 I joined the Air Force originally really just because there's something I always wanted to do. One of my step-brothers was a Marine and growing up he was like maybe 10 years older than me roughly. It always just kind of inspired me. Me and my other step-brother were actually going to join together but he went off to college. I kind of did my own thing and finally decided enough was enough so I joined. So I've been in the Air Force coming up to two years next month. I'm currently in Airman 1st Class or an E3. I though hopefully if I find out next month as well I actually may be going up for what's called BTZ or Below the Zone. What that means is if you've proven yourself to your leadership and you're doing your job right you potentially can get promoted up to six months early. So hopefully by the time we watch this video I'll be at E4 by then or Senior Airman. So I am a C17 Crew Chief that is 2 Alpha 5 X1. X stands for basically the different level you're at. So there's a 3 level, a 5 level, a 7 level and a 9 level. When you basically first get to your shop after a Tech School generally you're going to be a 3 level theory you should be qualified on all the basic jobs which should allow you to go into the jet and do different things with it. Once you get on a 5 level you're basically out of that little blanket of I didn't know what I was doing so you theory should have been there long enough to be able to say hey I know what I'm doing let me sign off all these jobs. A 7 level obviously you're a lot more qualified you can basically be a supervisor of most every kind of job that's going to be out there. You can sign off certain jobs that neither one else can. When I joined I did not want to be a Crew Chief. I joined wanting to be weather. I had on my dream sheet of what jobs I would like to be as security forces, weather, cyber, linguist and a few others. When I originally went and did my little test I ended up getting like an 80, 87 or 88 which in theory you are already qualified on almost every job in the Air Force. With that I had no intention of doing anything else and it was what I wanted to do yeah that's what I wanted to do. That's what I actually wanted to be whenever I joined. So getting to the other part of it when did I find out what job I was getting? About six months before I joined so on Memorial Day specifically. I made my brother a playing football and we got a little too serious with this throw one time. I was going to catch the football and snap my finger back so in the truthful airman I was I decided to go tell the recruiter how to go back to meps. The logic behind this I'm still trying to figure out to this a day but they basically said oh your finger was broken whenever that heals we don't know how well that's going to work when it comes to typing on a computer. How about let's just put you in maintenance working with heavy machinery and moving parts and all this stuff that's going to be a lot healthier for your finger than working on a computer. So no still don't but I'm starting to appreciate the job and that's probably a big key for anyone who does any kind of job whether your security forces services finance really any job in the Air Force unless you're like a PJ where you're personally trying to get in there to do one of those jobs. I highly doubt it's anyone's dream job to sit out there and be a crew chief and be yelled at all the time. It is not something I wanted to do I'm appreciating it more but that's just because it's kind of cool I'm going on a plane that costs like 200 something 280 million dollars or something like that. It's crazy to see this big hunk of metal. I do still for a life and you cannot see how that thing lifts off the air. Listen to the air and see that thing go up and I'm saying wow I launched that jet or I did the inspection on this jet to help a crew to actually launch. Obviously I wanted to be a being weather it was something being from Texas it's something I was kind of been interested in because I was born and raised in tornado alley so for me I got to see tornadoes all the time and I used to go outside cameras and started fiddling a tornado because I was weird and just weather in general is exciting to me and so that's really the number one job I wanted. Security forces is kind of cool basically whenever I came when I was still in depth some kids were coming back from tech school to do their rap situation and they're all talking about how cool it was. I'm very happy I didn't get security forces no disrespect to anyone in security forces but yeah they those are pretty much the two main jobs pass that yeah linguists anything with computers yeah but that's basically what was going on there. Never in a million years wanted to necessarily do maintenance but here I am. So I ended up joining a six for a couple reasons I was being stupid with my money beforehand and I'll send some debt so I looked at joining six because I knew I wasn't going to get the sign-on bonus but I was at least wanting to be more stable with my life for a little bit longer so I ended up choosing to stay in four or six instead so that I can get my life back on track and be debt-free going forward at least from what I was originally going with. Obviously now I have a truck and I have a house so those are some that's a good debt in my mind so yeah I did six. I was in a place no one usually wants to go to Shepard Air Force Base in Wyshtall Falls, Texas it's about an hour and 30 minutes from where I grew up yeah. So our tech schools I'm not sure if this is for every single job out there but at least for us your job your tech schools like split up into two or three schools the first one for me was at Shepard Air Force Base that alone was about two months roughly it was from like November to maybe like a month and a half but it basically from like November to January at least for me that's roughly around the time that I graduated basic as soon as I finished at Shepard I was shipped off to either McCord or Charleston and they sent me to Charleston from there that one was another two months and then once you get to your job usually you're on you're at your work your job for between three to six months and then they'll send you to your final one so basically you have Shepard it's called Fundies or Fundamentals where you learn just basics on each plane or on planes in general you learn basically how to fill out forms how to do very simple jobs as soon as you finish with those then you go to the other two that I was talking about at least for me because I'm a C-17 crew chief so for us we went to one of the two from there we got more in depth with it we got to go out onto our actual plane or if it's raining or something they just send us into one of the buildings where they have nearly a full-size at least a simulated plane inside of these buildings so you can go and mess with the flight deck see different seats learn how to go underneath into like a maintenance tunnel underneath like the underneath the floor finally the last one which is phase two the one that you have basically the one where you're either Charleston or McCord that one's called phase one we have phase two is a last class where they try to basically sign you off on everything to get your five level the tech school wasn't awful there's some really stupid stuff at Shepard that pretty much no one liked I'm not I don't even think the MTL has really enjoyed it but it was like basic training was very simple you know and no disrespect to the MTIs it was it was very easy it was a lot easier than at least I was assuming it was going to be going in so when I went to Shepard it just seemed like there being way too gung-ho about certain things like every Friday or so you go into a middle of a field and have a dress blues inspection for absolutely no reason and food was amazing so I'll say that Shepard Air Force Base was if you go there you'll find out they have voted like one of the best de-facts or commas or just de-facts in the Air Force when it comes to all these training bases so that was the nice part my instructor he was awesome I have nothing but good things to say about him he was fantastic so my tech school at least in Shepard wasn't awful my dad died so I can have a really negative connotation with Shepard with that but that's not Shepard's fault when I got to Charleston oh boy I've been living in Texas my entire life I spent some time in like Santa Fe in Mexico and then a little bit in Washington DC living on the coast coming from like the desert that was amazing I'm used to just seeing dead grass all the time a few trees and dried up creek beds and coming out to Charleston I was I was feeling like my life was the greatest thing in the world I get to go to the beach which I've barely ever been in my life there's mountains out here forests to go hiking in to me that was that kind of set it off the MTLs here were phenomenal I ended up becoming pretty good friends with one of them I really can't find anything negative so far to say about Charleston when it comes to them on the tech school side that all is amazing for C17 there's basically seven bases state side yeah there's Charleston, McCord, Travis, Elmendorf, Andrews, Dover, there's one more it starts with an M2 past that you have a couple different overseas ones but once again it's still pretty small uh it's I remember it's Hickam there's like one more but uh yeah there's like a really really small overseas list when it comes to how many bases you can get stationed at uh regarding the levels you're at once you become a seven level in your job your shred goes away so the shred is uh basically a letter at the end of your a fc so me being two alpha five x1d d is the shred you'll learn a little bit more about this during basic training once you become a seven level that shred goes away so now I'm just I would just be a crew chief I means I can go into any aircraft that is at least in my field so being on a heavy aircraft I would go to I can go to any of them C17 C130 C5 and yeah so basically I can go to a lot of different jets at that point all right so I'm a like I mentioned I'm a crew chief the jokes we will say is we're jiffy lube basically so our job is to inspect the aircraft to make sure that it is good to go for another flight or for its mission so we'll be going out there doing a full inspection a minor inspection or a mid inspection roughly at least it's what we do here at my base it's called a pre-flight through flight or a bpo depending on what kind of inspection you're doing kind of depends on what's going on there but so we'll go for a bpo that is the one that basically is an all-inclusive one that focuses on every single section of the plane you go out into the jet and you basically do an full inspection either observing opening up a little tiny doors here in there on everything on the exterior you're looking at the wheels make sure that the the wheels and tires make sure that they are still able to be used you're checking the brakes brake lines making sure there's nothing that's cut looking for bird strikes that happens a lot yeah so that's basically like the main things you're going on the inside looking making sure everything in the inside is looking good making sure the upstairs all the like on all the computers that everything is good there's going to be faults that'll pop up little issues that they're going to claim is something bad and you basically will go through look at everything make sure it's all okay so all serviceable checking fire bottles fire bottles like fire extinguishers oxygen masks first aid kits making sure the plane has enough oil and hydraulic fluid in a storage bin in the back to make sure that when it flies if something happens down range they have oil and hydraulic fluid to take care of the situation we change tires we change different flight surfaces remove things to fix from a different shop let's say like when we had yesterday there's a an issue with one of the panels on the side had to take it off we sent it to a shop called Simcoe Kyle probably can explain that one a little bit better it's sheet metal so we send it to them they'll do the inspection or repair on it if it's crack they'll find some way to fix it and then paint it or put a certain coating on it to help keep it strong that's basically our job pass that we do launches and recoveries launch you know you marshal a jet uh to go fly away and then when the plane's coming back marshal it back into your spot it's not as intimidating as it may look when you first go through it's actually pretty fun still everyone else will disagrees with me on this one but it's still my current favorite thing we do as a crew chief obviously inspections are nice because they kill time but launching and recovering in chips pretty darn cool so that's a funny one generally we're supposed to just work a eight hour shift per day and new york five days week but as you'll find out as a maintainer that no longer really applies because they can at least how we do it here in my base once a week or once a month you do what's called week in duty super fun where you work already four days out of your week you have one night off then you come in and do two 12 hour shifts and then one night off then you go back to your you go finish off the next week i'd like to say you work 40 hours a week but sometimes it's 50 60 just kind of depends on what's going on i'd say between 40 and 60 on average well you kind of already said the biggest one uh amp license yes so basically what we can do is we can get an amp license it alone is like one of the best things you can get when it comes to being maintenance especially if you want to do maintenance on the outside though a really good option is like for me where i'm stationed bowing is here as well so we share the same runway we share the same everything basically so in theory uh let's say what my six years is coming up to an end and i'm in my five year mark and i want to get out bowing actually will hire you or me on since i already have the experience and i already know how to use an air force to or a technical order i think that's that's what it means so since they their job basically actually follows us yeah i can just start working for bowing um without anything which is nice um now not all jobs don't like that obviously but not all bases are have that ability just my currently my base is connected to that so it's very easy for us you can also go work for airliners let's say you wanted to go for american airlines or southwest you can go straight into it with just the amount of time you've had as an aircraft mechanic and go start working for them on the signaling side just fixing their jets when they come in that's basically the main things you can also get one for like radios isn't bad obviously that means you know how they talk on it like you know how to work a radio for like emergency situations and stuff like that and there are a lot of companies that do want that too so uh mostly amp the radio one not mentioning and just simply just work finding the right company to work for so this one's kind of i would definitely say it's in in the middle the people who want to go into appointments they're gone a lot the people who don't want to go into appointments aren't gone it's one of those things where the nco's or the the staff sergeants and tech sergeants they definitely try to get on almost every uh in a deployment that they can i i know people that have been here for six years and they have never deployed at all and i've seen people who volunteer to to deploy and they deploy several times it all really depends on how serious you are about deploying now not to say that you're going to get to your base and your base is going to be the same way mine is i have heard that my base is a little different because everyone else on the east coast pretty much gets the deployment slots before we do so this is probably why everyone kind of volunteers for them when they can because they know it's not very often that we get to go on them it just kind of depends on your base gear at charleston yeah it's not very often but it does happen a lot probably doesn't make as much sense as it does in my head but we'll get over that while let's say mccord they're going to deploy to north to south korea and all the other bases on the pacific rim so it'll be a little bit different for them because our their staging base is going to be a lot different than ours ours were basically getting stationed in afghanistan iud guitar things like that so it's a little bit different for us versus them i am undecided currently on if i want to stand for 20 or just finish my enlistment and get out it's kind of a when i joined right during tech during basic during tech school right when i got to my job it was 100 yeah i want to since then there's been a lot of stupid things that have happened in the air force at least of my base that kind of possibly pushed me away from wanting to 100 at this point now not to say my mind can't change again but i am coming up to my cross training window so if i can change jobs i will stay while this job is cool it has this really enjoyable moments i'd rather just get a different job that i'll enjoy better so for me uh in about one year i'm going to be trying to switch over to what's called a load master oh yeah so so i kind of answered that with the last one but uh 100 still going to be weather that's never going to change for me but i am going to attempt to do load master that's a not necessarily an exciting job for me but it's uh i get to travel the world i get to do a lot of really cool stuff as a load master and as a crew chief while there's some cool stuff you can do i know it's just not as exciting to me as another job possibly could be so for me 100 going to try cross training a two different job if i can get weather i'm gonna get i definitely want to request weather if i can't get weather i'm not worried about it i'll just go i'll be happy for load master so those are the two jobs that i really am trying to get into uh the number one thing i would say is do your job correctly not in like a rude way there are literally nco's and other people who think that they're really good at their jobs so they no longer follow the jobs that are laid out for you our job is not very difficult while it may suck you have what's called a job guide this job guide it's basically a picture book with instructions it will literally explain it like this here's a circuit breaker right here pull this one circuit breaker if you can't figure it out here's a picture of where it should be or let's say you're going to inspect something on the outside or you're trying to remove a panel you go to that job guide and it will say remove this panel it has 218 screws okay i'm going to be here for a while you see exactly where each one of them are tells you how many there are so luckily at the end of your job you can go back and say okay i've got 287 not 288 or so tells you every single thing that is required of you someone is telling you to do it other than the way the job guide tells you to they are wrong they are trying to set you up for failure so do not allow that to happen there are things you can do around your job that don't necessarily have to do with your job that can help you out as well especially if you're trying to promote some things that are always going to help us volunteering or doing extra jobs on the side or taking an additional job on the side that takes you away from your current one it doesn't make as much sense as it does in my head but i'll give you an example i just came back from what's called honor guard now everyone at your shop is going to hate you for doing it because they think you're just trying to get out of your job really annoying when they do that especially because you're doing something for the Air Force regardless that has nothing to do with my job anymore for the extra amount of months that you're there but you're still doing something very humbling and it's an amazing experience like for me whenever i got to do it i got to go help these families bury their their loved one who served in the military that previously were just very recent and give them that last experience with the military that they probably would ever ever have that widow or that mother is now going to associate that funeral now with you and if you do an amazing job they're now going to be more grateful for the military and for the people that are actually caring about her situation her family too it itself is one of my favorite things i got to do so far in the Air Force coming back into my job again sucky thing is you kind of forget a lot of the stuff you get again and uh so you have to go right back to the very beginning having to learn your job 100 again so it kind of sucks but once you get comfortable again i was like two months ago i'm already pretty comfortable again with my job i understand what i'm doing again i'm back to being super thorough and that's pretty much the most important thing you want to make sure that you're thorough know what you're doing but take opportunities when you get them while your job only cares about your job the Air Force cares about what you've done in the Air Force honor guard's gonna help me out whenever i want to apply for or when i whenever i want to make staff sergeant or whenever i pretty much do anything it's going to help me out at least temporarily now over time it's no longer going to help me because that's old news at some point now it'll look good on me going the rest of my career but not always going to help me out