i tell you what, the carrier rocks quite a bit. you are on the flight deck like 100ft above the water and standing on the fantail looking toward the bow, and the horizon is rising and falling like 20ft while jets are taking off on the cats, makes you a little nervous.
surprisingly most of the ships company i talked to had not been on deck during flight ops. one of my buddys from ATT at TSC in Chicago who is an ET and works on the 06 level with them UHF radios and crap - i showed him around the jet a little bit. its surprising how little the people who aren't in the aviation field know about the jets they keep hitting their heads on while they are traversing the jungle known as the hangar bay lol.
but i have not been on a small boy, and as far as the community goes - i think there are only a few hundred people on those ships. and that must be very very nice. standing in chow lines that are 20 minutes long is rediclious. getting sick for 3 weeks at a time because there are so many people is gross. and just the things that people do because they know that they are so many people on the ship to blame and not get caught themselves is sad. from littering all over to vandalizing and stealing - it is bad on a carrier. but then again - there are lots more women.
and ill tell you this fc1, the aviation community - from the people i have talked to in ships company - work a hell of a lot more than the people on the ship. it sucks. i worked from 0500 to 1700 each day no questions with one chow break. and on top of that we had to stay topside next to our jets 'on watch' in case the ABH plane handlers wanted to move them somewhere. it was basically 7 hours of watch on the flight deck and 4 hours of flight schedule. and while we are 'on watch' we have to hand-clean the jet with rags because everyone leaves dirty fingerprints on the jets.
but as far as aviation goes - we just maintain the jets like you would a race car. every time they fly before and after we look everything over - computers in the jet let us know whats having problems and then we troubleshoot to figure out which part is faulty and remove+replace+test. we work on qualifications for our jobs to work on harder things, such as a turn qualification - to actually get in the cockpit and turn the jet on and test all the systems on deck while the engines are running and what not. we also do corrosion control and clean and preservation.
the best part about aviation life aboard ship - is we do not have to participate in anything but flight deck drills (fires on the flight deck and stuff like that) and those kinds of drills are cake because we dont have anything special to do but stand around and hold a fire hose lol. for GQ we just chill in our shops and sleep with flash gear on hahah. same with man overboard. and sometimes we get GQ sleeping chits so we can straight up sleep through it.
i dunno. all i hope is that i make second class before this next cruise. test in September results round December! hopefully i pass!
