Career Day

Every six months or so, CAFB has a career day where they bring in a lot of pilots and airplanes and in the morning everyone gathers in the auditorium and the pilots give briefs about the airframe and the accompanying lifestyle, typical deployment schedule, training schedule, locations, etc.  After a lunch break everyone heads out to the SAC ramp(no, I do not know what SAC stands for.  But it’s a huge concrete slab at the end of the runways) and crawls around the planes and ask the pilots questions.  It’s pretty fun.  This was our third and final career day before assignment night!                                                                                              

Capturing a huge slab of concrete covered with airplanes with a point and shoot proved to be more difficult than I thought it would be.  I did the best I could.  From the left, the planes pictured are a KC-10(tanker i.e. refuels other planes mid-air), RC-135(tanker and recon), C17(cargo) peeking out from under the C17 is one of the A10s(fat fighter), then AC130(armed cargo), a JC130(fancy cargo) and couple helicopters that didn’t make the shot, and a PC12(special ops) and a black T38(some bases use them for training to fly other aircraft as well).

This was our first career day where they brought in a pair of A10s, which are number two on Caleb’s dream sheet(after the F-16, which did not make it to career day this time) so that was fun to look in those and talk to the pilots. They are ugly, ugly planes used for air-to-ground support, i.e. dropping explosives and shooting things on the ground, not air-to-air combat like the prettier F16s, F15s, or F22s.  (All the other Fs are Navy planes and not an option for us)

You do not want to find yourself on the wrong end of that gun.  I believe Caleb said it’s a 33mm bullet.  Also, you can see under the wings where they can load it up with missiles and bombs.  Each plane has a nickname and the A10 is the Warthog.  I assume because it’s ugly and dangerous.  So that’s what’s supposed to be painted on the nose.  I think it looks like a shark.  Ugly, dangerous, and gray.