all right guys we are down here in the lounge starting a new two-day trip uh we're actually
flying with a good buddy of mine uh scott you guys will see him here in a second flew in the
air national guard with him for a lot of years uh really good guy um but today yeah we're heading
over to pensacola home of uh the naval and marine aviators got a chance to hang out with those
uh guys and gals last week actually it was about two weeks ago i got to go to a flight suit night
over there so that was pretty cool but uh looking forward to it let's go uh head to the airplane
what's up everybody we're back in the cockpit all right we just got our clearance here's
our clearance right now uh broke one to maxo then has filed a ton to eight thousand feet
that is set up there uh 39 in three minutes and then we've
got uh one two six point eight for departure squawk is one five
one four this guy's gonna be flying so that's up he's got the flight director on his side
there is the route actually looks really good today there is no turbulent spots a little bit of
uh storm action down below and some radar returns but heading over to dallas today it is a gorgeous
ride again heading over at 39 000 feet anyways uh that is the route let me introduce you to my
good friend scotty scotty and i flew at the air national guard here in phoenix
for a long time uh scotty retired for me obviously he's he's a captain here it's really awesome to
get to fly with him uh scotty say hi to the people hello people so good thing about this video today
is we're going to talk about um air national guard and reserve units so well scotty and i obviously
full for the air national guard i also approve for the reserves out in california and uh we'll have a
little bit of a question and answer session about you know what our experience was getting into
the guard flying for the guard and flying for the guard and flying for the airlines at the same time
right kind of the you know just kind of the nuts and bolts of that and what our interpretation
and our experience was uh flying for both because it is a little bit tough
balancing too but it can be done so anyways uh we will talk to you here in a little bit uh probably
in dallas maybe uh at our ultimate destination today which is pensacola all right guys
all right guys we are here took us only uh two hours three minutes to find time block of 225.
we've got our apu on right now we have ground power available so taking a look at our boots
and bolts that looks good let's go ahead and add that go ahead and turn off the air light going
and ground air is good with the gen bus lights off and go ahead and turn off the apu
and we're done with that we're gonna go ahead and uh vacate this airplane we are uh i didn't tell
you guys we do have a plane change so we're gonna run up grab uh our other airplane that the other
gate number one here in dallas and uh head on over to pensacola so that's what's going on right now
we'll see at the other airplane all right guys we are here at our new airplane okay we're gonna
knock out uh a couple of questions but first i want to introduce scott scott i flew within the
air national guard for probably about 10 years uh really good fun with him i just want to get
his journey that he had through the air national guard and i'll let him explain that to you so
here's scott hi how's everybody doing out there i started my guard career i was in college and i
was kind of looking at flying and i had heard about the air national guard so i went in and
actually enlisted as an aircraft mechanic first to get myself a foot in the door for the guard units
in phoenix arizona and so i got in there i kind of started meeting people seeing how the process
work of becoming a pilot and i kind of went from there i was from alaska i grew up in alaska
and i heard about some openings of pilot training slots
in the alaska guard and so i was kind of trying both phoenix and alaska at the same time
i got my degree i applied for the pilot training slots it's kind of like applying for a job you
apply for those and then they weed through the applications and then they pick and they interview
and select from there so i did that alaska called me first i went up there i interviewed i got hired
and basically put in a pool where you start the process of getting your physical done first make
sure you can pass the physical then when i went we had a flight screening program i went through that
then officer training school and eventually on to undergraduate pilot training in columbus
mississippi and went through that whole process and basically it was a great life great career
i spent 23 years in the guard changed my whole life uh it's been great and i i highly recommend
anybody do it and you're always it's always easy to find help when you're trying to find people
that want to join the guard and get in there the guardsmen are always great helping out so that
was kind of my my journey through the whole guard so i ended up here at southwest that was awesome
uh so i learned a little bit about scott that i didn't know i thought i knew everything about them
anyways uh we're gonna go with one uh question right now we uh we are still boarding we still
got uh a couple of minutes but uh scott i will tee this one up to you it's from chocolate taco okay
uh is it difficult to manage flying as a traditional reservist slash guardsman and
flying for the airlines so this is probably a good and popular question can you do both and
scott's been doing it a long time so we'll let him answer that one yeah i did both
uh for eight years i hired southwest in 2000 and i retired from the guard in 2008 so for that eight
years i was doing both it is a balance to trying to balance the schedule it all really depends on
what your flying job is in the guard we flew tankers so we did a lot of trips a lot of support
so we would uh so trying to balance those two can be difficult sometimes
uh but the airlines work with you really well and giving you the days off you need to go do to fly
with the guard if you're going on trips or local flying or drill weekends and things like that so
it is uh it can be tough at times but it's fun at times uh and uh you know it's it's
you kind of learn how to manage the whole thing uh between the two jobs so for me
yeah yeah it was it was fun but uh it is it is a lot of work and uh you know just make it happen
that's it that's that's the key phrases make it happen you can do it so yeah like scott was saying
it also depends on what airframe you're flying right us as tanker guys uh we could go over do
a local mission be fully qualified we did have to do some overseas trips so again our airline worked
for us really really good um and giving us the time off so we could do those td-wise deployments
or whatever uh depending on the airplane you fly like if you flew c17 um many of you guys knew
i was in the reserves before i came to the guard flying c5s my unit transferred over to a c-17 unit
and uh there are a lot more requirements so with your ar airdrop assault you know all that all
that good stuff so it depends on the unit um and the airplane now don't get me wrong man c-17 is
an amazing airplane uh it's just going to be a little bit more of a bouncing act when you come
to the airlines to fly a c-17 versus a tanker versus a fighter uh it's gonna be mavericks
sorry i'm on airplane nut but anyways yeah it depends on the airplane so my advice to
you guys is to research what airplane you want to fly number one uh that's first and foremost
and then uh learn more about what the lifestyle is at that unit and the only way you're gonna do that
is by going to the unit during their drill weekends meeting the people that are there and
talking to them and getting a better understanding i used to say it's a it's a two-way street we're
interviewing you in the air national guard as much as you're interviewing us and you got to make sure
that uh that works out so uh if if it works it works out great and we spend you know 10 15
20 years in the guard and it's it's great so all right guys uh we'll hit up some more questions but
uh thank you chocolate taco for that question and uh we'll answer some more here uh probably on the
next stop we have clearance clarence roger roger what's our vector victor hey guys good morning
we are here in pensacola it's a good night
about 17 hours on the ground so good overnight but uh anyways we are back at it we're going to head
to dallas change plans head over to reno and then back down to phoenix ending out our two-day trip
so with that we're going to answer a few more questions uh i've actually got a few
questions about um do you need any flight time or ratings to get in the air national guard basically
some are saying do i need a private do i need an instrument
well that depends on the guard unit some guard units don't require anything
some guard units require you to enlist so they can see you there during that process
uh back in my guard unit back in the day at the arizona guard the copperheads um we like to see
a little bit of flight time uh i like personally to see you at least have a private pilot license
if you had more than that that was awesome um but what we're generally trying to do is are
you going to be successful in military pilot training and i found that those with a private
pilot license or at least some form of flying had a little bit of a leg up initially in the process
but it tends to even out uh as you go through the t6 phase but uh initially it kind of gives you a
little bit of a boost that i've seen so again the answer is it depends depends on the unit depends
on what their flavor of the of their unit is like some take without flight time some like
to see some flight time some like to see private and some are the more the merrier so it depends
you will hear that answer a lot uh in your flying curve so anyways uh scott's got a good question
hey everybody how you doing now a couple people had asked about uh how in the guard do you get
assigned what aircraft you're gonna fly also how often do you fly and what's the competition like
when you get to pilot training uh on what airplane you're gonna fly and the beauty of the guard is
that if you get selected to go to pilot training you already know exactly what you're gonna fly
so whatever unit you get hired by let's say they have kc-135s f-16s f-22s whatever uh if you get
hired by them to go to pilot training that is what you're going to be fine you're going to
know that before you ever get to pilot training which when you get there you'll find out you'll
get a lot of questions about how do you already know what you're gonna fly and uh everybody'd be
like well i've never heard of the guard you'll be like you'll be a god that's everybody will love it
and they'll be like i should have done that but uh so that's how you determine what aircraft you're
gonna fly now as far as how often or how much do you have to fly it all depends on the equipment
in the guard you get what they call aftps which are flight training periods
and you get four of those a month and so those are usually for like local flights
ground training that kind of stuff so typically on an average guard unit we'll
say for kc-135 which i play with ernie uh we flew probably once a week four times a month
and then on top of that there are trips that you do like deployments to places like that and as a
guard guy as a part-timer you volunteer for those most of the time and you can do them as often
as you want or as little as you want they kind of try to divide them all up between
all the guys that want to go on trips so uh it depends on how good the trip is too yeah that's
right you might have to do some that aren't great to get the really good ones but uh but they're all
fun they're all great uh and that's that's kind of how the whole guard works and the beauty of of the
guard is that when you get assigned your airplane of what you can fly you'll be there for as long as
you want there's no moving you know you know it's like get your orders out but now it's time to go
somewhere else you'll be there for 20 years if you want uh through retirement which most guys stay
till retirement uh but uh that's that's kind of it in a nutshell so all right guys we got to get uh
get ready we're going to head on off to uh dallas we got a little bit more time to answer a few more
your questions thanks for thanks for sending them in they're uh they're very thoughtful and
uh we wanted to do this for a little bit now so i'm glad we get to do it we'll see you in dallas
are we there yet all right guys we are here
reno yep we skipped dallas because we got into dallas a little bit behind schedule and we had
to change plans and we didn't have a whole lot of time so sorry uh no dallas in that one but
uh anyways we're gonna finish up on uh two more questions and we're gonna call it a day because
then we gotta get ready we got one more back to phoenix and we're done so uh from luke manu
you'd like to know uh the opinion on how a guard pilot handles working at an airline um
with having a guard job so do you need to live in base for the guard job or can you travel from
your airline base that's a great question uh one that is asked a lot and one that uh
we got a lot of experience with so i'll let scott answer that one
yeah like ernie said it's a great question uh as an airline pilot you can almost guarantee
some time in your career you're gonna have to commute to something somewhere uh maybe
for a short period maybe for a long period but you'll definitely be commuting somewhere but
as far as the guard is concerned uh if you're gonna have to pick one to commute to or from
uh i think it would be a lot easier to commute to your guard job and then live in a domicile base
reason being is uh you have a lot of usually have a lot of flexibility with the guard uh let's say
you have to get your three or four flights in for the month uh usually the schedules are work work
with you and you can just commute in say one day and then work your couple of flights or three four
days or whatever and then get all your your beans done and then go ahead and commute back to your
domicile base for your airline but you probably have to do that once a month whereas if you're
working for the airline and you're living somewhere else you're probably gonna have
to commute in once a week uh sometimes you can put those trips together and lessen your commute
but you'll be commuting a lot more for the uh for the airline as base they're against the the guard
so if i had to pick one that's what i would do obviously the best scenarios both in your base
uh it's difficult to do sometimes but it's definitely possible me and ernie did it uh
yeah we live in phoenix and uh we're in the garden phoenix and uh southwest of phoenix so uh best of
both worlds obviously but uh yeah if i was going to pick one definitely be commute to your garage
you know there was one uh saying back in the day it was like if you want a airline job join the
garden reserve if you want to guard a reserve job get on with an airline so yeah yeah that was kind
of a big saying back in the day i don't know how true it is nowadays but uh anyways uh we
are gonna wrap it up thank you so much for all the questions that were very very thoughtful questions
uh we like doing this stuff um obviously giving back to you all uh asking questions for from us
to hopefully help you guys get into these seats one day so um we we enjoy doing that but uh
anyways i hope you guys have a great week um and thanks again for watching uh if you got value out
of this hit the thumbs up uh and subscribe if you haven't come along with us and uh enjoy the
growing journey growing up growing up getting down