I will soon be starting flight school and I am thinking I want to fly C-130s. Can any C-130 pilots explain the good and bad aspects of being a C-130 pilot. I hear the duty is pretty chill.
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C-130s
- Thread starter SpankenStein
- Start date
Agree. As a counterpoint, I met a pretty impressive female USMC Captain who was (is?) an NFO (not sure what they may call them in the Herc community) flying in C-130Js from Miramar. I tried to interest her in maybe applying for the "Blues" as a "Fat Albert" aircrew….always seemed to me the at Navy/USMC was slower than the AF to bring female "role models" into the Team. I thought perhaps a Marine Herc crew person would be a good entree. I know all about Amy Tomlinson…daughter of a very good friend of mine, who was the first "female Blue" to wear a Number (8) on her blue flight suit.
The female Herc NFO smiled, but was quite adamant in her belief that flying the operational missions in the "J" was so much better than being "just the Nav" on Fat Albert, despite the perks and lifestyle. I guess it actually may be "pretty chill". Just an impression from a 60-second dialogue at a San Diegoo Tailhook Ready Room function...
If you're already down here, Maj Brown over at the MOC is a great resource. If not, nevermind.
There was a good thread on here a while back but the search function keeps returning me an error message. If you go to MarineOCS.com, usmcecho4 has a good "Face the Forum" post with KC-130 info.
Edited:
http://www.airwarriors.com/community/index.php?threads/usmc-maritime.40931/
There was a good thread on here a while back but the search function keeps returning me an error message. If you go to MarineOCS.com, usmcecho4 has a good "Face the Forum" post with KC-130 info.
Edited:
http://www.airwarriors.com/community/index.php?threads/usmc-maritime.40931/
Sorry Er'Body. Just Trying to make some friends. Kinda feel like this Guy.
OP,
Like the other guys said the search function is your friend. However, since information on here is only as accurate as it was last posted, I'll give you a brief overview.
Squadrons: we have 3 active duty flying the J-model( Cherry Point, Miramar and Okinawa soon to be Iwakuni) and 2 reserve flying the T-model (Fort Worth and Newburgh , NY). You must have at least one active tour under your belt to go to one of the reserve squadrons.
FRS: Basically we don't have one. We have two Fleet Replacement Detachments, one in Cherry Point and one in Miramar where newly winged pilots go through 4 months of simulator training from civilian contractors ( all prior C-130 pilots). Once complete here the students PCS to their respective squadrons, however at this point they are still not qualified. Once at the squadron they have to go through 5 flights then a check ride then they are qualified as a T3P.
Deployments: here is where we differ from most other communities. We do not deploy as a whole squadron. Instead we deploy in 2-4 plane dets commanded by a Maj anywhere from 6-9 months. I can only speak from experience from the Cherry Point, but the last 10 years we have had a det supporting OIF/OEF and a det supporting the MEU year round. Now that OEF will be gone, we will have a Det supporting the MEU and a det supporting Crisis Response based in Europe.
Ground Job: You would think that having 40 pilots in the squadron that there would be few ground jobs to do. WRONG. Because we always have at least 2 dets out, this leaves us with only the minimum number of personnel to function back home so most guys end up with multiple collateral duties.
Flying: We do a wide variety of mission sets so the flying is awesome and keeps things interesting. I'm about to leave the squadron after 3 years and I got just about 1000hrs in 3 years. Some guys leave with more, some with less. Now that we are pulling out of OEF, guys will definitely be leaving with less. In deployment you will typically fly a lot more but it depends on where you are and what you are doing at the time. Back home expect to fly once or twice a week. If you are an instructor, you get to fly a little more often.
Family: the vast majority of guys in our squadron are married. The downside to our community is that we are gone ALOT. Even when not on deployment there is always some kind of tasking for us to go on the road. I got back from my first deployment a year ago and since then I've gone overseas 3 times , one of those times was a brief deployment augmenting one of our other dets. That does not include multiple road trips in CONUS. Your marriage definitely gets tested but divorces are few and far between.
I think that pretty much covers it top to bottom. Let me know if you have any other questions.
Like the other guys said the search function is your friend. However, since information on here is only as accurate as it was last posted, I'll give you a brief overview.
Squadrons: we have 3 active duty flying the J-model( Cherry Point, Miramar and Okinawa soon to be Iwakuni) and 2 reserve flying the T-model (Fort Worth and Newburgh , NY). You must have at least one active tour under your belt to go to one of the reserve squadrons.
FRS: Basically we don't have one. We have two Fleet Replacement Detachments, one in Cherry Point and one in Miramar where newly winged pilots go through 4 months of simulator training from civilian contractors ( all prior C-130 pilots). Once complete here the students PCS to their respective squadrons, however at this point they are still not qualified. Once at the squadron they have to go through 5 flights then a check ride then they are qualified as a T3P.
Deployments: here is where we differ from most other communities. We do not deploy as a whole squadron. Instead we deploy in 2-4 plane dets commanded by a Maj anywhere from 6-9 months. I can only speak from experience from the Cherry Point, but the last 10 years we have had a det supporting OIF/OEF and a det supporting the MEU year round. Now that OEF will be gone, we will have a Det supporting the MEU and a det supporting Crisis Response based in Europe.
Ground Job: You would think that having 40 pilots in the squadron that there would be few ground jobs to do. WRONG. Because we always have at least 2 dets out, this leaves us with only the minimum number of personnel to function back home so most guys end up with multiple collateral duties.
Flying: We do a wide variety of mission sets so the flying is awesome and keeps things interesting. I'm about to leave the squadron after 3 years and I got just about 1000hrs in 3 years. Some guys leave with more, some with less. Now that we are pulling out of OEF, guys will definitely be leaving with less. In deployment you will typically fly a lot more but it depends on where you are and what you are doing at the time. Back home expect to fly once or twice a week. If you are an instructor, you get to fly a little more often.
Family: the vast majority of guys in our squadron are married. The downside to our community is that we are gone ALOT. Even when not on deployment there is always some kind of tasking for us to go on the road. I got back from my first deployment a year ago and since then I've gone overseas 3 times , one of those times was a brief deployment augmenting one of our other dets. That does not include multiple road trips in CONUS. Your marriage definitely gets tested but divorces are few and far between.
I think that pretty much covers it top to bottom. Let me know if you have any other questions.
Thank you much for the feed back. You hit it right on the nut. Everything I wanted to know you pretty much answered. The rumors I've always heard were that deployments are shorter and less frequent.
Yeh I was fed the same rumors as well. If I hadn't needed hernia surgery last minute, I would have had an additional OEF deployment.
RadicalDude
Social Justice Warlord
There's NFOs in Marine Herks? I was under the impression you guys had all enlisted aircrew besides the pilots.
Mostly due to my VT-10 ground school instructor who said "Don't take this the wrong way guys, but, in my community an enlisted man does your job." Hahaha.
Mostly due to my VT-10 ground school instructor who said "Don't take this the wrong way guys, but, in my community an enlisted man does your job." Hahaha.
C-130Js don't have Navs, they were replaced by the glass cockpit along with the FE. I am going to hazard a guess that the NFO you met was probably flying in support of Harvest Hawk, the sensor and weapons kit installed on some KC-1030Js flying in Afghanistan. To operate the system when it first rolled out they used experienced folks like F/A-18 WSOs and others while the Herk guys got up to speed. Not sure if they are still using them.
The Marine KC-130's are the only aircraft still flying in the US military that have enlisted Navs and it is only the older models that still have them, the newer KC-130Js don't. They shut down the schoolhouse at Randolph AFB in 2004 but when I went through before that they were still training junior enlisted to do the Nav thing in the same sims and on the T-43's seperate from us Navy and USAF folks. My celestial nav instructor was a retired USMC CWO4 who had been the CO of the USMC school when he retired, a real character and a very skilled navigator from the 'old school'. Very proud of his wings as they all were (same as the 1945-1947 Naval Aviation Observer (Navigation) Badge):
Works for me…she didn't offer and I didn't ask. Just saw the NFO wings on her name tag and the C-130 squadron patch on her flight suit. Taking a peek at the NFDS website, I see the only FA officers are indeed pilots.
Nope, the Coast Guard has enlisted navigators (wearing Naval Aircrew wings, of course), on our older C-130s.
I have asked about USCG C-130 'navs' of several guys and was told they 'work the boxes' and don't do a lot of 'real' nav stuff by some of the Marines (who were familiar with their training) and Coasties I have asked but haven't gotten a lot of detail. What training do the Coastie navigators get?
The Marine KC-130 navs went through a pretty rigorous program that was an actual flight school learning how to navigate instead of just aircrew school, which is more of a tough screening program before folks get to the RAG/fleet and not really a flight training program. Several of the contractor ground instructors when I went through Randolph were former Marine Aerial Navigators and were just as good if not better than most of their USAF contemporaries.