Congrats, Dave! All the best!
Good job, Airman Leader Doors! Gotta love a man with a green rope.
Now, can you explain to me and the other clueless civilians what all of the acronyms and jargon (BTZ, Fishbowl, 341) and the rope colors mean. (you know, fighting ignorance and all).
Best of luck on the tests and promotions.
Good job, Airman Leader Doors! Gotta love a man with a green rope.
Now, can you explain to me and the other clueless civilians what all of the acronyms and jargon (BTZ, Fishbowl, 341) and the rope colors mean. (you know, fighting ignorance and all).
Best of luck on the tests and promotions.
Good job, Airman Leader Doors! Gotta love a man with a green rope.
Now, can you explain to me and the other clueless civilians what all of the acronyms and jargon (BTZ, Fishbowl, 341) and the rope colors mean. (you know, fighting ignorance and all).
Best of luck on the tests and promotions.
Oops, sorry. I don’t know how I did that, but I only need one set of explanations, not three.
Congratulations all the way around! I have no idea what you’ve accomplished, but I’m sure you deserved it. I’m so proud!
I guess I somewhat ambiguous there. OK, here’s your explanation.
There are three colors for Airman Leader ropes: Green, which is the lowest one, the one everyone starts at. Yellow you get after you meet some specific requirements, such as Open Ranks inspection. Red is the top of the heap, the leader of the Airman Leaders, if you will. They run the show for the most part. I have a lot to do to get Yellow, but I can never make Red because I’m not here long enough.
BTZ means Below The Zone. Airmen are promoted up to Senior Airman automatically barrng any major screwups, but you can get it faster than normal if you distinguish yourself, which I am trying to do. After that there are many ways to get promoted, but you can always get promoted BTZ if you show superior leadership skills.
The Fishbowl is the nickname for the Levitow Training Support Facility Student Center, so named because in the old one you could watch people go by and they could look in on you like you were “in a fishbowl”.
A PFE is a Promotion Fitness Examination, which is required to get Staff Sergeant or above (aka Non-Commissioned Officer). An SKT is a Specialty Knowledge Test, required for promotion as proof that you know what you are doing. And a CDC is a Career Development Course, required to increase your skill level.
That’s all those acronyms in a nutshell.
Thanks, Airman!
I now realize that I have a more basic question: What does it mean to be an Airman Leader (of whatever color rope)?
I figure that it’s some sort of leadership position (duh) and that’s a good thing in the military. However, I’d be interested to know what privileges it may get you or responsibilities it may give you.
I’m happy things are going well, but tell us when you learn to head space a .50.
What’s a Beat and Blow, darn it?
In tech school, you have a military training leader. Pretty much, he’s like a T.I. only less harsh. Its been a while since i was in tech school, but i remember the ropes were a bunch of kiss-ups who acted as the MTL’s henchmen while he was away. They’re very militant anal people who have been successfuly brainwashed in six quick weeks. They use staple words alot too. Its the rope’s job to make sure you stand of line and keep your eyes and head straight forward. Why in the world would anybody want to do that? You don’t get paid any more than you normally would. Airman freekin special! Maybe ropes have an inferiority complex and feel that they need to be part of some “elite” group.
The people who are responsible for giving you BTZ usually dont look at whether you were a rope or not, but it helps. The main points they look at are amount of hours spent doing volunteering (honor guard, helping with special events, etc.) and your scores for you CDCs (Career Development Course). Your CDC tests are exams you take to reach your 5-level.
Siding with A1C Joe just a little here in that being a rope in tech school won’t mean much in the real AF. For BTZ they’re going to look at a lot more than your GPA, a clean nose, and whether you were a rope in tech school or not. Volunteer work is a big boon, being a mentor was always a big one and volunteering in the local community, not just on base. They also like to see airmen expanding their college credits along with good scores on the CDCs.
I was Honor Guard and Unit Historian (a job normally done by NCOs, not the airmen), but not a rope in tech school. I was submitted for BTZ, but my spotty record held me back (a couple arrests, some LORs) which was just as well since I did my four years and got out.
You’ll have to go to Airman Leadership School before they promote you to SSgt anyway (at least that was the case 6 years ago), so I don’t know what the hell kind of class they’ve got you going to now, unless it’s just a class to be a rope. In short, being a rope is all well and good, but I’m getting the feeling you’re reading a bit much into it.
341’s! :eek:
Bwahahahaha!
That just took me back, lessee, 17 years!
Since you didn’t explain that along with the other jargon, please allow me. Those are Air Education Training Command form 341’s, which are used to report merits and (more typically) demerits. You have to carry blank ones with you and present them to people who catch you screwing up.
A1C Doors, do you still have to fold them in perfect thirds lengthwise, then make another fold near the end so that you can tuck them into your shirt pocket? If we couldn’t whip out a 341 in under a second, like a freaking street magician, we’d get another demerit for being too slow. And if your face betrayed any emotion for getting written up, you guessed it, a third demerit for “lack of military bearing.”
Dave, someday you’ll look back on things like this and laugh. Probably in 17 years. Mwahahahaha!
I gotta admit that I was nowhere near as ambitious as you when I was in tech school. I was on the drill team and we got cut a little bit of slack in exchange for learning to flip rifles around and for getting our boots just a little shinier than everybody else. Not a bad deal.
Anyway, congratulations on your rope and the academic achievements! Hey, I don’t remember, can ropes pull 341’s from other students?
You guessed it: Drum(beat) & Bugle(blow).
Not to be confused with Blow & Beat… (fife and drum)
Yup… that’s about the way it was when I went through BMT and Tech School 3 years ago…
Jesus Christ… three whole years ago…
<wanders off feeling old>
This ex-USAF BTZ E-4 (4 yrs and out) wishes you the best of luck. Did the whole rope thing myself, up to red at both my tech schools (DLI Presidio, Monterey, CA and Goodfellow AFB, San Angelo, TX)
D_Odds - were you a linguist? I was a 209x0 (later changed to 1N6x1), a job title more affectionately known around Goodfellow as a “buddyfucker” and a “7 week wonder”.
I can’t speak for Airman Doors, but my primary reason for becoming a rope (student leader) all those long years ago was simply I didn’t being told by other junior TI-wannabes what to do 
Whether or not I became one is open to interpretation, but I don’t think I did.
However, the Presidio was much more laid back than many other technical training schools. I think we did marching drills no more than a half-dozen times in my year there.
Yes, ropes (facist youth) are aloud to pull 341’s. What in the world would they have to gain? What kind of sicko gets his kicks doing that?
Jeez, I hadn’t seen a 341 after I left summer (boot) camp. You should have been a linguist.