reply to post by NoRegretsEver
Would you care to post a few items of interest from the book?
I have tried to download it, but it is either really busy or being shut down.
Originally posted by apacheman
reply to post by NoRegretsEver
While humorous, all the terms are genuine shorthand.
TDY: temporary duty
PDS: Permanent duty station
PCS: permanent change of station
FOD: foreign object damage, FOD walk meant to walk the flightline picking up anything and everything that a jet engine might ingest
LOX: liquid oxygen
APU: auxiliary power unit
Aux air doors: Auxiliary air doors: two 1.5'X2' doors on the belly of an F-4 that snapped shut in a fraction of a second when the power was cycled from the APU to internal aircraft (a/c) power. Poor communications between aircrew and groundcrew could result in severe injuries to the groundcrew.
Phantom bites: minor and major injuries resulting from any of the sharp edges, projections and other dangers working around fighters entailed.
Form 35: a card that listed all the equipment you were certified to operate.
Mule: A large, complicated, and messy piece of equipment that provided hydraulic power to an a/c, universally hated and avoided by crewchiefs.
Jargon serves a very useful purpose when well-constructed: huge amounts of information can be conveyed accurately and quickly in noisy and stressful environments.
So enjoy learning it and try to understand no one is trying to hide anything from you with it, anymore than a speaker of a foreign language is. Once you learn it, it is just another way to communicate within a specific field.
I would have nearly as hard a time understanding the Army dialect as a civilian; while similar to the USAF dialect, it has its own formulations and rules designed for a much different environment and need, hence the requirement for a USAF translator on the ground to coordinate with army units to avoid friendly fire incidents.