 Hello, I'm Airman Bullier. I am a C-5 load and I joined the Air Force because I loved the travel. I've been in the Air Force for about a year. I talked to the recruiter in September of 2018. I signed my contract in October and then I shipped out in November of 2018. So I went through BMT for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year. So if you have any questions about that, happy to answer. Whatever you have. My current rank, I signed as an A1C and I was told that I am ready to rank up. So I'm just waiting to sew on E4. The name of my job, so officially my job is a loadmaster. So I'm a C-5 load and the AFC is 1-alpha-2. Anything that's 1-alpha is aircrew. So the two identifies the loads. I got my job when I signed my contract. So I'm in the reserves. I'm not active duty. I'm under active orders right now. So when I talked to my recruiter, they first went through meps. I tested while in the ASVAB and then I went through and did my medical and I passed the aircrew physical. And then the recruiter hooks you up with an interview and you have to be interviewed by the local squads. And it's a typical job interview. Went pretty well. And as long as you actually make it through the training, you're in. So with the contract, my contract was just for a load. So if something happened and I washed out or something happened during training that I couldn't actually do the job, the Air Force would not reclass me. That was like my safety net. So if you go as a reserve or in the guard, your contract is just for the job that you signed for. It's a little bit different than active duty. Definitely, yes. I sought out a traveling job. I sought out a job that I could be actually using my brain. I used to be a teacher. And so I'm looking to change careers. And I enjoy puzzles and I enjoy math. So right now it's a great job. Any other job that I wanted? Nope, this was the job I was looking for. And I haven't regretted it since. If I was in another life, maybe I would maybe consider like as your instructor, get to camp out and live off the land. And that, I mean, that scene's pretty cool. But right now I'm happy. Happy with either staying on base or staying in hotels and flying around. I signed a six year contract. So like I said, I'm changing careers. So I actually look to do this a little bit more long term. But the door is open that if I want, I could still fly and go to college full time or continue another job during the week and then still fly, you know, once or twice a month in the future. So that the nice thing about the research is you have that opportunity to have different options while you're still while you're still serving. So the tech school is actually pretty long. I guess it's in a nutshell six months, technically. But after the six months, you come back to your base and you have what's called a prog tour. So it's six months plus nine months of a prog tour. I'll explain. So in general, so I'm on active duty orders right now for technically a year and a half. We went to Lackland, Kelly and Fairchild before going back to my home base. So right after BMT, you basically transfer to the other side of the base. And that's where you have aircrew fundamentals. Any enlisted that is aircrew has to take a fundies class and that's about a week and a half long. That class is I mean, I was in the class with linguists and sensor operators. And other loads. So it was a variety of aircrew. And then at the end of that class, the linguists learn what language they have, what language they're assigned. And the second part of that class is you actually go through chamber. So your body experiences hypoxia. And so that's pretty cool because that's the first time you actually put on the equipment. So that was at Lackland. And then right after that class, so all aircrew go through that. And then and then all the loads go through. It's called BLM and that's basic load master. There's a basic load master course. And so all the loads take a five week course. And then a few weeks into that course, if you're active duty, that's when you find out what airframe you're assigned to. I already knew because I signed my contract for C5. So it depends on depends on the week. Some weeks they they tend to give more C130s and some weeks they tend to give more C17s. I don't know. I don't know how it works, but that's when they get it. And then at the end of that course, at the end of the five weeks from BLM, that's when you earn your wings. So I didn't realize I would get my wings so quickly, so fast. So that was a pretty cool, pretty cool graduation from that tech school. And then from graduating from BLM, then we went and transferred from another side to the other side of the base closer to Kelly. And so you actually reside in Lackland, but the classroom is in Kelly. So they give you a vehicle to drive around base and that's called IQT. So that's initial qualification training and that's only for C5s. So you have aircrew, and then you have loadmasters, and then you have C5 specific. And then this is 10 week course, IQT. And during that course is when you learn the actual numbers and everything for the C5 specific. And then you actually get your hands on the ramp and door trainer. You actually get to kneel the aircraft, you get to open up the forward and afterwards. You get to actually run the panel, the flight engineer panel. So it's a lot of hands on, but it's also a lot of CBTs. So it was a lot of, and then also you're running, you're doing time in the sim, so you're in the simulator. And then following that 10 week course, then you have what's called a 15 day course. So it's not kind of part of it, but they don't really say it's mandatory. So I had budget funding issues. So I only got a five day course, but technically during the 15 day course of IQT, you have 15 days of flying twice a week and then extra time in practice on the ramp and door trainer and actually working with the active, the reservist down there, which is pretty neat. They're really nice. Following IQT, then you go to Sear. That was the order I went in. Then I went to Sear up in Fairchild. And Fairchild had Sear as well as water survival. Sear is the survival, evasion, resistance and escape. That was intense. Parts of that was awesome. Other parts was horrible, but can't talk about that. The difference between Sear and any other training was that was the one time that you went through tech school and you didn't have any weekends off. So all the other tech schools, you went from Monday to Friday and then you had Saturday and Sunday. You could do your own thing. Sear, once you start, it's from beginning all the way to the end, no days in between is a break. And so they purposely set it up so they control how much you sleep and how much you're working and how much you're in class. So they have it down to a science. They know what they're doing. I'm glad I went through it. I don't want to do it again. But I'd rather do the training and not need it than not have the training and need it. So Sear was three weeks and then I did water survival. And that was only for three days. You could do a two day course or a three day course. They put me in for the perishing course. I loved it. It was like a million dollar water park for a few days. They did, it's awesome. Lots of hands on. People asked if they could fail just so they could take the class again. You're gonna do well if you go because they just make it so hands on and so realistic. It's definitely out of all the training that was definitely the most fun, most enjoyable. After Sear and water survival, then I was told to go home and then I was told to take 11 days off. So I started my proctor the end of August beginning of September and then I go all the way up until the middle to end of May. So in a nutshell, it's about a year and a half of training. The actual days, strictly speaking, your tech school's six months not including the proctor. But keep in mind if you're active duty when you're sitting at tech school you are not a priority. You a lot of times sit two weeks to one or two months in between classes because I'm a reservist. I'm only on active orders for as long as I'm there. And so they wanted to get me in and out, in and out, in and out. So my tech school was one after the other whereas other people that went through schooling the same time as I did that were active duty. Some of them are still sitting around and they're not even doing missions yet while I've already been out on several missions. So that's one of the perks of being in the reserves. So as a C-5, like I said, there are other loads. You have C-17s and C-130s, but for C-5s there are only two active bases, Travis and Dover, so one coast or the other. And then two reserve bases, Kelly and West Dover. There are reservists at Travis and Dover. That's the way it is. So from what I understand Dover travels East and Travis travels West and then the reservists get to pick going East and West or West. I like to think that we get the best of the two, but. A load supervises the loading and unloading of cargo, vehicles and people. So anything that goes on the plane that needs to be transported somewhere else, we basically direct it and make sure that it needs to go in a certain location so that the placement and weight distribution is evenly set up so that basically if you take the plane and you dangle it on a string the weight on the plane is gonna keep the plane level so that when they wanna fly, when the pilot wants to go up, basically they build up. We make sure that everything is restrained. Everything is strapped down. Everything has a proper restraint so that it doesn't shift in flight. We work on our own a couple hours before the flight and then a couple hours depending on the load. We load up, we oversee the loading, we oversee the unloading and then while we're on the ground we're basically civilians until it's time to load up again. It's a fun job. You definitely get to travel and you get to sight-seeing the locations that you're at and some places you just basically you only have time to load and unload and then you're gone. So sometimes you get to see the local spots and other times you don't. Right now I'm a student so I'm Monday through Friday so eight something in the morning until three in the afternoon that includes they give you time to go to the gym. So it's really not a heavy load and then once I'm qualified basically I just need to keep up with my qualifications and then go on missions every month or so. I was told some people do load planning, load planning for major companies. They do it in the United States as well as downrange. I guess not a huge thing but I have heard of people doing it. Most places, most people I know are, they work locally, either they have their own company or they just work like police officer, fireman or just at the local jobs. Me being a reservist, a lot of, there's a number of active, I guess active reservists who have EGR slots or positions but so there are people that are there on base all the time as well as instructors that fly with me and sometimes there's instructors that just come just for one night, one a five so. We don't deploy. C-fives don't deploy because well we do TDIs. We go on missions and our missions can be anywhere from I guess three days to whatever they need. Usually not in any location for more than a couple weeks but I guess it depends if we break down. But yeah, so we don't go to deployment locations. We can drop off at those locations but. For C-fives, I guess my main advice is you can't be afraid of heights. It's a big plane. If you don't know from I guess ground to tail, it's about six and a half stories tall so it's pretty big and inside the actual cargo area you can actually transport six commercial Greyhound buses. So that's like, that's just cargo and that's not counting the troop compartment which you can put people up above as well. So you have to not be afraid of heights, enjoy puzzles, enjoy math, it definitely helps. You have to have good people skills because you also deal with any space A travelers. You always have something in your ears when you're traveling. You know these things that go in and then you also have your headset and people call them vice groups. But if you don't like wearing something on your head, probably isn't a good job for you because you constantly, especially when you're flying and you have to be talking with the front or talking with the scanner. You need to keep communication so you do need to have something in your head all the time either in your ears or above. For I would say most of the time and even in flight you also need to have that communication. So it's one of the things I didn't know but now I do. One of the perks right now is we're wearing what's called the green pajama. Green pajamas, it's the old flight suit. Some of the other bases are wearing the two piece OCPs. I don't know. I don't know what the Air Force is gonna do as far as deciding that down the road but right now we're just being issued the green flight suits and then the tan flight suits for down range. So of the Air Force only 2% of the Air Force actually flies and then of that 2% are females. So I guess there's not that many of us but we're around. You still have the same PT requirements, the same physical requirements for aircrew. So you just, if you keep up, you're good. And then of the for once, not just when you're in training but also throughout your career you have to keep up with your testing. So it's not like once you're in your in you also have to test throughout and not many people know but a passing grade is an 85. Anything below an 85 is a fail. So if you can 84, it's a no go. So just keep that in mind if you're not good at memorizing or you're not good at math or you're just not good at test taking there's less wiggle room to actually get by. For in-flight duties there are three different positions on the C5 that a load master can have. They can be either a flight deck, cargo or troop compartment. So if you're a troop compartment you're basically seeing, watching the loading and unloading of the passengers and then you stay with them throughout the flight. You don't cook for them. If they purchase box lunches you pass those out otherwise most people just bring their own food and you're basically, you're the one who's in charge of their wellbeing making sure they're comfortable. Blinkets, pillows, temperature of course anything goes wrong. You're there to help out with any emergency equipment. If you're cargo that means you are the one who's supervising the loading and unloading of the pallets or of the ruling stock of whatever comes into the cargo compartment. So you're going to be, you're going to be directing the K-loader. You're going to be directing the forklift. You're going to be saying where everything is going to be positioned on the plane. And we can take quite a few. You can take up to 36 pallets on the C5 or we can take two Abram tanks, six Apache helicopters or we can take 15 Humvees. Fun fact we can also, you take the wings off the C130 you can take the whole, the entire cargo of the C130 you can fit it inside of the C5. So it's like an Anaconda eating another plane. So that's the car. And then cargo actually doesn't sit. No one's allowed to sit in the cargo area during flight. So cargo sits in troop with whoever's on troop. And then if you're iFlight, if you're aFlight deck, your job is to, once again, the pre-flights. Everybody has pre-flights of their section of the plane, but then you also are in charge of the Form F. You're in charge of any paperwork before, before takeoff. And then also before you land into other countries, you're also in charge of the customs page, custom paperwork, as well as any forms that you need for your base for in-flight, for where you've landed, what time you landed, and all those details. And basically know your work, follow the instructors and you'll have a good career. If anybody has any extra questions or if you wanna, I guess see what I'm up to. I can't give you recent posts, but I do keep up with Instagram once in a while. I do have an Instagram account, CAB3CA, so Charlie Alpha Bravo Tree, Charlie Alpha. It is a private account, but if you ask the follow, I'll let you in. And I will, if you have questions, go ahead and send them to me.