I moved this over to a new thread so it wouldn't get lost in the....whatever was going on in the other thread. Hopefully we can get a bit more than just a couple of HSL takes, but for the most part (except maybe VQ), it's the same general cycle...
Same, same from what I saw on HSL west. The difference was that sometimes you had more bodies than cruises, so people only got one cruise, or more cruises than bodies, so people got to go out to sea more. Generally it was the former after OIF. From what I've heard, it's similar now, but maybe someone else in the fleet can correct me.
For the most part, it's the same general cycle for gray planes that go on gray things: show up at some point during a cycle, eventually workup (might be two days after you show up), deploy, come back, maybe work up again and deploy, depending on your timing and the timing of that particular squadron/community.