 Why did you join the Air Force? I wanted money for school. I worked at a job that I didn't enjoy. I wanted to do something that I love for a living. And I felt that joining the military would help me get a chance to go to school but not have to pay for it. Because you get tuition assistance while you're in and then you knew about the GI Bill and all that when you were coming in. I didn't know about the GI Bill. So you just thought they would pay for school while you were in? You didn't know that they were going to pay for it after you got out? No, I didn't. So you actually got way more than you were bargaining for in the first place. You were like, this is sweet. It was a Marine that taught me into going into the Air Force. Into the military in general, but into the Air Force. And all the military branches are going to have the GI Bill and tuition assistance, DOD wide thing. That's not Air Force specific, but he was recommending the Air Force for what reasons? Since he was a Marine, did he tell you why? He knew that I had a family and I was a little older going in. He was like, it would probably be more stable for you and your family. You know, you get to spend more time with them as opposed to if you joined Marines then you could be shipped off. His opinion that the Air Force had better housing, he just felt like they had more to offer than the Marines. That's not me, the Air Force talking down with Marines. This is coming from the Marines. I'm going to say that is probably true. Just from my experience talking with a bunch of other people and being on other bases and stuff while I was in for six years the Air Force definitely seems to have things a lot more figured out as far as the family life goes. So that I wouldn't say is necessarily untrue. There will be bases that maybe aren't as good. I think overall, if you're doing as the Air Force is a whole thing, I think overall you're going to have a lot better lifestyle. So how long were you in the Air Force for and what rank did you make? I was in for about three years. I was in A1C and I got out probably a couple of weeks before I was put on C Air Force. Okay, so you were in E3 and got out right before you would have put on E4. So this is going to be with the whole video topics going to be about what exactly was the title of your job and what was that AFSC? The title of my job was Non-Destructive Inspections 2A7X2 involved with inspecting the aircraft but not destroying it to inspect it. Even if you want to oversimplify it. We're going to get more into that towards the end of this interview so I'm going to save that where you actually explain all the little things you did or maybe the different sections. So when you joined the Air Force did you come in as an open contractor? Did you have NDI right away? NDI is Non-Destructive Inspection just short and that's what people call it in the Air Force. But did you get that job specifically in depth or did you join with an open contract and then how long of a contract did you sign? I joined with an open contract and I got the job later. I signed initially for four years. Okay, so you signed a four year open mechanical when you came in and then they gave you NDI at BMT. At BMT, yeah. Was NDI something that you wanted to do when you were initially joining? When you were looking into first joining when you're like, oh I'm going to go for school were you like, ooh NDI looks really good or were you just kind of open minded or did you have anything specific like what did you want to do? Initially I wanted to do air traffic control but they just didn't have any openings at that time and like I said my recruiter was like you need to take open mechanical or you're not going to be going so I took the open mechanical and doing so I started doing research on NDI because people I was in depth with kept talking about NDI how good it was and doing my research I was like, this doesn't look bad. So once you found out your job in basic training because you signed the open contract you were going to be headed to tech school. Where was your tech school and how long was it? My tech school was in Pensacola, Florida and it was actually on a Navy base NAS Pensacola, the Navy base and it's shared with Navy Marines and Air Force. I loved it there by the way. I think it was from two or three months long. You said you enjoyed it. So you want to know something funny is you probably already knew this. I was in tech school at the same place. It just hit me. I went to tech school at NAS Pensacola as well because I was cheap and I was aircraft structural maintenance which is 2A7X3. So you're 2A7X2 and we're like the next AFSC up so it doesn't mean we're like above them it just means like we're all in a string of order like we all work together basically. So 2A7X we all are like very similar jobs in a way. So yours was NA with two, mine ended with three and then I think Metal's Tech might end with one or four. I can't remember what it was. All these jobs that work all together but at NAS Pensacola it was NDI low observable structural maintenance and then it was aircraft structural maintenance. So we have those three career fields there and you said you loved it. I absolutely loved it. Well actually I'll throw up a clip kind of to sum up how tech school was for me. When did you go? What months? It was during the cold months. Ooh that sucks. But it was still for December through I think February. Okay so I got there in March and I left in June and it was beautiful. Now keep in mind there's only three jobs that go to that base. Don't expect that when you go to tech school your life is going to be like that. We just got very lucky. Also do not just join a job because of where tech school is. Because your job can go anywhere, right? So it's not like you're like well you went to tech school in Florida and you got station in Florida. You're looking at you could go to Mynot. You could go like that's like the first thing because of everybody's mind. You're like no Mynot. So you could go to North Dakota, right? And you'd be like but I signed because I got three months in Pensacola and now I have four years in North Dakota. So I wouldn't base anything off of just like where your tech school is. But yeah, we were pretty lucky with where our tech school was. So I know we kind of just talked about getting stationed at places we said Mynot and then you've been stationed at Tyndall. Where all can NDI go? Is it like limited to a few bases or can you go like everywhere or what's like the limitations really? I think NDI can go pretty much anywhere but it depends on the jet that you get attached to. So like I went to Tyndall and I was attached to the F-22. So would they actually they attach you to the 22? So you can only They can still take me or whoever that is attached to the F-22 and put you somewhere else. But they try to keep you with the F-22 if you start on the F-22. Okay. Yeah. So like my experience was totally opposite of that because I was just on a regular old airframe. I was on the F-15s at first and then they moved me to the AJ-60 helicopters in my next base. So which both of those aren't like this crazy new technology or anything. So maybe that had anything to do with like just like the amount of newness to it is like they're kind of like, well, we want that experience to stay with the aircraft. So you could go pretty much anywhere there's aircraft essentially as NDI. Yeah, pretty much. One of the questions I was going to ask at the very end but I'm just going to ask it now because we already know the answer is were you going to make the Air Force a career? I never had attention on making Air Force a career. No. So you're currently out. How long have you been out? Almost two years. Well, a lucky year and a half. Okay. So definitely not making it a career. I was just going to say that to the end and I'm like, might as well get it out of the way now. But this is the biggest question of the whole interview that we're going to do about your job NDI. Can you explain to somebody that might have no idea or might be interested in this job possibly and they've just seen the short description that's on the Air Force website of what exactly do you do in your job? Because I'm sure what you've learned in your three years of doing it was probably a lot more in-depth than what you had read online. What different sections can you maybe be stationed in or different jobs or duties can you get in your career field and what do you guys do on a daily basis? I will say that NDI is one of the few jobs that the description pretty much is accurate. Okay. Well, that's good to know. It's good to know. There's a lot of descriptions you read it and you're like, there's no way that's what it's like. And then you're like, yeah, it wasn't like that at all. If you read the NDI description and you're like, what is this? And you're confused, that's what you're going to be doing in NDI. We use different methods to test the jet and to see if it has cracks in the jet. Because when you're flying you have a lot of force and pressure on the aircraft and so it can get cracks and that could be detrimental. So you want to find them and get sheet metal or someone else to... We use to fix everything. So basically we give everybody else work and that's why nobody like NDI and it takes... You tell everybody everything is broken. We tell everybody was broken and they have to do work and they will have to stay late and yeah, they hate you. One way to find cracks is through X-rays. We would X-ray the aircraft. You would do the entire aircraft sometimes. You do sections of the aircraft. Okay. So you do like a wing or something like that? Yes, exactly. You do a wing or you do like the bottom of it and I know that's not the correct term. I can't read the correct term for the bottom of the aircraft but you would do that and it's kind of dangerous. So they actually call us the cancer job. I think that's something that's very important. All maintenance is cancer, jobs. True. All maintenance. Because isn't the LO stuff like... Oh, LO is like super bad for you. Yeah. Like really bad. We shoot unshielded X-rays. So if you go to the doctor you notice that the nurse or doctor or whatever go behind a little thing and they shoot your X-ray and it's like lead plated. Yeah. When you shoot X-rays on the aircraft it's unshielded. So you have to hit the button for it to do its thing and you have to run and you have to get a certain distance away and use a survey to make sure you're not in the radiation area. Yeah. It's like pretty dangerous. You know what's funny? We were... Okay this isn't funny at all but when I was in Japan there was a call up at the radio one night. We were waiting on a Friday night because some reason they always wanted to do X-rays on Friday nights. Yeah. In the evening when we're trying to go home and they're like nobody could go home until the X-ray was done and they got everything cleared up. And like everything put away. So we're like waiting on them and then like comes out of the radio and was like oh yeah could we get somebody down here? I've been radiated and I'm like bro like you gotta be kidding me man. You're like well that dude might not be able to have kids anymore or something. You're just like but like they had to go to the hospital and then get tested and like we didn't have to wait for that like they like took the dude to the hospital. Yeah it was a big deal because that person wasn't paying attention because you guys set cones up around the outside of the hanger that you're doing it in and some like crew chief just like straight up walk through it up to the aircraft and they were like what are you doing? And so and then literally there's like signs that say like X-ray in process and some people are just like they're not paying attention. So you're like dude but yeah I say it's funny but it's really not because that person is probably like lifelong consequences from that possibly hopefully not. Yeah definitely like can be scary but Yeah it can be. Yeah I didn't mess with it when you saw cones as an X-ray in process I was like bro I'm out I didn't go near it. If you don't pay attention to anything else in the Air Force don't break red and don't walk through those cones if it says X-ray in process. Other than the X-rays like what are some other things that you'll do with your job? Penetrate was another method that we used and it's like this glow in the dark type material and you put it on where you think a suspected crack would be and it seeps into the crack and so we use a black light and you shine it on it and if you see it like it'll make the crack glow. So pretty simple but yeah that's another method that we use Magna Particles is another method that we use we have this huge magnifying machine thingy and you put this liquid on it and this liquid has like little particles of metal in it and so if you think about it if you have a crack in something it splits the part into poles like a north and south pole like a magnet does that make sense? So because it splits it the little metal particles will find the crack and they will attach there and it'll glow it's all glowing it's all under a huge black light it's all little scientific stuff like that and NDI and sometimes a lot of people say NDI is easy which it is for the most part but sometimes you can get a night where I can't think of which job but they may bring you like two or three hundred bolts that you have to do you have to do like one at a time sometimes where you dip them and then let them sit and then you have to inspect them all yeah so it can be tedious jobs like that welcome to the other maintenance jobs in the Air Force where we actually have constant work yeah so and there's something else that you didn't mention Eddie Currant Eddie can talk about that the reason I know is because like he was saying earlier they find the cracks and they tell us to do the work like he was being like yeah they bring us all these bolts so we had to work they would find all these cracks so then we had to work like that's kind of how it was so Eddie Currant was a major thing that was used when I would work with people I'm glad you said that because that's one that I'm making explaining the best without sounding like Eddie because it's been so long Eddie Currant it's like this little pin like a metal pin it's attached to this machine that gives you like readings and readouts and when you put it on there you scan it across and so if you think about it a crack if you have a flush metal surface and you have a crack that crack is going to have air in it so it's putting out these like electronic pulses and it will pick up on the air that that crack has in it it'll give you a spike so it's like bouncing from the metal back so if it hits a crack it'll make like a deeper bounce basically pretty much you learn how to do this a little bit and so like when you guys would do it you would like move the pin back and forth over a spot and it would just keep creating a line going like this and then if there was a crack it would go like this so then you would have like a line that was like flat like it was showing like the like level of the metal and then all of a sudden you just have these like random jagged spikes so then they could tell where the crack was and you have to adjust the pin for different metals because different metals are composed different so it would have to to penetrate the metal differently it would have to be set differently because it would have to you know penetrate differently and I know there's a NDI expert just like he didn't get everything a hundred percent right but it's been a long time we're just giving you a general sense of what's going on so jokes is something else we do in NDI you know a lot about NDI I worked with NDI guys so so pretty much if you think about the aircraft and it's flying or whatever and it can get wear metals in the oil and so we take an oil sample I forget which job brings us the oil samples crew chiefs crew chiefs bring us the oil samples and we put it into this machine we take a little cat food we put it in this machine with an electrode and it spins like a million miles an hour and it reads all the wear metals all the materials that are in that oil and there should be a certain amount of certain things in the oil and I cannot can you remember I hate to ask somebody that's not NDI like not magnesium or something magnesium is one of like copper, zinc or something maybe you should have made a NDI so I actually helped a guy do it I didn't know anything I was doing though when I was TDI that I was like helping him do it and so the way he explained it was like your car right when your car needs an oil change when you drain it there's a bunch of little like bits of metal and stuff like dust metal dust in your oil and that's why it gets dirty and so when you change it out and you put new oil in is what that's kind of what you guys test for too is to be like because you can actually tell what components are wearing down that's the thing so certain certain elements shouldn't be reading too high and I think one of the biggest things on the F-22 was titanium we really always look for titanium so if titanium you have a book to go by T.O. you have a T.O. to go by and if titanium is above a level 5 then you know that this aircraft something is going wrong with it could be like the engine or something there's a specific part of the aircraft that is going bad because it'll give you a high reading so you're kind of like the electronic diagnostics on a car when you plug it in it tells them the codes back it's kind of what you're doing except you're testing the oil and then it's telling you what parts are being worn essentially because you're like well this part is this metal so that could be the only thing in the whole engine compartment or anything that touches this oil what parts that touch the oil are this compound and so then you can kind of be aware like we need to change this part out or let them know so they can keep an eye on it or change it before it completely goes bad so I thought that was really cool because I was like dude I wish cars did that too like people could be like the transmission is going bad this is going out but that is because they know what metals are being worn but I think it would be way too expensive to do it on a car because I'm sure those machines that you guys put that oil in are like ridiculously expensive and it's cool because you have the power to well it's not cool but for your power freaks out there you have the power to prevent a jet from flying if it's too high you can say oh you can't fly that jet or whatever now the thing that comes with that a lot of people are going to be mad at you and they're going to say you don't know what you're doing so you're going to have to prove and you're going to have to do it over and over again and show these people that it's reading high in titanium and that it doesn't need to fly and it's kind of tedious because you have to use gloves when you do it if you touch your face or your gloves aren't clean you need to put alcohol on your gloves or whatever you can cause the readings to be off because you have dirt on if you don't change the electrolyte or the little wheel thing if you don't clean the machine good enough it'll have it'll cause false readings so yeah so my last question for you after you've just explained what you're doing your job is what would advice be that you could give to anybody that's going to have your job possible or they're looking into India what would advice be for somebody that's going to get themselves into this type of career field I would tell you the biggest thing is I saw a lot of people get in trouble because NDI is one of those jobs putting upon your base that you can go in there and you can do absolutely nothing like you go you walk in there and you see staff sergeants and you see senior airmen not doing it not doing it just sitting around NDI not doing it not doing it no dirt ball and everybody's playing ping pong and watching TV and shooting pool yeah we have TVs at NDI so we can watch we have pool we have ping pong all that stuff you guys have made a tunnel in yeah we did and so you'll think hey I can go join in on the fun too and it's like you're the little guy on the totem pole so you have to like look busy and find stuff to do study your CDCs and just make it look like you're doing something because you haven't earned the right to do nothing yet so just keep that in mind like don't fall into the trap like just stay focused because you can't get in trouble by not doing nothing although there's nothing to do so yeah so just work hard basically figure out how things go yeah they want to make sure that you know how to do your job so which is kind of important in the Air Force which is you probably know how to do your job yeah so when everybody else is shooting pool or playing ping pong just go study your CDCs or and once you get out of your CDCs and you're like there's no jobs to do go practice you can you can set up NDI you can set up like simulation like edit current stuff or magnum part you can practice like to see that kind of stuff alright well we hope you guys appreciated this video of Jay talking about his job non-destructive inspection in the Air Force if you guys are interested in this job or you know anybody that might be go ahead and share this video with them and maybe it'll be helpful also let your recruiter know possibly that we're making videos interviewing people about different career fields so if they want to send people this way and get information about the different career fields in the Air Force directly from Airmen this is a great way to do it