Another Newbie

[Icarus]

Greetings to all,
I'm a long time JC reader/first time poster who finally got around to creating an account. A little bit about me: I'm an active duty USAF C-130 navigator and have been flying as such for about 17 years. I've been around the world and done about everything there is to do as a crewdog. Somehow finished a Master's at ERAU along the way. Now, my career is winding down (I plan on retiring as soon as I'm eligible after 20 yrs of service), but I enjoy flying so much that I'm seriously contemplating a career as a pilot in the next 3 yrs. I've done a bit of private flying, but never enough to get serious or obtain a lisence. Not sure how far I want to go just yet (CFI, freight, regionals etc.), so I'm just going to take it one step at a time starting with PPL and see where it leads. Thanks to my pension, investments, years of frugal living, and a spouse who's more employable than I am, I'll be more or less financially set to persue this ambition. I'll keep you posted as I progress. But enough about me; thanks for the great posts and Happy Halloween!

[captainphil]

Hi and welcome. I love the c-130. I got to sit in the co-pilot seat on the ground during an aviation career fair at my tech school.The pilots were very nice and of course I was ranting what each instrument does to the pilots and they were shocked to know that me being a student knew how to read an approach plate chart and they offered me a fuhnny comment saying do I want to sign up to fly the c-130 lol. I don't think i'd be able to fly the c-130 that thing is massive. How hard is that to fly from your experience? Its massive !! and the copilot who flew it only had 500 hrs total!! wouldn't you need more hours to fly sometihn gof that size? Happy Halloween as well .(Don't eat to much candy)

[frog_flyer]

welcome.

It's good to have more military dudes on here.


It sounds like you'll be good to go for anything when you retire. Are you an 0-4?

[Icarus]

How hard is that to fly from your experience? Its massive !! and the copilot who flew it only had 500 hrs total!! wouldn't you need more hours to fly sometihn gof that size?

I must say it flies remarkable well for a 50 yr old design whether it's in a low-level environment, airdrop configuration, or landing on an unimproved airstrip. As a navigator, I've never manipulated the control yoke or throttles, but many of the low time co-pilots do just fine. Some show up new with as little as 300 hrs. As for it's size, most USAF cargo aircraft are even larger (C-17, C-5, KC-10 etc.)