instructor pilot tour

[S.O.B.]

Of course I looked at unrestricted types only

unristricted = helicopter pilot

 

[Huggy Bear]

Of the 21 JO's I served with at various times in my 3+ years in the fleet:

FRS-9
TPS-3
VT-2
VX-2
Weapon School-2
Top Gun Instructor-1
Wing Ops-1
Fnaeb'd out-1

That is probably a fairly typical breakdown for a single seat hornet squadron. You can see we don't really pull our weight in the VTs. That is just a numbers game, most communities have at least 2 pilots per plane and hence fill up the VTs. I don't think that it is necessarily a negative to go to the VTs, but it is often perceived that way in the hornet community.

For what its worth, I've really enjoyed my FRS instructor tour. It is a great tour to recharge the battery.

 

[Gatordev]

I went to the list of command web sites and tried every helicopter squadron. I found one CO/XO that went to the HTs, two that went to PG school and the other 20 or so were FRS IPs. Granted many of the sites didn’t work. You can draw your own conclusions. I don’t think it’s “cool aide” as much as it’s a statistic. Go to the FRS and you will have a much greater chance of screening for CO. Of course I looked at unrestricted types only but I bet it's not far off espicially for the P3 community.

Also the XO of HC-4 went to VX1.

http://www.navy.mil/links/alpha.asp

Fair enough, and perhaps I wasn't as concise in my statement as I should have been. The Koo-Aid comment was meant more towards there being only one, "correct" career path. I'll concede that statistically the FRS is the best place to go for your career, but it might not be the best choice for the individual, nor is it always the #1 guy that goes.