Anyone out there?

[daaaniiieee]

I'm a future AV and I ship on July 22nd. How long was your A school? And what were your duty station choices?

[Temen]

I'll just copy an paste my last explanation since I can't remember the exact lengths of school.

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I can't remember exactly how long each class was. I'll tell you I was in Pensacola from Sept 2011 all the way to Feb 2012. My time there included barracks support (cleaning the barracks), Indoctrination (2-3 days), barracks Yeoman (volunteer), Aircraft Firefighting (I think only a week), Personal Finance, basic electronics class with ATs, AEs, and AWs (I believe it is called ATT), AE A-School.

The Electronics class was about 2 months long and it is all computer based lessons covering different types of electricity, generating electricity, electronic components, and basic circuits. There is a lesson on soldering, but no hands on experience. It has some basic troubleshooting for circuits that you do get to work hands on with pre-made circuits.

A-School was about 2 1/2 months long and again it was mostly computer based lessons. You mostly learned about reading out wires and how to find various faults in all of the aircraft systems. Like one lesson would be devoted to the landing gear system. First you'd learn the components, then how they work together, and finally troubleshooting techniques to find faults. They have a very interesting computer program that does it's best to simulate reading wires and components on a jet.

During A-School you will be able to choose your orders. They usually try to wait until you take your first test, so that you can pick orders depending on your test score. Unfortunately for me, we picked orders before our first test; so we picked at random.
What will happen is, the Chief will come in with a list of available orders. He will write them on the board and then you will get to choose in whatever order your class happens to do it in.
There will be orders for all sorts of places in the States and over seas. There might be I-Level or O-Level (for AEs, obviously ATO and ATI are stuck in their level) and there could be orders for any type of platform (fixed wing or helicopter).

C-School will depend on your platform of course, but mine was about 2 months long. I mostly learned how to use IETMs and went more in-depth on the various aircraft systems. They had a jet that had been disassembled into various sections (such as the cockpit, wings, landing gears, etc) and you got to watch how the aircraft is supposed to work. During some parts of the training I actually got to go replace a few parts and sit in the cockpit to learn the different switches.

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But choices vary from time to time and it's hard to predict. If you get F-18 orders you will probably go to Lemoore, CA or Oceana, VA. There's usually a couple for Japan. You could go to Washington or Hawaii even. It's hard to predict.
San Diego has a lot of Helo orders.

[Sebass1223]

Are ae workdays really long?

[Temen]

Originally Posted by Sebass1223

Are ae workdays really long?

It depends on your command and sometimes the work load.
I came from a command whose average work day was 6 hours.
My current command has work days around 10 hours long. Night shift usually gets out a little early if they complete the "priority" jobs.
On the ship everyone does 12 hour shifts.