I'm HSC, getting ready to go on my first deployment in a couple months. I'll try to give you the good, bad and ugly as I've seen it in the last 6 months. Take that for what little it's worth obviously.
I'm going on a 2-bird det to a USNS ship, so it'll be a VERTREP det, with little or no tactics stuff as I understand it. We have another 3-bird det on a Gator that is currently limited to the D and PMC runs, despite plans to integrate with the MEU airwing for CSAR/TRAP. At homeguard, we do a very aggressive amount of SWTP syllabus training compared to squadrons in say, San Diego, and we have more flight hours overall by a fair margin. A lot of expeditionary HSC JOs have been leaving their tour with ridiculously low hours, in the realm of 700 total. We don't have that problem. I have a lot of friends at HSC-12 in Japan, and they too are ahead of the Seawall CVN squadrons in hours and tactical quals. So, for HSC at least, FDNF (Japan for CVN, Guam for Exp) will put you in a good position to fly and deploy compared to other places.
To be honest, (and I'm looking over my shoulder as I type this), it looks to me like our tactical syllabuses are pretty weak. You do two CAS events to get your level III, and now you're supposedly good enough to do it in real life? If I were on the ground, that would not give me a warm and fuzzy. SOF and PR training is fun, even if occasional training is all you'll likely do. Here in Guam we do SAR on a regular basis, which is awesome. No one else in the Navy gets to do that, except maybe some station SAR units. We have a giant board covered in little plaques for rescues going back 30 years. It's a rare chance to do something real...
We just got a little peek at the current vision for HSC (subject to change...). Apparently people are upset with HSC for a recent spate of overland training mishaps, which occurred while landing in night brownout conditions, with crews who were generally pretty rusty. So, the reaction from higher echelons is not to ensure we get more training, but to "limit exposure" to the overland tactical environment. Basically, Big Navy doesn't consider it worthwhile for HSC to be good at this stuff, despite the fact that we just killed HSC-84 and 85 and somebody needs to do those missions. So fewer people in each squadron will obtain these tactical quals, and everyone else will focus on overwater missions, like HVBSS and blowing jet-skis out of the water.
So this all ties in to the identity crisis Pags was talking about. HSC wants to be more important in "the kill chain" but can't figure out how. We tried to be super-tactical at our three mission areas (SOF, PR, ASUW), but next we're going to try and be more Romeo-like since HSM has had some success at integrating into the Carrier Airwing and getting a bigger piece of the pie. Who knows what the next plan will be. Not me...
All that cynical-sounding stuff aside, I really like my squadron and enjoy the flying and training we do. It's a blast to have Marines fastrope out of your helo, and to K-duck a CRRC into the water. TERFing through the jungle and landing in CALs is really great. It would be a damn shame if we did less of it. If I were selecting all over again, I wouldn't change anything. If I were in HSM, all the above complaints would be business as usual. No VERTREP, no SOF training, just overwater ASW/ASUW stuff all day erryday.
One unrelated piece of advice: your selection sheet is all over the map. It's going to be really hard to determine what exactly your preferences are. You should have a very clear preference for platform or location. If you are all over the place, you're going to be harder to place than someone with a clear pattern, and are liable to get stuck with whatever.