• Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?

    Go here:

    Edit Account Details and Profile

Watches...the Skinny?

Gatordev

Gatordev

Well-Known Member
pilot
Site Admin
Contributor
In one tour, the standard used to be ~1000 flight hours during your tour for helo and VP guys. It might be less for the VP guys and it's significantly less for helo guys now, but let's stick w/ 1000 hours to make the math easy.

In a 3 year tour, that's 26,280 hours. Let's assume you sleep 8 hours a day which leaves you with 17,520 hours awake. There's some weekends in there, but you also fly on weekends when deployed, so let's call it 78 weeks off, so that leaves 13,776 hours available to fly. So out of that, you get 1000 hours. So that's (very roughly) 7% of your tour that you actually spend flying.

The question is, are you sure it's the right business for you?
 
twobecrazy

twobecrazy

RTB...
Contributor
Remember you still have shore duty and a disassociated sea tour after that intial sea tour. Also, the higher in rank you go it seems like the less you end up flying. So if you are in this JUST because you want to fly then I will agree that this is probably not the best job for you.
 
xj220

xj220

Will fly for food.
pilot
Contributor
Gatordev said:
Are you talking about the ASDO or the SDO? As SDO, in many squadrons, it involves running the flight schedule on fly days, which if it's a busy sked and the birds aren't cooperating, can take up a lot of time. I always liked weekend duty. Our squadron had very little issue w/ arrests so it was worth the gamble.



I've seen JO's who don't have much responsibility, but it's fair to say that you'll have more hours pushing paper than flight hours for a given week.
Click to expand...

A lot of people think they can get by with studying while on SDO, but it usually never works out. Even if there's no flights, or very few, there's always something going on and people wandering around the duty office. I agree with weekend duty not being that bad, that's usually when I do get some studying done. Watch while in the desert was the worst, I remember running a 14 event flight schedule while in the middle of turnover and two duty vans for getting through customs. There's also duty pilot/nav (VP world) which can be a drag or a blessing depending on how it goes down. Any other off time is for upgrading/PQS or if you're qualified then you're much more intensive ground job. Once you're into a routine it's really not that bad and you'll find out what works for you. That is assuming your ground job isn't CSM, Legal O or PAO.
 
Wudgles

Wudgles

Cause I am most ill and I'm rhymin' and stealin'
pilot
SticknRudder said:
No, really...let's not kid ourselves...we do this to fly.
Click to expand...

I hope that's still part of your joke. Otherwise, you're an idiot.

If it was only about the flying, we'd all have done the civilian thing and never bothered with becoming Naval Officers. It's about wayyyy more than the flying. I'm an ensign and I know that.
 
S

SticknRudder

New Member
Wudgles said:
I hope that's still part of your joke. Otherwise, you're an idiot.

If it was only about the flying, we'd all have done the civilian thing and never bothered with becoming Naval Officers. It's about wayyyy more than the flying. I'm an ensign and I know that.
Click to expand...


Okey doke. What reasons have you got, besides flying? And I don't mean serving...I want to serve and go to war for my Country just as much as the next guy.
 
C420sailor

C420sailor

Former Rhino Bro
pilot
Wudgles said:
I hope that's still part of your joke. Otherwise, you're an idiot.

If it was only about the flying, we'd all have done the civilian thing and never bothered with becoming Naval Officers. It's about wayyyy more than the flying. I'm an ensign and I know that.
Click to expand...

I'll tell you straight up that, for me, flying the jet is what makes this all worth it. When the day comes that I can no longer do that, I'm heading for the exit.

I guess I'm an idiot too?
 
M

MasterBates

Well-Known Member
I'll be honest. If I had to do my ground job and stand the watches I stand (SDO, CATCC, PriFly, AWDO) , and did not get to fly, I would have been a dot the second my initial contract was up.
 
Wudgles

Wudgles

Cause I am most ill and I'm rhymin' and stealin'
pilot
Well, color me wrong. I can't wait to be jaded like everyone else, then.

I guess well all have our reasons. I'm not going to lie and say that flying wasn't a part of it. But for the people I grew up knowing, and eventually myself, it was more than that. Guess I'll go sit in the corner with the other idealists and wait for reality to set in.

/naïveté on
 
xj220

xj220

Will fly for food.
pilot
Contributor
Why does that make someone jaded? I became a pilot so I could do what pilots do. Yeah, there's a lot of other great opportunities that separate us from our civilian counterparts, but there's also a lot of flying that we do that they don't. Also, you think it's easy to go flying on the civilian side? It's pretty damn expensive when Uncle Sam doesn't foot the bill for you. Sure you could go to an aviation school, then what? Regionals? You'd make half of what you do in the Navy.

My ground jobs have been pretty good/enlightening so far and you really learn about how the squadron functions and what your people do. Still, if I wanted a permanent ground job I wouldn't have gone aviation.
 
Wudgles

Wudgles

Cause I am most ill and I'm rhymin' and stealin'
pilot
xj220 said:
Why does that make someone jaded? I became a pilot so I could do what pilots do. Yeah, there's a lot of other great opportunities that separate us from our civilian counterparts, but there's also a lot of flying that we do that they don't. Also, you think it's easy to go flying on the civilian side? It's pretty damn expensive when Uncle Sam doesn't foot the bill for you. Sure you could go to an aviation school, then what? Regionals? You'd make half of what you do in the Navy.

My ground jobs have been pretty good/enlightening so far and you really learn about how the squadron functions and what your people do. Still, if I wanted a permanent ground job I wouldn't have gone aviation.
Click to expand...

I know it's not easy to go flying on the civilian side. However, joining the military should make it abundantly clear that flying isn't what it's about. Search the forums and you'll hear people screaming to applicants "OFFICER FIRST, Naval Aviator second."

If I wanted a permanent ground job, I wouldn't be trying to earn my wings. That wasn't my point. My point was that I would HOPE it's about more than just "HERP DE DERP I joined so I can use an afterburner. Everything else is a hassle."
 
S

SticknRudder

New Member
Take my wings, and I'll take a hike...Proud to say I was born to fly! Now I'll put up with a certain amount of ground-pounder stuff to do it, but a true pilot is a special breed, don't ever forget that ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top