Hi Folks,
Here is some advice from someone thats done it both. "Small boys" and the "Bird farm". Which is better? It's all a matter of your individual point of view, likes, dislikes, etc...However, I'll give you a quick primer.
Small Boys:
1. Small ship and small crew. More family-like.
2. Food is generally better, but they run out of stuff quicker and meal hours are short.
3. Usually pierside in liberty ports and those ports are often places the CV will never ever see. I hit place like Bali, Surabaya, Phuket, Ketchikan, Alaska are some of the unusual places.
4. Opportunities to learn more about how the "shoes" do stuff. OOD underway qual is a biggie for HSL bubbas to get.
5. Ship is usually cleaner, quieter and squared away (not the rule though).
6. Water hours are a pain in the ass on small boys sometimes. Almost never happens on a carrier, especially a Nuke.
7. Working out and other off-duty stuff is a bit harder to come by, but just requires more imagination. Even FFGs have gym equipment, LifeCycles and usually some pretty good MWR things-to-do in-port.
"Bird Farm"
1. Yep, it's a helluva lot bigger, so doesn't rock n' roll, but where is the fun? Nothin like riding out a typhoon on a an 1052 class FF!
2. Noisy, smelly, usually not as squared away as the "greyhound" escorting her.
3. Food...Actually not so bad most of the time, and always has the "dirty shirt" open on the O-3 level and the "auto-dog" machine is usually FMC most of the time.
4. Working out is pretty good on the CV, most have a couple of gyms or equipment scattered around.
5. Staterooms are a serious crap shoot. You could be in the "JO Locker" next to a water brake or cat room. Most of the "O's" SRs are foward on the O-3. Kinda loud. Even the "Majors" get a shitty room at the end of an AC trunk or so loud you need "Mickey Mouse" ears to sleep!
6. Your at-sea with the entire sqdn. Hmmmm, two-edged sword there. In LAMPS thae whole idea was to get away from the sqdn! In a an HS sqdn your there with all your buds competing for the top JO FITREP slot. On a LAMPS DET you make a name for yourself without having to serve as the 1st Lt or PAO. Thats why you want to get underway in LAMPS and not have a "S***Y Little Job".
Thats about it for an itemized list, however, this barely scratches the surface and prime considerations need to be made according to the mission(s) the two types of helicopters fly. If you want to fly in the weeds, mountains, desert...HS and the CV is the only way to do that. HSL is the maritime dominance helicopter of choice for the BG, with some in-close back-up from the "dippers" (BEST damned piece of gear out there in the fleet for killing a submarine is that AQS-13 SONAR). I'm a little biased, I prefered the DD, FF, FFG, CG...I rode them all.
Can't comment on the HC boys, but they are getting a great new toy and expect "mission creep" to take on a whole new meaning when they get going!
Regards,
Kaman
