wondering if i should retrain

[brown7]

when the time comes of course im at my halfway point in the enlistment. i dont dislike my job, im just at the point i want something else.

Was thinking something Aircrew related, perhaps aerial gunner or even load master.

i am Air Transportation, aka i load/unload/service planes/cargo/people.

[SeeingRed]

Loadmaster isn't a bad gig. It's a pretty cool deal sometimes. Other times, loadmasters get the shaft, but not too bad.

You could always cross train in to maintenance and be a crew chief. We need 'em bad...the SRB is 3.0 right now too for Zone A.

[brown7]

dont think im going to be anything mx.. just because 70% of people ive met that work mx wish to end themselves.

[Black_Bullitt]

Aircrew positions are always open, they're chronic critical. There's a lot of medical shit to get cleared on before you're accepted into the program though... Color vision, red lens test, and high cholesterol is what kept me from getting into FE earlier this year.

But yeah, if you can cross train, do it. And stay on those donkeys down at AFPC. My window opened up when I was deployed, and I was trying to do all that online application crap from the desert, never got any replies from AFPC. Then once I got back to homestation, I got an email saying they're sorry, they effed up, I got a 2 week extension to get my application in... which was just enough time to find out that the jobs I was trying to get into weren't accepting any more cross trainees. So, yeah, stay on those guys...

[LQQKOUT]

After 12 years in Vehicle Maintenance I am retraining into Airfield Management. Start school April 2010. I hope it was a good choice. "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence until you get there."

[brown7]

im good on color/depth depending on which test is given.
Looking at it now i think i just want something "exciting" and more air forcy.

[Black_Bullitt]

Lol, yeah it really does depend on which test they give you. I fail miserably when it comes to the color dot test where you have to pick a character out of a field of colored dots. But, last time I went in for color vision, they gave me this batch of tiles all colors of the rainbow, and all the colors in between, and told me to put them in order as they fade from one color to the next. I got 100% correct in one eye, 95% in the other. But they told me that test didn't count. I was like, "The why the fuck did you administer it? To get my hopes up? ...asses."

But "more air forcey"? I can't think of anything that does a better job of saying "Air Force" than MXG. lol
You could be a log planner like me though, get to see how the AF contributes to the joint fight, deploy people, etc...
And we have an SRB. lol

But seriously, this job is the most "Air Force" I've ever felt. It's not a bad job at all, and it carries over well to the civilian sector, to the tune of high 5-digit, low 6-digit salaries, starting off... At least that's what everyone's been telling me. Haha!

[SeeingRed]

dont think im going to be anything mx.. just because 70% of people ive met that work mx wish to end themselves.

I love my job as a crew chief, just hate all the bullshit that comes from the supervision. I mean, I just made an EASY two grand on an Iron Swap and got to go to Canada, Germany, Turkey, Kuwait, Turkey again, Germany for 10 more days, overnight in Iceland. I hardly did any work the entire time I was gone. Now, fighter and bomber crew chiefs don't get those kind of trips, but in the heavy world (cargo planes), you get stuff like that everywhere you go on every airframe, C-130s especially because we can only hold 60k pounds of fuel and don't have the range of a C-17 or a C-5 and can't refuel in flight.

Rich is right though. He's got an "Air Forcey" job, as do I, as do flight crew. Flight crew isn't cut out for everyone though. It's long hours when you're on the road and it's a lot of political stuff. Being a loadmaster, you wouldn't see the political/bureaucratic side of it much, but as a flight engineer you sure would.

But, if I were you and was able to cross train, I'd be looking to go where the money is. Right now, contracting is where the money is. Zone A for contracting has a 7.0 SRB for Zone and and at least a 6.0 SRB for Zone B, C, and D....at least that's what it was when I re-enlisted going off of the May '09 SRB list.

[MasterForce]

After 12 years in Vehicle Maintenance I am retraining into Airfield Management. Start school April 2010. I hope it was a good choice. "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence until you get there."


hey how is vehicle maintenance? is it just fixing GOVs? im thinking of cross training too but im leaning more into medical tho. id like to work in fixing the med equipment and stuff like that. right now i do all the acft statistics and metrics for c130s

[SeeingRed]

Ps&d ftl.

[brown7]

But "more air forcey"? I can't think of anything that does a better job of saying "Air Force" than MXG. lol
You could be a log planner like me though, get to see how the AF contributes to the joint fight, deploy people, etc...
And we have an SRB. lol




i already do that lol... all those people you push thru the line. i weigh there bags and put them on said plane. here anyways..in korea we had tons of shit going to 3 letter bases that didnt even have names. tank treads, H/AC units, patriots(those where fun lol) etc.

i suppose i will stay with my job and just get better at it i guess.

[IRONMAN]

Just keep in mind man. The job is only as good as youmake it. Yeah MX sucks some times, and yeah it sucks knowing the guys on the other end of the ramp make shit tons on tdy's. But that's the beuty of it all, it doesn't matter what you do, where your stationed , or how bad your leadership sucks... If you make your job important to you, and incourage those around you, it will be the best job in the AirForce.

When I first got to dyess all the NCO's told me that dyess sucks, the B-1 sucks and to buy a house, cause I was going to be here a while. I did buy a house, but that's about all I listened to. Dyess and Abilene aren't bad at all if you really look at it. And always keep the second most quoted comment in the AirForce. " prepare for the worse and it can only get better" and if that don't work. You can always use my view. I would rather do it here than in -25* weather in Minot.

It's all on how you let yourself look at it. And only you can make your job,"The best job in the AirForce"

[*1GT2NV*]

+1 to what everyone has already said.... IMO a job is what u make it but supervision plays the biggest role. You can have a cake job doing something that you really like but if you got POS supervision they will make you hate it. Being a B-1 crew chief wasn't really "bad" but the people in charge suck(ed).....

[MasterForce]

Ps&d ftl.

im not ps&d :) that job is way different that ours.

[SeeingRed]

Oh yeah...you're analysis. My bad dude. I'm on drugs sometimes.

[Black_Bullitt]

I'm on alcohol all the time... just sayin'...

[LQQKOUT]

hey how is vehicle maintenance? is it just fixing GOVs? im thinking of cross training too but im leaning more into medical tho. id like to work in fixing the med equipment and stuff like that. right now i do all the acft statistics and metrics for c130s

I would recommend staying away from Vehicle Maintenance. You do get to learn how to fix stuff, but you better be ready to deploy to the tune of 6 on 12 off.....................more like 8 on 10 off, doing BS JET tasking. That's what I am doing now and most of us get stuck doing this or convoys (6 Deployments and 1 remote in less than 12 years). Plus tech school is long 5 mnts and way to many CDC's.
Working on the Medical Equip. would be a bad ass job that pays allot more than VM will, plus it is allot cleaner and more appreciated.