracks for awhile, awaiting orders to be shipped out to Sheppard AFB, for tech school, for training in jet aircraft mechanics.
So no air conditioning in the old barracks.

I went in towards the end of April of 71 and well, it wasn't all that cool out during the month of May. In fact I remember it being pretty hot out but don't recall hearing about what the temps were running. I'm thinking the dorm I was in only had an off/on switch.....it sure felt that way lol. The chow hall was ok. Never too hot or too cold. The old barracks were still being used and remember seeing the fans going all the time. So, did you pick jet aircraft mechanics as your first pick on your dream sheet?

 

[hemi71x]

I went in towards the end of April of 71 and well, it wasn't all that cool out during the month of May. In fact I remember it being pretty hot out but don't recall hearing about what the temps were running. I'm thinking the dorm I was in only had an off/on switch.....it sure felt that way lol. The chow hall was ok. Never too hot or too cold. The old barracks were still being used and remember seeing the fans going all the time. So, did you pick jet aircraft mechanics as your first pick on your dream sheet?

No, i wanted to get trained in the telephone company, communications type of repair field, but that didn't happen.
Forget the reasons why, after all these years.
They, more or less told me, i qualify for the aircraft maintenance field, due to my test scores, and prior civilian employment, before i said my i do's.
But i really think it's because they were way short of mechanics to maintain the jets, so your gonna be a mechanic.
That turned out to be true, as they were understaffed at Zweibrucken AB Germany, before i got there, and were still not enough of us to go around, at my 2 years at that Germany base.
Back then, they sent the first batch of female trainees, out of tech school, as "aircraft mechanics" which were utterly useless, on the flight line.
So, on paper, to the big shots, it looked like you had enough personnel, but in the real world you were still severely under manned.
I got to be a full fledged crew chief on 69-370 as an A1C because there weren't any E-4 buck sergeants left to go around.
Jim V.
hemi71x