How do I fly with the ANG?

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ShaggyAce

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ShaggyAce
As a sophomore in college pursuing an Accounting degree, if I am planning on enlisting in the Air Guard as a loadmaster, would the Air Guard pay for all, if not some, of the flight training at a private flight school? Will I have time to obtain my ratings while attending college and the ANG? Would I have to put my semester on hold to attend Basic Training? How does that work? I hear that as a load master you have a better chance of networking with current pilots for future opportunities. The end goal is to fly majors someday.
 
ShaggyAce said:
As a sophomore in college pursuing an Accounting degree, if I am planning on enlisting in the Air Guard as a loadmaster, would the Air Guard pay for all, if not some, of the flight training at a private flight school?
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No. There may be GI Bill money, but I know od no ANG program to fund civilian pilot training.

Will I have time to obtain my ratings while attending college and the ANG?
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It's possible, but you won't have a lot of time for anything else if you're in a flying job at the ANG unit.

Would I have to put my semester on hold to attend Basic Training?
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One, possibly two semesters, depending on timing.

How does that work? I hear that as a load master you have a better chance of networking with current pilots for future opportunities. The end goal is to fly majors someday.
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Enlisting in an ANG unit usually gives you a slight edge on getting one of the one or two UPT slots the unit gets every year. Don't know if being a loadmaster is any additional edge or not.

For accurate information on the processes, talk to one of the recruiters at that ANG unit.
 
One of the flight instructors I work with is retired from flying with the Nebraska ANG. I'm sure he could answer some of your questions too. He flew the F-4 phantoms and the tankers up until about 5 years ago. His name is Greg Love if you'd like to give him a call.
(402) 499 - 0666
 
Ron Levy said:
No. There may be GI Bill money, but I know od no ANG program to fund civilian pilot training.
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There is a good chance it has changed or I may not recall it correctly, but it used to be that if you qualified for the Loan Repayment program (it was often up to $10,000 for ANG and Reserve) and did the paperwork for it when you enlisted, you could use this money to reinburse up to 60% of your flight training for ratings beyond your private rating. You also had to fly at an approved 141 school. Of course you could also use it to repay your student loans. THis paid for a good portion of my instrument rating.

Do make sure you have it in writing when you enlist. I sat in the recruiters office for almost 2 hours insistingvhe show me in writtng in my enlistment papers where it said I qualified. He never found it but after a few phone calls he got approval to write a letter to put in my file saying I qualified. A year later when I went to start collecting this money I was told I didn't have the correct paper work for it. Fortunately I had this letter in my file which authorized them to retroactively do the proper paper work for the Loan Repayment Program.

Brian
 
I still serve in the ANG, and now at state HQ after working in both units in our state. If you are interested in becoming a traditional Guardsman, you would have to go to basic and then tech school afterwards. Could take a year, but probably less, total. You could use your GI benefits to flight train at a Part 141(?) school, so you have to be sure your flight school is approved.

You could also use the GI.benefits toward your college tuition. There are also full time jobs in the ANG, either as federal technicians, or as Active Guard Reserve, and in general it is a much better deal as an AGR.

Anyone in OPS can probably expect a fairly high ops tempo, so deployments might delay your education.

Student loan repayment and enlistment bonuses vary from year to year, but tend to focus on officer career fields that are hard to recruit, like surgeons, etc.

The guard is like a big family, unlike the REGAF,where people move on every few years. I have met and worked with some really great people in the ang, and travelled around the world with them (not to mention getting around 75 hours in the pit of an F16). It has been a great experience.
 
I still serve in the ANG, and now at state HQ after working in both units in our state. If you are interested in becoming a traditional Guardsman, you would have to go to basic and then tech school afterwards. Could take a year, but probably less, total. You could use your GI benefits to flight train at a Part 141(?) school, so you have to be sure your flight school is approved.

You could also use the GI.benefits toward your college tuition. There are also full time jobs in the ANG, either as federal technicians, or as Active Guard Reserve, and in general it is a much better deal as an AGR.

Anyone in OPS can probably expect a fairly high ops tempo, so deployments might delay your education.

Student loan repayment and enlistment bonuses vary from year to year, but tend to focus on officer career fields that are hard to recruit, like surgeons, etc.

The guard is like a big family, unlike the REGAF,where people move on every few years. I have met and worked with some really great people in the ang, and travelled around the world with them (not to mention getting around 75 hours in the pit of an F16). It has been a great experience.
 
Other options would be to join in a career field similar to your own, like in personnel or finance. Being a member of a unit, in combination with some flying time and meeting the physical would give a big advantage over someone off the street if you are looking at meeting a pilot board.

Flying clubs are becoming rare, since they are an inspectable item and therefore need reams of documentation. What wing CC or safety officer would want to take a hit on a safety inspection or UCI over a flying club?

If you are simply thinking of joining the Guard to help finance your personal flight training or college education, and not necessarily interested in a flying slot, you might be better off in a career field like personnel or finance, where the ops tempo is lower, and your education would likely have fewer interruptions due to deployments.
 
Other options would be to join in a career field similar to your own, like in personnel or finance. Being a member of a unit, in combination with some flying time and meeting the physical would give a big advantage over someone off the street if you are looking at meeting a pilot board.

Flying clubs are becoming rare, since they are an inspectable item and therefore need reams of documentation. What wing CC or safety officer would want to take a hit on a safety inspection or UCI over a flying club?

If you are simply thinking of joining the Guard to help finance your personal flight training or college education, and not necessarily interested in a flying slot, you might be better off in a career field like personnel or finance, where the ops tempo is lower, and your education would likely have fewer interruptions due to deployments.
 
I did some research and realized the closest airlift wing is about 2 hours from where I live. I have a rescue wing located closer to home. Do only airlift wings hire loadmasters?
 
Rescue wings, if they fly helos, have a number of enlisted crew positions. I flew a couple of times with a reserve unit in an HH-60, and got to be the door gunner at night with NVG's, along with a PJ insertion done at night and a refueling in complete darkness. It was a blast.

Traveling two hours for a drill weekend is not out of the ordinary. Part of the deal is that you would get billeting on Friday before drill, and Saturday of the drill weekend. It does mean more time away from other activities and interests, along with the costs of travel, which typically are not reimbursable.

With the current ops tempo, you could be asked to deploy for 60, 90, or 180 days at a time. As a member of the flying crew, this would be an expectation.

If you make it into an aircrew position and successfully accomplish the training, and if you do a good job, then you might do well on a pilot board, and if there were openings, you could possibly attend flight screening and training. Helo time, like time in single engine fighters, is factored somehow toward total multi engine hours for airline jobs. While heavy pilots can accrue thousands of hours in a few years, fighter pilots and helo pilots build hours at a much slower rate.

There are a lot of "ifs" in what I just said, so if you want to get into the majors, there are a lot easier ways. If you want to serve in the military, with all of the responsibilities as well as the fun stuff, than this should be your goal, not building hours toward something else. You and your supervisors ultimately would not be happy if you were planning on solely using an enlistment in the military as a stepping stone toward flying with the majors, at least in my opinion. Participation in the ANG takes a lot of time and commitment, and certainly a lot more than the weekend a month that many people think. This is particularly true as you advance in rank, or if you are in a flying position, where currency of training is hard to maintain.

I think I put in over forty days last year, not including the weekend drills. This also did cover several training courses as well as a short deployment. So, if you want to be a member of the Guard, you should know the responsibilities, both in terms of time and commitment, so you are ultimately not unhappy.

I would never trade the experience for anything, but it's not for everyone.
 
There are lots of caveats in the system, and they change constantly. For example, if you fly over certain designated areas, there is no federal tax for that month on your military pay,etc. There are yearly limits on student loan repayment, and limits on how many AD days you can use in a year, depending on needs, etc. There are incentives for air crew, and so on.

Bottom line, join the Guard because you want to be in the military, but not as a career stepping stone. If it's the latter, you will not be happy.
 
ShaggyAce said:
I did some research and realized the closest airlift wing is about 2 hours from where I live. I have a rescue wing located closer to home. Do only airlift wings hire loadmasters?
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If the resuce wing has HC-130's, I believe they'll have loadmasters, too, but I'm not sure why you're so fixed on being a loadmaster. I know of no particular advantage to being a loadmaster as opposed to any other specialty when it comes to nailing down a unit's pilot training slot. When I was in the guard, one of the pilots with whom I flew was former crew chief who'd used that job to help pay for enough college to qualify for ANG officer training and then UPT.

Also, living two hours from the unit is not easy for someone in a flying billet. Part-time aircrew in ANG units don't just show up one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer like most of the part-timers. They are required to fly just as much as the regulars -- figure on being on the schedule about twice a week, which usually means flying nights after work (or school) during the week and/or non-drill weekends. Four hours round-trip each time you have to fly could make it pretty much impossible to have time for college study and private pilot training, too. Better to pick a unit closer to home, or find a non-flying slot if the unit is that far away.
 
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