Hi Guys,
Last night I was hopping mad, but I've calmed down significantly now. I want to be frank about this and tell you what is going on. Please understand that this is not merely a whine, but the result of several months of frustration in the squad.
About two months ago, the squad was seriously considering dropping out of TOD ops entirely. I love the Friday TODs so I did all I could to persuade them to stay, and for my efforts was "voluntereed" to be the new Flying Zoo Squad OPs CO. I was willing to do it if it meant we would continue to fly Squad Ops. Accordingly, the retiring CO, Sandman, posted a message here informing the community that I was the one who should get orders in future. Since that time, only on one occasion did I get the orders [from Ice Nine, bless him] prior to the frame. This made the Friday Squad ops a huge fiasco for us, and has successively driven down Squad participation (that and a few other factors, I'll mention later).
After each failure to send us orders I've generally tried to post a reminder via email and the hi tech BB - all to no avail. Once again last night I didn't have the orders and only one other FZ pilot showed up.
At this point we are feeling communally like the Red-headed step kids of AH. Sandman is no longer flying AH, and in any event he got rightly tired of having to forward me the orders - orders which usually show up late anyway.
So at this point, we are probably on the cusp of bowing out of Friday Night TODs entirely unless...
1) We Start Getting Orders Send 'em to me and I'll post em on the squad BB, and try desperately to stir up some interest - which at the moment is about nil.
2) Orders start coming out in time I know many frame side COs don't do this, but some seem to feel sending out the orders on Friday is ok. That doesn't give sufficient time for me to make sure that squaddies get it. I'd love to see a "by Thursday" deadline for orders.
3) We start getting some variety At this point the Squad is feeling snubbed - so always getting gruel for dinner isn't going to help. For instance, in one scenario we got Heavy KI-61s and basically the same orders for every frame. That effectively broke the camel's back when it came to interest. At this point I'm going to have to post a real hum-dinger of a mission to woo guys back.
So basically, give us some reason to hope here or a mutiny is going to be inevitable.
Thank you.
- SEAGOON