I found ou the jobs I qualified for today and just wanted to get your opinions on AE. Will I ever fly? Where will I most likely be stationed? How is my A/C decided? Do you guys enjoy and like the job? Is it good for the civilian world?

Thanks

in my opinion, avionics techs have one of the best chances of using their experience on the outside, and getting paid well for it.


You will fly from place to place... or if you become an observer.. you get put on flight orders and go out on missions... provided of course you end up in a rotary squadron. im not sure about the c130's.

Pete

Your occupational field will be decided for you in Pensacola, Fl. That is where you will go to school to learn the basics about aviation electronics. After you get there you will be placed into one of three areas, given that you can pass "common core" (not hard). Two of these areas will be Organizational (O) level AE and AVI O-strand, and one will be Intermediate (I) level AVI-I strand. O-level guys work on the actual aircraft, they remove and replace the faulty components and troubleshoot the wiring in it. I-level guys work in a maze of white vans that are not generally on the flightline, they repair the gear the O-level removes from the aircraft radios, transpnoders, HUDs, etc. A lot of time they are Y-codes that have nothing wrong with them and get sent back A-799 (just a poke at some of them O-level guys.)

As for where you could be stationed, thats up to the monitor who tracks vacancies in you field. You'll get a wish list, and you'll get to choose your priority, starting from your most desireable to the least. They are: East coast, west coast, and overseas. After that there are many places; San Diego, Cherry Point, New River, Beaufort, C-Pen, Okinawa, Hawaii, and Iwakuni Japan just to name a few.

You can make decent money on the outside if you go I-level. Calibrators and Micro-mini solder techs can bank. Not sure about the O-level, but there are many contract jobs out there for different arircraft manufacturers.

Hope this helps

i found aviation electrician school challenging, and it taught me a lot. when i got to the fleet i ended up aimd(I level maint)where i worked on everything from batteies to flight control computers...quite a range of stuff there. some of us became part time door gunners when the need arose, plus the corp is ALWAYS looking to give ya more duties when they can! later i got to go back to what was then memphis tn nas millington and go to AT school and AFTA(advanced first term avionics) and then got to ecm school at the pit in havelock nc. since i had to extend 6yrs to be able to do the FIRST term issue i had a 12 year initial enlistment! WO's can move mountains when they need to! lol