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Thanks. I guess you weren't a rated pilot then.

There's some Evil Kneival-type daredevil in all military pilots so you can always tell them, but you can't tell them much. No matter what the rules are or what the flight manual says, they will push the limits to "find out" what they really are. If they didn't have that characteristic, they'd be smart enough to stay on the ground.

I agree on the cross training. You really learn your first serious aircraft's characteristics well because of the pucker factor. After you get comfortable with it, the neural patterns take over in emergencies, and they're based on THAT particular aircraft. If you then transition to a new aircraft with different flight characteristics, you're liable to resort to inappropriate "remembered" solutions to emergencies. Besides military pilots don't retain combat level skills for that long anyway. If they're good, they get promoted out of the cockpit, and if they're not, they get transferred or separated. If those things don't get them, they'll start failing flight physicals as they age.

It doesn't make economic sense either. It costs $X to get proficient in a C-130. It costs $Y to get proficient in another AC. Great, we've spend $X + $Y on a pilot who's dull to and set in his ways in the new AC, and won't be much good in either. Most of the cross trained pilots I gave standardization training to in Vietnam were "good" and "adequate" but they weren't the "best" pilots in the unit.

Bona fide "Test Pilots" are a different breed altogether. Their skill and air sense transcends any aircraft. They can fly anything, and they're rare. They're guys like Chuch Yeager. I don't know what the odds really are, but I'd guess that fewer than 1 in a 1,000 excellent military pilots has the innate talent to be a test pilot worthy of the genre.

There's some Evil Kneival-type daredevil in all military pilots so you can always tell them, but you can't tell them much.

I've ridden with THREE. After one almost smacked me into cumulo-granite out at Bridgeport, I had a long and rather profanity-laden conversation with the OPSO. (I came in cussing a blue streak, told OPSO what just happened, and the OPSO began cussing a blue streak--if someone had set up a beat track and gotten us to rhyme the cussing, we could've cut a gangsta rap album on the spot! :o)

That hotdog was FNAEB'd, and spent the rest of his time as the Clubs Officer at COMCABWEST.

No matter what the rules are or what the flight manual says, they will push the limits to "find out" what they really are.

And if they wax a couple dozen grunts in the process, hey, stuff happens, eh?

On the maintenance side of the house: helicopters have a LOT of kinetic energy whirling around in variously-opposed directions. Get sloppy on maintenance, and the forces can tear the airframe apart.

And it's that way for ANY helicopter. Lose either main rotor on a Phrog or a S***-Hook, and you're dogmeat...